Teaching of St.
Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of
Hippo (354-430) is "a philosophical and theological genius of
the first order, dominating, like a pyramid, antiquity and the
succeeding ages. Compared with the great philosophers of past
centuries and modern times, he is the equal of them all; among
theologians he is undeniably the first, and such has been his
influence that none of the Fathers, Scholastics, or Reformers has
surpassed it." (Philip Schaff, History of the Christian
Church) Elsewhere, we have discussed his life and his writings;
here, we shall treat of his teaching and influence in three
sections:
I. His Function as a
Doctor of the Church
II. His System of
Grace
III. Augustinism in
History
I. HIS FUNCTION AS A
DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH
When the critics
endeavour to determine Augustine's place in the history of the
Church and of civilization, there can be no question of exterior
or political influence, such as was exercised by St. Leo, St.
Gregory, or St. Bernard. As Reuter justly observes, Augustine was
bishop of a third-rate city and had scarcely any direct control
over politics, and Harnack adds that perhaps he had not the
qualifications of a statesman. If Augustine occupies a place apart
in the history of humanity, it is as a thinker, his influence
being felt even outside the realm of theology, and playing a most
potent part in the orientation of Western thought. It is now
universally conceded that, in the intellectual field, this
influence is unrivalled even by that of Thomas Aquinas, and
Augustine's teaching marks a distinct epoch in the history of
Christian thought. The better to emphasize this important fact we
shall try to determine: (1) the rank and degree of influence that
must be ascribed to Augustine; (2) the nature, or the elements, of
his doctrinal influence; (3) the general qualities of his
doctrine; and (4) the character of his genius.
(1) The greatest
of the Doctors
It is first of
all a remarkable fact that the great critics, Protestant as well
as Catholic, are almost unanimous in placing St. Augustine in the
foremost rank of Doctors and proclaiming him to be the greatest of
the Fathers. Such, indeed, was also the opinion of his
contemporaries, judging from their expressions of enthusiasm
gathered by the Bollandists. The popes attributed such exceptional
authority to the Doctor of Hippo that, even of late years, it has
given rise to lively theological controversies. Peter the
Venerable accurately summarized the general sentiment of the
Middle Ages when he ranked Augustine immediately after the
Apostles; and in modern times Bossuet, whose genius was most like
that of Augustine, assigns him the first place among the Doctors,
nor does he simply call him the incomparable Augustine," but
"the Eagle of Doctors," "the Doctor of Doctors."
If the Jansenistic abuse of his works and perhaps the
exaggerations of certain Catholics, as well as the attack of
Richard Simon, seem to have alarmed some minds, the general
opinion has not varied. In the nineteenth century Stöckl
expressed the thought of all when he said, "Augustine has
justly been called the greatest Doctor of the Catholic world."
And the
admiration of Protestant critics is not less enthusiastic. More
than this, it would seem as if they had in these latter days been
quite specially fascinated by the great figure of Augustine, so
deeply and so assiduously have they studied him (Bindemann,
Schaff, Dorner, Reuter, A. Harnack, Eucken, Scheel, and so on) and
all of them agree more or less with Harnack when he says: "Where,
in the history of the West, is there to be found a man who, in
point of influence, can be compared with him?" Luther and
Calvin were content to treat Augustine with a little less
irreverence than they did the other Fathers, but their descendants
do him full justice, although recognizing him as the Father of
Roman Catholicism. According to Bindemann, "Augustine is a
star of extraordinary brilliancy in the firmament of the Church.
Since the apostles he has been unsurpassed." In his "History
of the Church" Dr. Kurtz calls Augustine "the greatest,
the most powerful of all the Fathers, him from whom proceeds all
the doctrinal and ecclesiastical development of the West, and to
whom each recurring crisis, each new orientation of thought brings
it back." Schaff himself (Saint Augustine, Melanchthon and
Neander, p. 98) is of the same opinion: "While most of the
great men in the history of the Church are claimed either by the
Catholic or by the Protestant confession, and their influence is
therefore confined to one or the other, he enjoys from both a
respect equally profound and enduring." Rudolf Eucken is
bolder still, when he says: "On the ground of Christianity
proper a single philosopher has appeared and that is Augustine."
The English Miter, W. Cunningham, is no less appreciative of the
extent and perpetuity of this extraordinary influence: "The
whole life of the medieval Church was framed on lines which he has
suggested: its religious orders claimed him as their patron; its
mystics found a sympathetic tone in his teaching; its polity was
to some extent the actualization of his picture of the Christian
Church; it was in its various parts a carrying out of ideas which
he cherished and diffused. Nor does his influence end with the
decline of medievalism: we shall see presently how closely his
language was akin to that of Descartes, who gave the first impulse
to and defined the special character of modern philosophy."
And after having established that the doctrine of St. Augustine
was at the bottom of all the struggles between Jansenists and
Catholics in the Church of France, between Arminians and
Calvinists on the side of the Reformers, he adds: "And once
more in our own land when a reaction arose against rationalism and
Erastinianism it was to the African Doctor that men turned with
enthusiasm: Dr. Pusey's edition of the Confessions was among the
first-fruits of the Oxford Movement."
But Adolf Harnack
is the one who has oftenest emphasized the unique rôle of
the Doctor of Hippo. He has studied Augustine's place in the
history of the world as reformer of Christian piety and his
influence as Doctor of the Church. In his study of the
"Confessions" he comes back to it: "No man since
Paul is comparable to him" — with the exception of
Luther, he adds. — "Even today we live by Augustine, by
his thought and his spirit; it is said that we are the sons of the
Renaissance and the Reformation, but both one and the other depend
upon him."
(2) Nature and
different aspects of his doctrinal influence
This influence is
so varied and so complex that it is difficult to consider under
all its different aspects. First of all, in his writings the great
bishop collects and condenses the intellectual treasures of the
old world and transmits them to the new. Harnack goes so far as to
say: "It would seem that the miserable existence of the Roman
empire in the West was prolonged until then, only to permit
Augustine's influence to be exercised on universal history."
It was in order to fulfil this enormous task that Providence
brought him into contact with the three worlds whose thought he
was to transmit: with the Roman and Latin world in the midst of
which he lived, with the Oriental world partially revealed to him
through the study of Manichæism, and with the Greek world
shown to him by the Platonists. In philosophy he was initiated
into the whole content and all the subtilties of the various
schools, without, however, giving his allegiance to any one of
them. In theology it was he who acquainted the Latin Church with
the great dogmatic work accomplished in the East during the fourth
century and at the beginning of the fifth; he popularized the
results of it by giving them the more exact and precise form of
the Latin genius.
