NATURE AND GRACE IN THE THEOLOGY OF SAINT AUGUSTINE

125 Pages·06.324 MB·English

by  ALTIZER, THOMAS JONATHAN JACKSON

THE UNIVERSITY OP CHICAGO
NATURE AND GRACE IN THE THEOLOGY OP
SAINT AUGUSTINE
With Special Reference to
the Confessions and the
Anti-Pelagian Writings
A DISSERTATION
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OP THE DIVINITY SCHOOL
IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OP
MASTER OP ARTS
BY<- X
THOMAS J. :J/ALTIZER
ii
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
JUNE, 1951
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TABLE OP CONTENTS
Page
Chapter
I. INTRODUCTION
The Historical Significance of St. Augustine
On the Method of St. Augustine
The Problem of the Present Thesis
II. SAINT AUGUSTINE’S CONCEPTION OP NATURE .......... 22
Against Manicheanism
God and Nature
Evil and Privation
Evil and Creation
Nature as Being and Nature as Creature
III. SAINT AUGUSTINE’S DOCTRINE OP SIN AND GRACE . . . $1
St. Augustine’s Conversion
St. Augustine and Pelagianism
St. Augustine’s Doctrine of Original Sin
The Meaning of Sin
St. Augustine’s Doctrine of Grace
Freedom and Grace
IV. CONCLUSION................................... 91
A Roman Catholic Solution
St. Augustine: the Man and the Problem
Classical Nature and Christian Nature
Nature, Grace, and God
BI3LI0GRAPHY ........................................... 120
ii
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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
The Historical Significance of St. Augustine
A zealous admirer of St. Augustine might insist that the
rise and fall of theology reflects the path of the history of
Augustinianism. Certainly, the three great periods in the his­
tory of post-Patristic theology: the high Middle Ages, the Ref­
ormation, and the twentieth century, were periods of a return to
many of the theological problems which were central to St. Augus­
tine. The very structure of Western dogmatics was largely laid
by the work of St. Augustine. For, the history of dogma in the
West was so thoroughly dominated by St. Augustine from the begin­
ning of the fifth century to the era of the Reformation, that the
historian may properly take this whole time as forming but one
period.Thus, in reconsidering an Augustinian problem, the mod­
ern student is not delving into the dusty pages of a deservedly
forgotten past; but, is, in fact, coming into contact with one of
the very foundations of Western theology itself. Another dimen­
sion of his historical significance which has found renewed empha­
sis in contemporary discussion lies in the relation of the Classi­
cal and the Hebrew Weltanschauungsn in the substructure of his
■^Adolph Harnack, History of Dogma, trans. Neil Buchanan
(Boston: Little, Brown and Company, .1599)» V, 3*
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thought. In fact, the present inquiry is but a sub-topic of this
general problem. The crucial point here is that many critics
think that it was not until the time of St. Augustine that Greek
and Jewish thought was brought into a dynamic and enduring synthe­
sis. Augustine provided a new way for Christian thought not only
with his dogmatic efforts but also with his philosophical Inquiries
which helped lay the basic foundations for the Christian thought
of the West. As Charles Norris Cochrane points out:
For, by pressing to a logical conclusion the implication
of the new starting-point, he completed the effort of thought
initiated by the Fathers and laid the foundation of what he
claimed to be "ours, the one true philosophy." In Augustine
we may then perceive the full meaning of the Evangel as it
presented itself to the mind of the fourth century and there­
with, the measure of the revolution in attitude and outlook
which resulted from the impact of Christianity upon the Graeco-
Roman world.1
One of the most difficult obstacles in Augustinian studies
to the modern mind, living as it does in a world of specialisa­
tions, is the vastness of St. Augustine^ thought. Yet, his work
did not merely extend over most of the great areas of the intel­
lectual life. It was so organically ordered, that despite an ap­
parent disparity of content, it comprehensively included the mind
of the Church itself. Hence, Friedrich Heiler has said: "What
makes Augustine marvelous and indeed unique is that his character
is a microcosm which comprehends the entire range of that macros-
cosm, the Church."^ 3h his consideration of St. Augustine as a
Christian teacher, Adolph Harnack asserts that he reconstructed
^Charles Norris Cochrane, Christianity and Classical
Culture (London: Oxford University Press, 19i)4), p. 399.
