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| Vancouver July 21 2013 |
Augustine’s Influences
Preface
This is a PhD Edit article originally published 21072013, revised with additions for an entry on academia.edu, 27072024.
Manichaeism
According to Alan
Richardson (1999), as a student Augustine was attracted to Manichaeism,[1] a movement began by the Persian, Manes (ca
215-275).[2] Vernon J. Bourke (1958) writes that
Augustine was in this religion for nine years from 373 A.D.[3]
The Manichees, according to Augustine scholar Henry Chadwick (1992), held that
matter itself was evil.[4] Augustine rejected
Manichaeism when he converted to Christianity,[5] but
this does not mean with certainty the views of Manes have no influence
whatsoever on Augustine’s theodicy.[6] However,
Augustine is historically known to have eventually challenged Manichaeism by
denying its views as mythology,[7] and in
disagreement with what he viewed as orthodox Christianity.[8]
Augustine’s view of the corruption and privation of matter and nature was that
they were good things as created originally by God,[9] but
had become less than they were originally intended through the rebellion of
creatures.[10] This view would therefore
contradict Manichaeism[11] which saw matter as
always by nature being inherently evil.[12]
Platonic Philosophy
Augustine was also
documented to have been influenced by Platonic philosophy.[13]
Scott MacDonald (1989) explains in his article ‘Augustine’s Christian-Platonic
Account of Goodness’ that Augustine held views influenced by Platonic thought.[14] Platonic philosophy was largely created by
Plato (427-347 B.C.).[15] Richard Kraut (1996) notes
Plato was a preeminent Greek philosopher who conceived the observable world as
an imperfect image of the realm of the unobservable and unchanging forms.[16] Plato, in Timaeus, written in 360
B.C, viewed these forms as divinely moved objects.[17]
Mark D. Jordan (1996) notes Augustine was primarily affected by Neoplatonism
before his conversion to Christianity.[18]
Augustine (398-399)(1992) states in Confessions he examined
Platonist writings that supported his Biblical understanding of the nature of
God.[19] Jordan states the Platonic writings
helped Augustine to conceive of a cosmic hierarchy in the universe in which God
was immaterial and had sovereign control over his material creation.[20] However, Jordan states Augustine saw philosophy
alone as being unable to change his life as only God himself could do.[21] Augustine’s use of Plato does not in itself
invalidate his understanding of Biblical writings where the two may happen to
be in agreement.[22] From my overall research of
Augustine and his free will theodicy, he places much emphasis on Biblical
theology as primary,[23] and therefore although it
is possible he could read Neoplatonism into his understanding of theodicy, it
is also very likely he rejects Neoplatonism where it contradicts his Scriptural
findings through in depth study.[24]
AUGUSTINE (388-395)(1964) On
Free Choice of the Will, Translated by Anna S.Benjamin and L.H. Hackstaff,
Upper Saddle River, N.J., Prentice Hall.
AUGUSTINE (398-399)(1992) Confessions,
Translated by Henry Chadwick, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
AUGUSTINE
(400-416)(1987)(2004) On the Trinity, Translated by Reverend Arthur
West Haddan, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series One, Volume 3, Denver,
The Catholic Encyclopedia.
AUGUSTINE (421)(1998) Enchiridion,
Translated by J.F. Shaw, Denver, The Catholic Encyclopedia.
AUGUSTINE (426)(1958) The
City of God, Translated by Gerald G. Walsh, Garden City, New York, Image
Books.
AUGUSTINE (427)(1997) On
Christian Doctrine, Translated by D.W. Robertson Jr., Upper Saddle River,
N.J., Prentice Hall.
AUGUSTINE (427b)(1997) On
Christian Teaching, Translated by R.P.H. Green, Oxford, Oxford University
Press.
BOURKE, VERNON J. (1958)
‘Introduction’, in The City of God, Translated by Gerald G. Walsh,
Garden City, New York, Image Books.
CHADWICK, HENRY (1992)
‘Introduction’, in Confessions, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
JORDAN, MARK D. (1996)
‘Augustine’, in Robert Audi (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of
Philosophy, pp. 52-53. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
KRAUT, RICHARD (1996)
‘Plato’, in Robert Audi (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy,
Cambridge, pp. 619-629. Cambridge University Press.
MACDONALD, SCOTT (1989)
‘Augustine’s Christian-Platonist Account of Goodness’, in The New
Scholasticism, Volume 63, Number 4, pp. 485-509. Baltimore, The New
Scholasticism.
PLATO (360 B.C.)(1982)
‘Timaeus’, in Process Studies, Volume. 12, Number 4, Winter,
pp.243-251. Claremont, California, Process Studies.
POJMAN, LOUIS P. (1996) Philosophy:
The Quest for Truth, New York, Wadsworth Publishing Company.
RICHARDSON, ALAN (1999)
‘Manichaeism’, in Alan Richardson and John Bowden (eds.), A New
Dictionary of Christian Theology, Kent, SCM Press Ltd.
Website work
(My comments)
Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by Dave Ofstead.
Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. 1907. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor. Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York.
Contact information. The editor of New Advent is Kevin Knight.'
Cited
'Catholic Encyclopedia: St. Augustine of Hippo'
'From his birth to his conversion (354-386)'
'Augustine was born at Tagaste on 13 November, 354. Tagaste, now Souk-Ahras, about 60 miles from Bona (ancient Hippo-Regius), was at that time a small free city of proconsular Numidia which had recently been converted from Donatism.'