To synthesis of
the past, Augustine adds the incomparable wealth of his own
thought, and he may be said to have been the most powerful
instrument of Providence in development and advance of dogma. Here
the danger has been not in denying, but in exaggerating, this
advance. Augustine's dogmatic mission (in a lower sphere and apart
from inspiration) recalls that of Paul in the preaching of the
Gospel. It has also been subject to the same attacks and
occasioned the same vagaries of criticism. Just as it was sought
to make of Paulinism the real source of Christianity as we know it
— a system that had smothered the primitive germ of the
Gospel of Jesus — so it was imagined that, under the name of
Augustinianism, Augustine had installed in the Church some sort of
syncretism of the ideas of Paul and of neo-Platonism which was a
deviation from ancient Christianity, fortunate according to some,
but according to others utterly deplorable. These fantasies do not
survive the reading of the texts, and Harnack himself shows in
Augustine the heir to the tradition that preceded him. Still, on
the other hand, his share of invention and originality in the
development of dogma must not be ignored, although here and there,
on special questions, human weaknesses crop out. He realized,
better than any of the Fathers, the progress so well expressed by
Vincent of Lérins, his contemporary, in a page that some
have turned against him.
In general, all
Christian dogmatics are indebted to him for new theories that
better justify and explain revelation, new views, and greater
clearness and precision. The many struggles with which he was
identified, together with the speculative turn of his mind,
brought almost every question within the scope of his research.
Even his way of stating problems so left his impress upon them
that there Is no problem, one might almost say, in considering
which the theologian does not feel the study of Augustine's
thought to be an imperative obligation. Certain dogmas in
particular he so amply developed, so skilfully unsheathing the
fruitful germ of the truths from their envelope of tradition, that
many of these dogmas (wrongly, in our opinion) have been set down
as "Augustinism." Augustine was not their inventor, he
was only the first to put them in a strong light. They are chiefly
the dogmas of the Fall the Atonement, Grace, and Predestination.
Schaff (op. cit. 97) has very properly said: "His appearance
in the history of dogma forms a distinct epoch, especially as
regards anthropological and soteriological doctrines, which he
advanced considerably further, and brought to a greater clearness
and precision, than they had ever had before in the consciousness
of the Church." But he is not only the Doctor of Grace, he is
also the Doctor of the Church: his twenty years' conflict with
Donatism led to a complete exposition of the dogmas of the Church,
the great work and mystical Body of Christ, and true Kingdom of
God, of its part in salvation and of the intimate efficacy of its
sacraments. It is on this point, as the very centre of Augustinian
theology, that Reuter has concentrated those "Augustinische
Studien" which, according to Harnack, are the most learned of
recent studies on St. Augustine. Manichæan controversies
also led him to state clearly the great questions of the Divine
Being and of the nature of evil, and he might also be called the
Doctor of Good, or of good principles of all things. Lastly, the
very idiosyncrasy of his genius and the practical, supernatural,
and Divine imprint left upon all his intellectual speculations
have made him the Doctor of Charity.
Another step
forward due to the works of Augustine is in the language of
theology, for, if he did not create it, he at least contributed
towards its definite settlement. It is indebted to him for a great
number of epigrammatic formulæ, as significant as they are
terse, afterwards singled out and adopted by Scholasticism.
Besides, as Latin was more concise and less fluid in its forms
than Greek, it was wonderfully well suited to the work. Augustine
made it the dogmatic language par excellence, and Anselm, Thomas
Aquinas, and others followed his lead. At times he has even been
credited with the pseudo-Athanasian creed which is undoubtedly of
later date, but those critics were not mistaken who traced its
inspiration to the formulæ in "De Trinitate."
Whoever its author may have been, he was certainly familiar with
Augustine and drew upon his works. It is unquestionably this gift
of concise expression, as well as his charity, that has so often
caused the celebrated saying to be attributed to him: "In
essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things
charity."
Augustine stands
forth, too, as the great inspirer of religious thought in
subsequent ages. A whole volume would not be sufficient to contain
the full account of his influence on posterity; here we shall
merely call attention to its principal manifestations. It is, in
the first place, a fact of paramount importance that, with St.
Augustine, the centre of dogmatic and theological development
changed from East to West. Hence, from this view-point again, he
makes an epoch in the history of dogma. The critics maintain that
up to his time the most powerful influence was exerted by the
Greek Church, the East having been the classic land of theology,
the great workshop for the elaboration of dogma. From the time of
Augustine, the predominating influence seems to emanate from the
West, and the practical, realistic spirit of the Latin race
supplants the speculative and idealistic spirit of Greece and the
East. Another fact, no less salient, is that it was the Doctor of
Hippo who, in the bosom of the Church, inspired the two seemingly
antagonistic movements, Scholasticism and Mysticism. From Gregory
the Great to the Fathers of Trent, Augustine's theological
authority, indisputably the highest, dominates all thinkers and is
appealed to alike by the Scholastics Anselm, Peter Lombard, and
Thomas Aquinas, and by Bernard, Hugh of St. Victor, and Tauler,
exponents of Mysticism, all of whom were nourished upon his
writings and penetrated with his spirit. There is not one of even
the most modern tendencies of thought but derives from him
whatever it may have of truth or of profound religious sentiment.
Learned critics, such as Harnack, have called Augustine "the
first modern man," and in truth, he so moulded the Latin
world that it is really he who has shaped the education of modern
minds. But, without going so far, we may quote the German
philosopher, Eucken: "It is perhaps not paradoxical to say
that if our age wishes to take up and treat in an independent way
the problem of religion, it is not so much to Schleiermacher or
Kant, or even Luther or St. Thomas, that it must refer, as to
Augustine.... And outside of religion, there are points upon which
Augustine is more modern than Hegel or Schopenhauer."
(3) The
dominating qualities of his doctrine
The better to
understand St. Augustine's influence, we must point out in his
doctrine certain general characteristics which must not be lost
sight of, if, in reading his works, one would avoid troublesome
misapprehensions.
First, the full
development of the great Doctor's mind was progressive. It was by
stages, often aided by the circumstances and necessities of
controversy, that he arrived at the exact knowledge of each truth
and a clean-cut perception of its place in the synthesis of
revelation. He also requires that his readers should know how to
"advance with him." It is necessary to study St.
