Theologian of the Month: Augustine of Hippo

It's February and I don't know about you, but for me, February is a pretty depressing month. It is sandwiched between January, which holds abundant promise for the new year and March, which brings St. Patrick's Day and my birthday. So what does February have to offer? In my experience, not much, but today I am going to remedy that problem: I am introducing my Theologian of the Month! So without further delay, let me present St. Augustine....

Born in North Africa, in the year 354, to a Christian mother and a pagan father, Augustine lived during an incredibly turbulent time in history. He lived during the waning days of the Roman empire and saw Christianity rise from an outlawed religion to the state religion of Rome. As a child, Augustine was a highly gifted student and he eventually became a well-known teacher of rhetoric. Though his mother was Christian, Augustine was not a believer and through the course of his studies he adhered to several different philosophical world-views before he converted to Christianity in 386. Following his conversion, Augustine entered the priesthood and eventually became the Bishop of Hippo. Augustine was a prolific writer and his writings on Christianity still serve as the foundation for modern theological thought. His works display a clear Christian world-view and in them he sets forth his views on how one can find spiritual salvation and happiness.

In my post today, I am going to give a brief overview of Augustine's most famous work: The City of God.

The City of God

Alaric the Visigoth

Augustine's most influential and well known work was published in the 5th century, immediately following the sack of Rome by Alaric the Visigoth (not to be confused with Alaric, my former garden gnome). This event was of enormous importance, historically speaking, as it marked the beginning of the end for the Roman Empire. While the fall of Rome can be so romanticized and dissected that the event becomes just another historical milestone (i.e. Edward Gibbon's six-volume account, appropriately titled, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) Augustine's work reminds us that for the citizens of Rome who survived the attack, Alaric's invasion brought everything they knew into question.

Rome was a historically pagan culture and its brutality towards Christians is heavily documented. However, this history of contention with Christianity ended abruptly when the emperor Constantine decreed that Christianity was a legal religion in 313 and was later, in 391, pronounced the only legal religion in the Roman Empire by the emperor Theodosius. With this history in their very recent past, the fall of Rome to the Visigoths made people question if it was their conversion to the Christian religion that led to the great Rome's downfall.

The City of God is written in response to this fear. In it, Augustine argues that truth is found only in God and that happiness is found only in His salvation. He argues that any attempt to find happiness outside of Christ is folly. Our hope is not in Rome, but in God and in order to demonstrate the chasm between these two assumptions, Augustine suggests that we look at the earth as if it was comprised of two cities, the city of God and the city of Man. The city of man is comprised of those people who engage in, "adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like." These citizens also believe that all happiness and pleasure are to be found in this life. However, he argues that this assumption is a mistaken one.

For what flood of eloquence can suffice to detail the miseries of this life?...For when, where, how, in this life can these primary objects of nature be possessed so that they may not be assailed by unforeseen accidents? Is the body of the wise man exempt from any pain which may dispel pleasure, from any disquietude which may banish repose? That amputation or decay of the members of the body puts an end to its integrity, deformity blights its beauty, weakness its health, lassitude its vigor, sleepiness or sluggishness its activity,--and which of these is it that may not assail the flesh of the wise man?

Augustine goes at length to argue that any pleasure this earth has to offer is fleeting. The vitality of the body, the eagerness of the mind, the success of the Roman empire. Everything that is earthly will fail. So then, how do we find contentment amidst this decaying life? We place our faith in Christ and ardently pursue the virtues of the Bible: faith, hope and love. It is these virtues and this faith that marks the citizens of the city of God.

Here Augustine makes an important distinction. The Greek philosophers put forth a list of virtues that would lead a man to a fulfilled life. Prudence, temperance, justice and fortitude were character traits that were highly valued during Augustine's day, be he derided these traits as prideful vices. If they are pursued apart from a relationship with Christ:

They have no proper authority over the body and the vices. For what kind of mistress of the body and the vices can that mind be which is ignorant of the true God, and which, instead of being subject to His authority, is prostituted to the corrupting influences of the most vicious demons? It is for this reason that the virtues which it seems to itself to possess, and by which it restrains the body and the vices that it may obtain and keep what it desires, are rather vices than virtues so long as there is no reference to God in the matter. 

Instead, our goal, in everything, should be to demonstrate those characteristics that most resemble God. For we desire, above all else to know eternal happiness, and that eternal happiness is an eternity spent with God.

Since, then, the supreme good of the city of God is perfect and eternal peace, not such as mortals pass into and out of by birth and death, but the peace of freedom from all evil, in which the immortals ever abide, who can deny that that future life is most blessed, or that, in comparison with it, this life which now we live is most wretched, be it filled with all blessings of body and soul and external things? And yet, if any man uses this life with a reference to that other which he ardently loves and confidently hopes for, he may well be called even now blessed, though not in reality so much as in hope.

For Augustine, nothing, whether it be thought or action, can be separated from God. Our goal as humans should be to desire ultimate happiness and through the grace and blessings of God, we are able to know and experience that happiness. This knowledge is what allows people to witness all the horrors the sacking of Rome provided and walk away knowing that their happiness hasn't been compromised.

Salvation, such as it shall be in the world to come, shall itself be our final happiness.