Cited
'From his conversion to his episcopate (386-395)'
'Augustine gradually became acquainted with Christian doctrine, and in his mind the fusion of Platonic philosophy with revealed dogmas was taking place. The law that governed this change of thought has of late years been frequently misconstrued; it is sufficiently important to be precisely defined. The solitude of Cassisiacum realized a long-cherished dream. In his books "Against the Academics," Augustine has described the ideal serenity of this existence, enlivened only by the passion for truth. He completed the education of his young friends, now by literary readings in common, now by philosophical conferences to which he sometimes invited Monica, and the accounts of which, compiled by a secretary, have supplied the foundation of the "Dialogues." Licentius, in his "Letters," would later on recall these delightful philosophical mornings and evenings, at which Augustine was wont to evolve the most elevating discussions from the most commonplace incidents. The favourite topics at their conferences were truth, certainty (Against the Academics), true happiness in philosophy (On a Happy Life), the Providential order of the world and the problem of evil (On Order) and finally God and the soul (Soliloquies, On the Immortality of the Soul).'
Cited
'It is now easy to appreciate at its true value the influence of neo-Platonism upon the mind of the great African Doctor. It would be impossible for anyone who has read the works of St. Augustine to deny the existence of this influence. However, it would be a great exaggeration of this influence to pretend that it at any time sacrificed the Gospel to Plato. The same learned critic thus wisely concludes his study: "So long, therefore, as his philosophy agrees with his religious doctrines, St. Augustine is frankly neo-Platonist; as soon as a contradiction arises, he never hesitates to subordinate his philosophy to religion, reason to faith.
(This conclusion in agreement with my PhD research and findings, documented above)
He was, first of all, a Christian; the philosophical questions that occupied his mind constantly found themselves more and more relegated to the background" (op. cit., 155). But the method was a dangerous one; in thus seeking harmony between the two doctrines he thought too easily to find Christianity in Plato, or Platonism in the Gospel. More than once, in his "Retractations" and elsewhere, he acknowledges that he has not always shunned this danger. Thus he had imagined that in Platonism he discovered the entire doctrine of the Word and the whole prologue of St. John. He likewise disavowed a good number of neo-Platonic theories which had at first misled him — the cosmological thesis of the universal soul, which makes the world one immense animal — the Platonic doubts upon that grave question: Is there a single soul for all or a distinct soul for each? But on the other hand, he had always reproached the Platonists, as Schaff very properly remarks (Saint Augustine, New York, 1886, p. 51), with being ignorant of, or rejecting, the fundamental points of Christianity: "first, the great mystery, the Word made flesh; and then love, resting on the basis of humility." They also ignore grace, he says, giving sublime precepts of morality without any help towards realizing them.'
(Non-Christian worldviews can have overlap of agreement with statements and arguments of truth within biblical, New Testament, Christianity; while still being overall, distinctly different worldviews, in contrast to that Christianity)
Citations
'The Manichæan controversy and the problem of evil'
'After Augustine became bishop the zeal which, from the time of his baptism, he had manifested in bringing his former co-religionists into the true Church, took on a more paternal form without losing its pristine ardour — "let those rage against us who know not at what a bitter cost truth is attained. . . . As for me, I should show you the same forbearance that my brethren had for me when I blind, was wandering in your doctrines" (Contra Epistolam Fundamenti 3). Among the most memorable events that occurred during this controversy was the great victory won in 404 over Felix, one of the "elect" of the Manichæans and the great doctor of the sect. He was propagating his errors in Hippo, and Augustine invited him to a public conference the issue of which would necessarily cause a great stir; Felix declared himself vanquished, embraced the Faith, and, together with Augustine, subscribed the acts of the conference. In his writings Augustine successively refuted Mani (397), the famous Faustus (400), Secundinus (405), and (about 415) the fatalistic Priscillianists whom Paulus Orosius had denounced to him. These writings contain the saint's clear, unquestionable views on the eternal problem of evil, views based on an optimism proclaiming, like the Platonists, that every work of God is good and that the only source of moral evil is the liberty of creatures (City of God XIX.13.2).
(Here we can see why I reviewed Augustine under the umbrella of free will theodicy within my PhD work, and this supports the view that it was/is historically accurate to do so)
Augustine takes up the defence of free will, even in man as he is, with such ardour that his works against the Manichæan are an inexhaustible storehouse of arguments in this still living controversy.
In vain have the Jansenists maintained that Augustine was unconsciously a Pelagian and that he afterwards acknowledged the loss of liberty through the sin of Adam. Modern critics, doubtless unfamiliar with Augustine's complicated system and his peculiar terminology, have gone much farther. In the "Revue d'histoire et de littérature religieuses" (1899, p. 447), M. Margival exhibits St. Augustine as the victim of metaphysical pessimism unconsciously imbibed from Manichæan doctrines. "Never," says he, "will the Oriental idea of the necessity and the eternity of evil have a more zealous defender than this bishop." Nothing is more opposed to the facts. Augustine acknowledges that he had not yet understood how the first good inclination of the will is a gift of God (Retractions, I, xxiii, n, 3); but it should be remembered that he never retracted his leading theories on liberty, never modified his opinion upon what constitutes its essential condition, that is to say, the full power of choosing or of deciding. Who will dare to say that in revising his own writings on so important a point he lacked either clearness of perception or sincerity?'
References from New Advent
'APA citation. Portalié, E. (1907). Life of St. Augustine of Hippo. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02084a.htm
MLA citation. Portalié, Eugène. "Life of St. Augustine of Hippo." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 2. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907. .