Augustine's works in historical order and, as we shall see, this
applies particularly to the doctrine of grace.
Augustinian
doctrine is, again, essentially theological, and has God for its
centre. To be sure Augustine is a great philosopher, and Fénelon
said of him: "If an enlightened man were to gather from the
books of St. Augustine the sublime truths which this great man has
scattered at random therein, such a compendium [ extrait], made
with discrimination, would be far superior to Descartes'
Meditations." And indeed just such a collection was made by
the Oratorian ontologist, André Martin. There is then a
philosophy of St. Augustine, but in him philosophy is so
Intimately coupled with theology as to be inseparable from it.
Protestant historians have remarked this characteristic of his
writings. "The world," says Eucken, "interests him
less than" the action of God in the world and especially in
ourselves. God and the soul are the only subjects the knowledge Of
which ought to fire us with enthusiasm. All knowledge becomes
moral, religious knowledge, or rather a moral, religious
conviction, an act of faith on the part of man, who gives himself
up unreservedly." And with still greater energy Böhringer
has said: "The axis on which the heart, life and theology of
Augustine move is God." Oriental discussions on the Word had
forced Athanasius and the Greek Fathers to set faith in the Word
and in Christ, the Saviour, at the very summit of theology;
Augustine, too, in his theology, places the Incarnation at the
centre of the Divine plan, but he looks upon it as the great
historic manifestation of God to humanity — the idea of God
dominates all: of God considered in His essence (On the Trinity),
in His government (The City of God) or as the last end of all
Christian life (Enchiridion and On the Christian Combat).
Lastly,
Augustine's doctrine bears an eminently Catholic stamp and is
radically opposed to Protestantism. It is important to establish
this fact, principally because of the change in the attitude of
Protestant critics towards St. Augustine. Indeed, nothing is more
deserving of attention than this development so highly creditable
to the impartiality of modern writers. The thesis of the
Protestants of olden times is well known. Attempts to monopolize
Augustine and to make him an ante-Reformation reformer, were
certainly not wanting. Of course Luther had to admit that he did
not find in Augustine justification by faith alone, that
generating principle of all Protestantism; and Schaff tells us
that he consoled himself with exclaiming (op. sit., p. 100):
"Augustine has often erred, he is not to be trusted. Although
good and holy, he was yet lacking in true faith as well as the
other Fathers." But in general, the Reformation did not so
easily fall into line, and for a long time it was customary to
oppose the great name of Augustine to Catholicism. Article 20 of
the Confession of Augsburg dares to ascribe to him justification
without works, and Melanchthon invokes his authority in his
"Apologia Confessionis." In the last thirty or forty
years all has been changed, and the best Protestant critics now
vie with one another in proclaiming the essentially Catholic
character of Augustinian doctrine. In fact they go to extremes
when they claim him to be the founder of Catholicism. It is thus
that H. Reuter concludes his very important studies on the Doctor
of Hippo: "I consider Augustine the founder of Roman
Catholicism in the West....This is no new discovery, as
Kattenbusch seems to believe, but a truth long since recognized by
Neander, Julius Köstlin, Dorner, Schmidt,...etc.." Then,
as to whether Evangelicalism is to be found in Augustine, he says:
"Formerly this point was reasoned out very differently from
what it is nowadays. The phrases so much in use from 1830 to 1870:
Augustine is the Father of evangelical Protestantism and Pelagius
is the Father of Catholicism, are now rarely met with. They have
since been acknowledged to be untenable, although they contain a
particula veri." Philip Schaff reaches the same conclusion;
and Dorner says, "It is erroneous to ascribe to Augustine the
ideas that inspired the Reformation." No one, however, has
put this idea in a stronger light than Harnack. Quite recently, in
his 14th lesson on "The Essence of Christianity," he
characterized the Roman Church by three elements, the third of
which is Augustinism, the thought and the piety of St. Augustine.
"In fact Augustine has exerted over the whole inner life of
the Church, religious life and religious thought, an absolutely
decisive influence." And again he says, "In the fifth
century, at the hour when the Church inherited the Roman Empire,
she had within her a man of extraordinarily deep and powerful
genius: from him she took her ideas, and to this present hour she
has been unable to break away from them." In his "History
of Dogma" (English tr., V, 234, 235) the same critic dwells
at length upon the features of what he calls the "popular
Catholicism" to which Augustine belongs. These features are
(a) the Church as a hierarchical institution with doctrinal
authority; (b) eternal life by merits, and disregard of the
Protestant thesis of "salvation by faith" — that
is, salvation by that firm confidence in God which the certainty
of pardon produces (c) the forgiveness of sins — in the
Church and the Church; (d) the distinction between commands and
counsel — between grievous sine and venial sins — the
scale of wicked men and good men — the various degrees of
happiness in heaven according to one's deserts; (e) Augustine is
accused of "outdoing the superstitious ideas" of this
popular Catholicism — the infinite value of Christ's
satisfaction, salvation considered as enjoyment of God in heaven —
the mysterious efficacy of the sacraments (ex opere operato) —
Mary's virginity even in childbirth — the idea of her purity
and her conception, unique in their kind." Harnack does not
assert that Augustine taught the Immaculate Conception, but Schaff
(op. cit., p. 98) says unhesitatingly: "He is responsible
also for many grievous errors of the Roman Church...he anticipated
the dogma of the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, and his
ominous word, Roma locuta est, causa finite est, might almost be
quoted in favour of the Vatican decree of papal infallibility."
Nevertheless, it
were a mistake to suppose that modern Protestants relinquish all
claim upon Augustine; they will have it that, despite his
essential Catholicism, it was he who inspired Luther and Calvin.
The new thesis, therefore, is that each of the two Churches may
claim him in turn. Burke's expression quoted by Schaff (ibid., p.
102) is characteristic: "In Augustine ancient and modern
ideas are melted and to his authority the papal Church has as much
right to appeal as the Churches of the Reformation." No one
notes this contradiction more clearly than Loofs. After stating
that Augustine has accentuated the characteristic elements of
Western (Catholic) Christianity, that in succeeding ages he became
its Father, and that "the Ecclesiasticism of Roman
Catholicism, Scholasticism, Mysticism, and even the claims of the
papacy to temporal rule, are founded upon a tendency initiated by
him," Loofs also affirms that he is the teacher of all the
reformers and their bond of union, and concludes with this strange
paradox: "The history of Catholicism is the history of the
progressive elimination of Augustinism." The singular
aptitude of these critics for supposing the existence of flagrant
contradictions in a genius like Augustine is not so astonishing
when we remember that, with Reuter, they justify this theory by
the reflection: "In whom are to be found more frequent
contradictions than in Luther?" But their theories are based
upon a false interpretation of Augustine's opinion, which is
frequently misconstrued by those who are not sufficiently familiar
with his language and terminology.