^Quoted by Kenneth E. Kirk, The Vision of God (London:
Longmans, Green and Co., 1932), p. 3
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§ and connected absolutely three great circles of thought, thereby
I
I assuring himself of a lasting influence. Harnack then sets these
P
[i three circles forth as follows:
In the first place, he built up a complete circle of con­
ceptions which is marked by the categories, "God, the soul,'
alienation from God, irresistible grace, hunger for God, un­
rest in the world and rest in God, and felicity." a circle in
which we can easily demonstrate the cooperation of Neoplatonic
and monastic Christian elements, but which is really so pure
and simple that it can be taken as the fundamental form of
monotheistic piety in general. Secondly, he gave expression
to a group of ideas in which sin, grace through Christ, grace
in general, faith, love, and hope forms the main points; a
Paulinism modified by popular Catholic elements. Thirdly, he
constructed':another group, in which the Catholic Church is
regarded as authority, dispenser of grace, and administrater
of the sacraments, and, further, as the means and aim of all
God’s ordinances
| However, St. Augustine’s significance is not to be summed up in
;-j theology alone. Augustine was also a philosophical Father of the
1
ij West. A contemporary historian of philosophy, Richard McKeon,
] has pointed out that the philosophy of Augustine, whatever its
’i
| origin, was to determine the problems, and in part even the con-
2
1 elusions, of a thousand years of philosophers. But perhaps more
«
| important even that this influence is the fact that, "in his work
1 there emerges, for the first time, a system of Christian philos-
l ophy."3
Historians of Ideas are often much more concerned to demon­
strate the proposition that the real origin of modern philosoph­
ical Introspection and subjectivism does not lie in the Italian
■^■Harnack, op. clt., V, 1|.
^Richard McKeon (ed.), Selections from Medieval Philos­
ophers (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1929), I, 3* "
3Ibid.
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A
1 Renaissance, or in the philosophy of Descartes, but, in fact, in
1 1
f the creative work of this great Patristic doctor of the Church*
•■I Ever since Pascal, critics have pointed out that Descartes’ fa-
'•'i
- mous "cognito ergo sum” is repeated many times in an only slightly
i different form in the writings of St. Augustine. Moreover, if
St. Augustine's teachings about nature and the self are to have
any cogency, they must be seen in the light of his discovery of
the centrality of the inner life. W. Windelband has asserted that:
The line of thought in which medieval philosophy essen­
tially moved, and in which it continued the principle of the
philosophy of antiquity, was proscribed for it by the doctrine
of Augustine. He had moved the principle of intemality
(Innerlichkeit), which had been preparing in the whole clos­
ing development of ancient science, for the first time into
the controlling-central position of philosophic thought, and
the position to which he is entitled in the history of philes-
5 ophy is that of the beginner of a new line of development.
- The contents of the inner life lay clearly before Augustine’s eyes
as a realm of distinctive objects of perception independent of
perceptory experience. In truth, he was convinced that in this
I sphere a genuine knowledge and information based on inner experi­
ence could be arrived at which was just as genuine as an empirical
knowledge of external nature. St. Augustine brought to an end the
I development of ancient philosophy by completing the process which
lead from the naive objective to the subjective objective. He
found what had long been looked for: the making of the inner life
Note especially the essay of Erich Przywara in the sym-
i posium entitled, A Monument to Saint Augustine (London: Sheed &
] Ward, 19i|5)» PP* 2i;9-256.
1
I ^W. Windelband, A History of Philosophy, trans. James H.
j Tufts (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1093)» p. 270.
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the starting-point of reflection on the world.^ Yet, Augustine
went even further than this. Principles which he derived from
the inner life became his general criteria of certitude. For the
first time, the criteria of epistemelogical certitude were derived
from self-consciousness. As Angel C. Vega sums it up:
Knowledge of oneself, as the primary guarantee of the
truth of our concepts; the existence of thought, as the first
incontrovertible affirmation of the mind; the existence of
the Ego as the first object of consciousness, the existence
of Consciousness as the first criterion of our internal acts,
and the fundamental basis of our certitude; the introspective
method, the hypothetical doubt, the theory of mental aberra­
tion— all these criteria of certitude originated with St.
Augustine.^
All of Augustine’s philosophical ideas centered about
the principle of the absolute and immediate certainty of con­
sciousness. In fact, all of these ideas have their ultimate
ground and inner union in the principle of the immediate certainty
of inner experience, which Augustine first expressed with complete
clearness, and formulated and used as the starting-point of philos­
ophy. 3
Accordingly, Etienne Gilson asserts that, "in proportion
as the teaching of St. Augustine arrived at being a metaphysics,
it is a metaphysics based upon a psychological empiricism, or, if
preferred, a metaphysics of inner experience.”^- But from the very
^arnack, op. clt.. V, 107.
p
Angel C. Vega, Saint Augustine: His Philosophy, trans.
Denis J. Kavanaugh (Philadelphia: The Peter Reilly Company, 1931)»
p. 47.
| ^Windelband, op. clt., p. 276.