(4) The character
of his genius
We have now to
ascertain what is the dominating quality which accounts for his
fascinating influence upon posterity. One after another the
critics have considered the various aspects of this great genius.
Some have been particularly impressed by the depth and originality
of his conceptions, and for these Augustine is the great sower of
the ideas by which future minds are to live. Others, like Jungmann
and Stöckl, have praised in him the marvellous harmony of all
the mind's higher qualities, or, again, the universality and the
compass of his doctrine. "In the great African Doctor,"
says the Rev. J. A. Zahm (Bible, Science and Faith, Fr. tr., 56),
"we seem to have found united and combined the powerful and
penetrating logic of Plato, the deep scientific conceptions of
Aristotle, the knowledge and intellectual suppleness of Origen,
the grace and eloquence of Basil and Chrysostom. Whether we
consider him as philosopher, as theologian, or as exegetist...he
still appears admirable the unquestioned Master of all the
centuries." Philip Schaff (op. cit., p. 97) admires above all
"such a rare union of the speculative talent of the Greek and
of the practical spirit of the Latin Church as he alone
possessed." In all these opinions there is a great measure of
truth; nevertheless we believe that the dominating characteristic
of Augustine's genius and the true secret of his influence are to
be found in his heart — a heart that penetrates the most
exalted speculations of a profound mind and animates them with the
most ardent feeling. It is at bottom only the traditional and
general estimate of the saint that we express; for he has always
been represented with a heart for his emblem, just as Thomas
Aquinas with a sun. Mgr. Bougaud thus interpreted this symbol:
"Never did man unite in one and the same soul such stern
rigour of logic with such tenderness of heart." This is also
the opinion of Harnack, Böhringer, Nourisson, Storz, and
others. Great intellectuality admirably fused with an enlightened
mysticism is Augustine's distinguishing characteristic. Truth is
not for him only an object of contemplation; it is a good that
must be possessed, that must be loved and lived by. What
constitutes Augustine's genius is his marvellous gift of embracing
truth with all the fibres of his soul; not with the heart alone,
for the heart does not think; not with the mind alone, for the
mind grasps only the abstract or, as it were, lifeless truth.
Augustine seeks the living truth, and even when he is combating
certain Platonic ideas he is of the family of Plato, not of
Aristotle. He belongs indisputably to all ages because he is in
touch with all souls, but he is preeminently modern because his
doctrine is not the cold light of the School; he is living and
penetrated with personal sentiment. Religion is not a simple
theory, Christianity is not a series of dogmas; It Is also a life,
as they say nowadays, or, more accurately, a source of life.
However, let us not be deceived. Augustine is not a
sentimentalist, a pure mystic, and heart alone does not account
for his power. If in him the hard, cold intellectuality of the
metaphysician gives place to an impassioned vision of truth, that
truth is the basis of it all. He never knew the vaporous mysticism
of our day, that allows itself to be lulled by a vague, aimless
sentimentalism. His emotion is deep, true, engrossing, precisely
because it is born of a strong, secure, accurate dogmatism that
wishes to know what it loves and why it loves. Christianity is
life, but life in the eternal, unchangeable truth. And if none of
the Fathers has put so much of his heart into his writings,
neither has any turned upon truth the searchlight of a stronger,
clearer intellect.
Augustine's
passion is characterized not by violence, but by a communicative
tenderness; and his exquisite delicacy experiences first one and
then another of the most intimate emotions and tests them; hence
the irresistible effect of the "Confessions." Feuerlein,
a Protestant thinker, has brought out in relief (exaggeratedly, to
be sure, and leaving the marvellous powers of his intellect in the
shade) Augustine's exquisite sensibility — what he calls the
"feminine elements" of his genius. He says: "It was
not merely a chance or accidental part that his mother, Monica,
played in his intellectual development, and therein lies what
essentially distinguishes him from Luther, of whom it was said:
"Everything about him bespeaks the man"'. And Schlösser,
whom Feuerlein quotes, is not afraid to say that Augustine's works
contain more genuine poetry than all the writings of the Greek
Fathers. At least it cannot be denied that no thinker ever caused
so many and such salutary tears to flow. This characteristic of
Augustine's genius explains his doctrinal work. Christian dogmas
are considered in relation to the soul and the great duties of
Christian life, rather than to themselves and in a speculative
fashion. This alone explains his division of theology in the
"Enchiridion," which at first sight seems so strange. He
assembles all Christian doctrine in the three theological virtues,
considering in the mysteries the different activities of the soul
that must live by them. Thus, in the Incarnation, he assigns the
greatest part to the moral side, to the triumph of humility. For
this reason, also, Augustine's work bears an imprint, until then
unknown, of living personality peeping out everywhere. He
inaugurates that literature in which the author's individuality
reveals itself in the most abstract matters, the "Confessions"
being an inimitable example of it. It is in this connection that
Harnack admires the African Doctor's gift of psychological
observation and a captivating facility for portraying his
penetrating observations. This talent, he says, is the secret of
Augustine's originality and greatness. Again, it is this same
characteristic that distinguishes him from the other Doctors and
gives him his own special temperament. The practical side of a
question appealed to the Roman mind of Ambrose, too, but he never
rises to the same heights, nor moves the heart as deeply as does
his disciple of Milan. Jerome is a, more learned exegetist, better
equipped in respect of Scriptural erudition; he is even purer in
his style; but, despite his impetuous ardour, he is less animated,
less striking, than his correspondent of Hippo. Athanasius, too,
is subtile in the metaphysical analysis of dogma, but he does not
appeal to the heart and take hold of the soul like the African
Doctor. Origen played the part of initiator in the Eastern Church,
just as Augustine did in the Western, but his influence,
unfortunate in more ways than one, was exercised rather in the
sphere of speculative intelligence, while that of Augustine, owing
to the qualities of his heart, extended far beyond the realm of
theology. Bossuet, who of all geniuses most closely resembles
Augustine by his elevation and his universality, is his superior
in the skilfulness and artistic finish of his works, but he has
not the alluring tenderness of soul; and if Augustine fulminates
less, he attracts more powerfully, subjugating the mind with
gentleness.
Thus may
Augustine's universal influence in all succeeding ages be
explained: it is due to combined gifts of heart and mind.
Speculative genius alone does not sway the multitude; the
Christian world, apart from professional theologians, does not
read Thomas Aquinas. On the other hand, without the clear,
definite idea of dogma, mysticism founders as soon as reason
awakes and discovers the emptiness of metaphors: this is always
the fate of vague pietism, whether it recognize Christ or not,
whether It be extolled by Schleiermacher, Sabatier, or their
disciples. But to Augustine's genius, at once enlightened and
ardent, the whole soul is accessible, and the whole Church, both
teachers and taught, is permeated by his sentiments and ideas. A.
Harnack, more than any other critic, admires and describes
Augustine's influence over all the life of Christian people. If
Thomas Aquinas is the Doctor of the Schools, Augustine is,
according to Harnack, the inspirer and restorer of Christian
piety. If Thomas inspires the canons of Trent, Augustine, besides
having formed Thomas himself, inspires the inner life of the
Church and is the soul of all the great reforms effected within
its pale. In his "Essence of Christianity" (14th lesson,
1900, p. 161) Harnack shows how Catholics and Protestants live
upon the piety of Augustine. "His living has been incessantly
relived in the course of the fifteen hundred years that have
followed. Even to our days interior and living piety among
Catholics, as well as the mode of its expression, has been
essentially Augustinian: the soul is permeated by his sentiment,
it feels as he felt and rethinks his thoughts. It is the same with
many Protestants also, and they are by no means among the worst.
And even those to whom dogma is but a relic of the past proclaim
that Augustine's influence will live forever."
This genuine
emotion is also the veil that hides certain faults from the reader
or else makes him oblivious of them. Says Eucken: "Never
could Augustine have exercised all the influence he has exercised
if it had not been that, in spite of the rhetorical artifice of
his utterance, absolute sincerity reigned in the inmost recesses
of his soul." His frequent repetitions are excused because
they are the expression of his deep feeling. Schaff says: "His
books, with all the faults and repetitions of isolated parts, are
a spontaneous outflow from the marvellous treasures of his
highly-gifted mind and his truly pious heart." (St.
Augustine, p. 96.) But we must also acknowledge that his passion
is the source of exaggerations and at times of errors that are
fraught with real danger for the inattentive or badly disposed
reader. Out of sheer love for Augustine certain theologians have
endeavoured to justify all he wrote, to admire all, and to
proclaim him infallible, but nothing could be more detrimental to
his glory than such excess of praise. The reaction already
referred to arises partly from this. We must recognize that the
passion for truth sometimes fixes its attention too much upon one
side of a complex question; his too absolute formulæ,
lacking qualification, false in appearance now in one sense now in
another. "The oratorical temperament that was his in such a
high degree," says Becker, very truly (Revue d'histoire
ecclésiastique, 15 April, 1902, p. 379), "the kind of
exaltation that befitted his rich imagination and his loving soul,
are not the most reliable in philosophical speculations."
Such is the origin of the contradictions alleged against him and
of the errors ascribed to him by the predestinarians of all ages.
Here we see the rôle of the more frigid minds of
Scholasticism. Thomas Aquinas was a necessary corrective to
Augustine. He is less great, less original, and, above all, less
animated; but the calm didactics of his intellectualism enable him
to castigate Augustine's exaggerations with rigorous criticism, to
impart exactitude and precision to his terms — in one word,
to prepare a dictionary with which the African Doctor may be read
without danger.
II. HIS SYSTEM OF
GRACE
It is
unquestionably in the great Doctor's solution of the eternal
problem of freedom and grace — of the part taken by God and
by man, in the affair of salvation — that his thought stands
forth as most personal, most powerful, and most disputed. Most
personal, for he was the first of all to synthesize the great
theories of the Fall, grace, and free will; and moreover it is he
who, to reconcile them all, has furnished us with a profound
explanation which is in very truth his, and of which we can find
no trace in his predecessors. Hence, the term Augustinism is often
exclusively used to designate his system of grace. Most powerful,
for, as all admit, it was he above all others who won the triumph
of liberty against the Manichæans, and of grace against the
Pelagians. His doctrine has, in the main, been solemnly accepted
by the Church, and we know that the canons of the Council of
Orange are borrowed from his works. Most disputed, also. like St.
Paul, whose teachings he develops, he has often been quoted, often
not understood. Friends and enemies have exploited his teaching in
the most diverse senses. It has not been grasped, not only by the
opponents of liberty, and hence by the Reformers of the sixteenth
century, but even today, by Protestant critics the most opposed to
the cruel predestinationism of Calvin and Luther who father that
doctrine on St. Augustine. A technical study would be out of place
here; it will be sufficient to enunciate the most salient
thoughts, to enable the reader to find his bearings.
(1) It is
regarded as incontestable today that the system of Augustine was
complete in his mind from the year 397 — that is, from the
beginning of his episcopate, when he wrote his answers to the
"quæstiones Diversæ" of Simplician. It is to
this book that Augustine, in his last years, refers the
Semipelagians for the explanation of his real thought. This
important fact, to which for a long time no attention was paid,
has been recognized by Neander and established by Gangaut, and
also by recent critics, such as Loofs, Reuter, Turmel, Jules
Martin (see also Cunningham, St. Austin, 1886, pp. 80 and 175). It
will not, therefore, be possible to deny the authority of these
texts on the pretext that Augustine in his old age adopted a
system more antagonistic to liberty.
(2) The system of
Pelagius can today be better understood than heretofore. Pelagius
doubtless denied original sin, and the immortality and integrity
of Adam; in a word, the whole supernatural order. But the parent
idea of his system, which was of stoic origin, was nothing else
than the complete "emancipation" of human liberty with
regard to God, and its limitless power for good and for evil. It
depended on man to attain by himself, without the grace of God, a
stoic impeccability and even insensibility, or the absolute
control of his passions. It was scarcely suspected, even up to our
time, what frightful rigorism resulted from this exaggeration of
the powers of liberty. Since perfection was possible, it was of
obligation. There was no longer any distinction between precepts
and counsels. Whatever was good was a duty. There was no longer
any distinction between mortal and venial sin. Every useless word
merited hell, and even excluded from the Church the children of
God. All this has been established by hitherto unedited documents
which Caspari has published (Briefe, Abhandlungen, und Predigten,
Christiania, 1890).