^Etienne Gilson, ”The Future of Augustinian Metaphysics,”
•j A Monument to St. Augustine, pp. 302-303.
1
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beginning of his career as a philosopher, Augustine had insisted
that God is not only the center of all philosophy but is the end
of all philosophizing.^- In the second book of his Soliloquies,
Augustine has said that, "All human knowledge involves the presence
of God, all attainment of truth is the knowledge of God, all things
?
are real insofar as they are like God." Whereas pagans fell into
error into the ordering of their knowledge because they assigned
to each science an independent domain, the Christian philosopher
can recognize the affinities of the sciences to each other for all
would be unintelligible save in view of their common source. Thus,
God is first in philosophy, because He is the beginning and end of
all things. Richard McKeon has judiciously asserted:
That God is present in all knowledge is particularly rel­
evant to the knowledge of the soul since of all knowledge that
of the existence of thought is most certain; and it can in
turn be made the basis of other certainties. Therefore Augus­
tine’s exquisite gift of self-analysis and introspection, by
which he is enabled to describe with precision the most deli­
cate phenomena of intimate life, is turned wholly to the inti­
mation of God.3
In the true philosophy, the mind grasps God first as truth, after
Him the soul, after the soul the body, after the body, other bodies.
Hence, to the Classical scholar.McKeon, philosophy must consist of
an inversion of perspective towards things, and the mind must be
prepared for it as for an initiation.^- The work of philosophy is
^William Pearson Tolley, The Idea of God in the Philosophy
of St. Augustine (New York: Richard R. Smith, Inc., 1930), p.
2Solil. ii. 13. 7, 8.
3McKeon, op. cit., I, 7*
frlbid., I, 10.
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if first a work of conversion, and it is not without reason that
Gilson considers Augustine’s philosophy to be a metaphysics of
1 conversion. But philosophically, at least, this conversion con-
sists largely in a reorientating of the mind so that it looks not
f-i
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.j at itself and God through nature but at nature through itself and
•
J God. Self-knowledge is then fundamental in the knowledge of the
I world. In fact, Augustine reached the revolutionary principle
■1 p
j that truth, formally considered, can exist only in the intellect.
:j "Go not outside, return to thyself." "Within the man dwells
■\ truth. "3
I
•
With regard to the problem of nature and grace, Hamack
asserts that St. Augustine, "was the first to separate nature and
•1
l-j grace, two spheres which men had long attempted unsuccessfully to
I divide: but by this means he connected religion and morality, and
:! gave a new meaning to the idea of the good."^- Augustine dialec-
;j tically developed the Christian idea of the good so that it encom-
passed and surpassed all that Classical ethics had arrived at, thus,
; probably effecting a crowning victory over Classical culture. It
.j is in this area that the problem of the present thesis lies. But
i it is important to insist at the outset that Augustine’s work is
j
.
j so organically related that it is only with grave risk that the
j
] historian can consider any given problem in abstraction from the
j •‘•Etienne Gilson, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, trans.
j A. H. C. Downes (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 19ij.O), p. 131.
j Vega, op. cit., p. 208
i ^Quoted by Vega, Ibid.
] ^Harnack, op. cit., V, 6£.
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H rest* If only for this reason the present study will suffer in
2
■i
I its necessary restriction of its data to the Confessions and the
I anti-Pelagian writings. Consequently, it is important to set the
A
.3 problem of nature and grace into some sort of coherent relation
•j
I with the great areas of Augustine’s life work. If such a study
were to be presented in its proper fullness, it would require a
j life-time’s preparation. However, the present thesis will merely
| be concerned with presenting the barest of outlines.
On the Method of St. Augustine
j An analysis of St. Augustine’s theological method is
extremely difficult if only because of its comprehensiveness. As
Hamack indicates,^ there are three planes in Augustine’s theolo-g-
; ical thought: Neoplatonic mysticism (without means of grace,
I without the Church, and even, in a sense, without Christ),
Christological soteriology, and the plane of the authority and
i sacraments of the Church. The critic must deal carefully with
j
= each one of these planes and must always be careful to refrain
!
from making judgments on the basis of one plane which would imply
in their conclusions to those of all three. But there are other
i
; factors in his method which present yet graver complications.
i
| Karl Adam has noted that:
it isJcharacteristic of this fresh creative fertility of his
i psychological habit of mind that he neglected the purely
i logical relations and interconnections of the data which he
] had acquired, and did not seek to devise any neat and system-
\ atic arrangement of his thought. His theological and phi-
j losophical views tend to lie unconnected, in a relation of
j mere juxtaposition to one another. He does not contrive, or
^Harnack, op. cit., V, 101+.
I
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