(3) The system of
St. Augustine in opposition to this rests on three fundamental
principles:
+ God is absolute
Master, by His grace, of all the determinations of the will;
+ man remains free,
even under the action of grace;
+ the reconciliation
of these two truths rests on the manner of the Divine government.
Absolute
sovereignty of God over the will
This principle,
in opposition to the emancipation of Pelagius, has not always been
understood in its entire significance. We think that numberless
texts of the holy Doctor signify that not only does every
meritorious act require supernatural grace, but also that every
act of virtue, even of infidels, should be ascribed to a Gift of
God, not indeed to a supernatural grace (as Baius and the
Jansenists pretend), but to a specially efficacious providence
which has prepared this good movement of the will (Retractations,
I, ix, n. 6). It is not, as theologians very wisely remark, that
the will cannot accomplish that act of natural virtue, but it is a
fact that without this providential benefit it would not. Many
misunderstandings have arisen because this principle has not been
comprehended, and in particular the great medieval theology, which
adopted it and made it the basis of its system of liberty, has not
been justly appreciated. But many have been afraid of these
affirmations which are so sweeping, because they have not grasped
the nature of God's gift, which leaves freedom intact. The fact
has been too much lost sight of that Augustine distinguishes very
explicitly two orders of grace: the grace of natural virtues (the
simple gift of Providence, which prepares efficacious motives for
the will); and grace for salutary and supernatural acts, given
with the first preludes of faith. The latter is the grace of the
sons, gratia fliorum; the former is the grace of all men, a grace
which even strangers and infidels (filii concubinarum, as St.
Augustine says) can receive (De Patientiâ, xxvii, n. 28).
Man remains free,
even under the action of grace
The second
principle, the affirmation of liberty even under the action of
efficacious grace, has always been safeguarded, and there is not
one of his anti-Pelagian works even of the latest, which does not
positively proclaim a complete power of choice in man; "not
but what it does not depend on the free choice of the will to
embrace the faith or reject it, but in the elect this will is
prepared by God" (De Prædest. SS., n. 10). The great
Doctor did not reproach the Pelagians with requiring a power to
choose between good and evil; in fact he proclaims with them that
without that power there is no responsibility, no merit, no
demerit; but he reproaches them with exaggerating this power.
Julian of Eclanum, denying the sway of concupiscence, conceives
free will as a balance in perfect equilibrium. Augustine protests:
this absolute equilibrium existed in Adam; it was destroyed after
original sin; the will has to struggle and react against an
inclination to evil, but it remains mistress of its choice (Opus
imperfectum contra Julianum, III, cxvii). Thus, when he says that
we have lost freedom in consequence of the sin of Adam, he is
careful to explain that this lost freedom is not the liberty of
choosing between good and evil, because without it we could not
help sinning, but the perfect liberty which was calm and without
struggle, and which was enjoyed by Adam in virtue of his original
integrity.
The
reconciliation of these two truths
But is there not
between these two principles an irremediable antinomy? On the one
hand, there is affirmed an absolute and unreserved power in God of
directing the choice of our will, of converting every hardened
sinner, or of letting every created will harden itself; and on the
other hand, it is affirmed that the rejection or acceptance of
grace or of temptation depends on our free will. Is not this a
contradiction? Very many modern critics, among whom are Loofs and
Harnack, have considered these two affirmations as irreconcilable.
But it is because, according to them, Augustinian grace is an
irresistible impulse given by God, just as in the absence of it
every temptation inevitably overcomes the will. But in reality all
antinomy disappears if we have the key of the system; and this key
is found in the third principle: the Augustinian explanation of
the Divine government of wills, a theory so original, so profound,
and yet absolutely unknown to the most perspicacious critics,
Harnack, Loofs, and the rest.
Here are the main
lines of this theory: The will never decides without a motive,
without the attraction of some good which it perceives in the
object. Now, although the will may be free in presence of every
motive, still, as a matter of fact it takes different resolutions
according to the different motives presented to it. In that is the
whole secret of the influence exercised, for instance, by
eloquence (the orator can do no more than present motives), by
meditation, or by good reading. What a power over the will would
not a man possess who could, at his own pleasure, at any moment,
and in the most striking manner, present this or the other motive
of action? — But such is God's privilege. St. Augustine has
remarked that man is not the master of his first thoughts; he can
exert an influence on the course of his reflections, but he
himself cannot determine the objects, the images, and,
consequently, the motives which present themselves to his mind.
Now, as chance is only a word, it is God who determines at His
pleasure these first perceptions of men, either by the prepared
providential action of exterior causes, or interiorly by a Divine
illumination given to the soul. — let us take one last step
with Augustine: Not only does God send at His pleasure those
attractive motives which inspire the will with its determinations,
but, before choosing between these illuminations of the natural
and the supernatural order, God knows the response which the soul,
with all freedom, will make to each of them. Thus, in the Divine
knowledge, there is for each created will an indefinite series of
motives which de facto (but very freely) win the consent to what
is good. God, therefore, can, at His pleasure, obtain the
salvation of Judas, if He wishes, or let Peter go down to
perdition. No freedom, as a matter of fact, will resist what He
has planned, although it always keeps the power of going to
perdition. Consequently, it is God alone, in His perfect
independence, who determines, by the choice of such a motive or
such an inspiration (of which he knows the future influence),
whether the will is going to decide for good or for evil. Hence,
the man who has acted well must thank God for having sent him an
inspiration which was foreseen to be efficacious, while that
favour has been denied to another. A fortiori, every one of the
elect owes it to the Divine goodness alone that he has received a
series of graces which God saw to be infallibly, though freely,
bound up with final perseverance.
Assuredly we may
reject this theory, for the Church, which always maintains the two
principles of the absolute dependence of the will and of freedom,
has not yet adopted as its own this reconciliation of the two
extremes. We may ask where and how God knows the effect of these
graces. Augustine has always affirmed the fact; he has never
inquired about the mode; and it is here that Molinism has added to
and developed his thoughts, in attempting to answer this question.
But can the thinker, who created and until his dying day
maintained this system which is so logically concatenated, be
accused of fatalism and Manichæism?
It remains to be
shown that our interpretation exactly reproduces the thought of
the great Doctor. The texts are too numerous and too long to be
reproduced here. But there is one work of Augustine, dating from
the year 397, in which he clearly explains his thought — a
work which he not only did not disavow later on, but to which in
particular he referred, at the end of his career, those of his
readers who were troubled by his constant affirmation of grace.
For example, to the monks of Adrumetum who thought that liberty
was irreconcilable with this affirmation, he addressed a copy of
this book "De Diversis quæstionibus ad Simplicianum,"
feeling sure that their doubts would be dissipated. There, in
fact, he formulates his thoughts with great clearness. Simplician
had asked how he should understand the Epistle to the Romans 9, on
the predestination of Jacob and Esau. Augustine first lays down
the fundamental principle of St. Paul, that every good will comes
from grace, so that no man can take glory to himself for his
merits, and this grace is so sure of its results that human
liberty will never in reality resist it, although it has the power
to do so. Then he affirms that this efficacious grace is not
necessary for us to be able to act well, but because, in fact,
without it we would not wish to act well. From that arises the
great difficulty: How does the power of resisting grace fit in
with the certainty of the result? And it is here that Augustine
replies: There are many ways of inviting faith. Souls being
differently disposed, God knows what invitation will be accepted,
what other will not be accepted. Only those are the elect for whom
God chooses the invitation which is foreseen to be efficacious,
but God could convert them all: "Cujus autem miseretur, sic
cum vocat, quomodo scit ei congruere ut vocantem non respuat"
(op. cit., I, q. ii, n. 2, 12, 13).
Is there in this
a vestige of an irresistible grace or of that impulse against
which it is impossible to fight, forcing some to good, and others
to sin and hell? It cannot be too often repeated that this is not
an idea flung off in passing, but a fundamental explanation which
if not understood leaves us in the impossibility of grasping
anything of his doctrine; but if it is seized Augustine entertains
no feelings of uneasiness on the score of freedom. In fact he
supposes freedom everywhere, and reverts incessantly to that
knowledge on God's part which precedes predestination, directs it,
and assures its infallible result. In the "De Done
perseverantiæ" (xvii, n. 42), written at the end of his
life, he explains the whole of predestination by the choice of the
vocation which is foreseen as efficacious. Thus is explained the
chief part attributed to that external providence which prepares,
by ill health, by warnings, etc., the good thoughts which it knows
will bring about good resolutions. Finally, this explanation alone
harmonizes with the moral action which he attributes to victorious
grace. Nowhere does Augustine represent it as an irresistible
impulse impressed by the stronger on the weaker. It is always an
appeal, an invitation which attracts and seeks to persuade. He
describes this attraction, which is without violence, under the
graceful image of dainties offered to a child, green leaves
offered to a sheep (In Joannem, tract. xxvi, n. 5). And always the
infallibility of the result is assured by the Divine knowledge
which directs the choice of the invitation.
(4) The
Augustinian predestination presents no new difficulty if one has
understood the function of this Divine knowledge in the choice of
graces. The problem is reduced to this: Does God in his creative
decree and, before any act of human liberty, determine by an
immutable choice the elect and the reprobate? — Must the
elect during eternity thank God only for having rewarded their
merits, or must they also thank Him for having, prior to any merit
on their part, chosen them to the meriting of this reward? One
system, that of the Semipelagians, decides in favour of man: God
predestines to salvation all alike, and gives to all an equal
measure of grace; human liberty alone decides whether one is lost
or saved; from which we must logically conclude (and they really
insinuated it) that the number of the elect is not fixed or
certain. The opposite system, that of the Predestinationists (the
Semipelagians falsely ascribed this view to the Doctor of Hippo),
affirms not only a privileged choice of the elect by God, but at
the same time (a) the predestination of the reprobate to hell and
(b) the absolute powerlessness of one or the other to escape from
the irresistible impulse which drags them either to good or to
evil. This is the system of Calvin.
Between these two
extreme opinions Augustine formulated (not invented) the Catholic
dogma, which affirms these two truths at the same time:
+ the eternal choice
of the elect by God is very real, very gratuitous, and constitutes
the grace of graces;
+ but this decree
does not destroy the Divine will to save all men, which, moreover,
is not realized except by the human liberty that leaves to the
elect full power to fall and to the non-elect full power to rise.
Here is how the
theory of St. Augustine, already explained, forces us to conceive
of the Divine decree: Before all decision to create the world, the
infinite knowledge of God presents to Him all the graces, and
different series of graces, which He can prepare for each soul,
along with the consent or refusal which would follow in each
circumstance, and that in millions and millions of possible
combinations. Thus He sees that if Peter had received such another
grace, he would not have been converted; and if on the contrary
such another Divine appeal had been heard in the heart of Judas,
he would have done penance and been saved. Thus, for each man in
particular there are in the thought of God, limitless possible
histories, some histories of virtue and salvation, others of crime
and damnation; and God will be free in choosing such a world, such
a series of graces, and in determining the future history and
final destiny of each soul. And this is precisely what He does
when, among all possible worlds, by an absolutely free act, He
decides to realize the actual world with all the circumstances of
its historic evolutions, with all the graces which in fact have
been and will be distributed until the end of the world, and
consequently with all the elect and all the reprobate who God
foresaw would be in it if de facto He created it. Now in the
Divine decree, according to Augustine, and according to the
Catholic Faith on this point, which has been formulated by him,
the two elements pointed out above appear:
+ The certain and
gratuitous choice of the elect — God decreeing, indeed, to
create the world and to give it such a series of graces with such
a concatenation of circumstances as should bring about freely, but
infallibly, such and such results (for example, the despair of
Judas and the repentance of Peter), decides, at the same time, the
name, the place, the number of the citizens of the future heavenly
Jerusalem. The choice is immutable; the list closed. It is
evident, indeed, that only those of whom God knows beforehand that
they will wish to co-operate with the grace decreed by Him will be
saved. It is a gratuitous choice, the gift of gifts, in virtue of
which even our merits are a gratuitous benefit, a gift which
precedes all our merits. No one, in fact, is able to merit this
election. God could, among other possible worlds, have chosen one
in which other series of graces would have brought about other
results. He saw combinations in which Peter would have been
impenitent and Judas converted. It is therefore prior to any merit
of Peter, or any fault of Judas, that God decided to give them the
graces which saved Peter and not Judas. God does not wish to give
paradise gratuitously to any one; but He gives very gratuitously
to Peter the graces with which He knows Peter will be saved. —
Mysterious choice! Not that it interferes with liberty, but
because to this question: Why did not God, seeing that another
grace would have saved Judas, give it to him? Faith can only
answer, with Augustine: O Mystery! O Altitudo! (De Spiritu et
litterâ, xxxiv, n. 60).
+ But this decree
includes also the second element of the Catholic dogma: the very
sincere will of God to give to all men the power of saving
themselves and the power of damning themselves. According to
Augustine, God, in his creative decree, has expressly excluded
every order of things in which grace would deprive man of his
liberty, every situation in which man would not have the power to
resist sin, and thus Augustine brushes aside that
predestinationism which has been attributed to him. Listen to him
speaking to the Manichæans: "All can be saved if they
wish"; and in his "Retractations" (I, x), far from
correcting this assertion, he confirms it emphatically: "It
is true, entirely true, that all men can, if they wish." But
he always goes back to the providential preparation. In his
sermons he says to all: "It depends on you to be elect"
(In Ps. cxx, n. 11, etc.); "Who are the elect? You, if you
wish it" (In Ps. Lxxiii, n. 5). But, you will say, according
to Augustine, the lists of the elect and reprobate are closed. Now
if the non-elect can gain heaven, if all the elect can be lost,
why should not some pass from one list to the other? You forget
the celebrated explanation of Augustine: When God made His plan,
He knew infallibly, before His choice, what would be the response
of the wills of men to His graces. If, then, the lists are
definitive, if no one will pass from one series to the other, it
is not because anyone cannot (on the contrary, all can), it is
because God knew with infallible knowledge that no one would wish
to. Thus I cannot effect that God should destine me to another
series of graces than that which He has fixed, but, with this
grace, if I do not save myself it will not be because I am not
able, but because I do not wish to.
Such are the two
essential elements of Augustinian and Catholic predestination.
This is the dogma common to all the schools, and formulated by all
theologians: predestination in its entirety is absolutely
gratuitous (ante merita). We have to insist on this, because many
have seen in this immutable and gratuitous choice only a hard
thesis peculiar to St. Augustine, whereas it is pure dogma
(barring the mode of conciliation, which the Church still leaves
free). With that established, the long debates of theologians on
special predestination to glory ante or post merita are far from
having the importance that some attach to them. (For a fuller
treatment of this subtile problem see the "Dict. de théol.
cath., I, coll. 2402 sqq.) I do not think St. Augustine entered
that debate; in his time, only dogma was in question. But it does
not seem historically permissible to maintain, as many writers
have, that Augustine first taught the milder system (post merita),
up to the year 416 (In Joan. evang., tract. xii, n. 12) and that
afterwards, towards 418, he shifted his ground and went to the
extreme of harsh assertion, amounting even to predestinationism.
We repeat, the facts absolutely refute this view. The ancient
texts, even of 397, are as affirmative and as categorical as those
of his last years, as critics like Loofs and Reuter have shown.
If, therefore, it is shown that at that time he inclined to the
milder opinion, there is no reason to think that he did not
persevere in that sentiment.
(5) The part
which Augustine had in the doctrine of Original Sin has been
brought to light and determined only recently.
In the first
place, It is no longer possible to maintain seriously, as was
formerly the fashion (even among certain Catholics, like Richard
Simon), that Augustine invented in the Church the hitherto unknown
doctrine of original sin, or at least was the first to introduce
the idea of punishment and sin. Dorner himself (Augustinus, p.
146) disposed of this assertion, which lacks verisimilitude. In
this doctrine of the primal fall Augustine distinguished, with
greater insistency and clearness than his predecessors, the
punishment and the sin — the chastisement which strips the
children of Adam of all the original privileges — and the
fault, which consists in this, that the crime of Adam, the cause
of the fall is, without having been committed personally by his
children, nevertheless in a certain measure imputed to them, in
virtue of the moral union established by God between the head of
the human family and his descendants.
To pretend that
in this matter Augustine was an innovator, and that before him the
Fathers affirmed the punishment of the sin of Adam in his sons,
but did not speak of the fault, is a historical error now proved
to demonstration. We may discuss the thought of this or that pre
Augustinian Father, but, taking them as a whole, there is no room
for doubt. The Protestant R. Seeberg (Lehrbuch der
Dogmengeschichte, I, p. 256), after the example of many others,
proclaims it by referring to Tertullian, Commodian, St. Cyprian,
and St. Ambrose. The expressions, fault, sin, stain (culpa,
peccatum, macula) are repeated in a way to dispel all doubt. The
truth is that original sin, while being sin, is of a nature
essentially different from other faults, and does not exact a
personal act of the will of the children of Adam in order to be
responsible for the fault of their father, which is morally
imputed to them. Consequently, the Fathers — the Greeks
especially — have insisted on its penal and afflictive
character, which is most in evidence, while Augustine was led by
the polemics of the Pelagians (and only by them) to lay emphasis
on the moral aspect of the fault of the human race in its first
father.
With regard to
Adam's state before the fall Augustine not only affirmed, against
Pelagius, the gifts of immortality, impassibility, integrity,
freedom from error, and, above all, the sanctifying grace of
Divine adoption, but he emphasized its absolutely gratuitous and
supernatural character. Doubtless, considering the matter
historically and de facto, it was only the sin of Adam that
inflicted death on us — Augustine repeats it again and again
— because God had safeguarded us against the law of our
nature. But de jure neither immortality nor the other graces were
our due, and Augustine recognized this in affirming that God could
have made the condition in which we were actually born the
primitive condition of our first parents. That assertion alone is
the very reverse of Jansenism. It is, moreover, formally confirmed
in the "Retractations" (I, ix, n. 6).
(6) Does this
mean that we must praise everything in St. Augustine's explanation
of grace? Certainly not. And we shall note the improvements made
by the Church, through her doctors, in the original Augustinism.
Some exaggerations have been abandoned, as, for instance, the
condemnation to hell of children dying without baptism. Obscure
and ambiguous formulæ have been eliminated. We must say
frankly that Augustine's literary method of emphasizing his
thought by exaggerated expressions, issuing in troublesome
paradoxes, has often obscured his doctrine, aroused opposition in
many minds, or led them into error. Also, it is above all
important, in order to comprehend his doctrine, to compile an
Augustinian dictionary, not a priori, but after an objective study
of his texts. The work would be long and laborious, but how many
prejudices it would dispel!
The Protestant
historian Ph. Schaff (St. Augustine, p. 102) writes: "The
great genius of the African Church, from whom the Middle Ages and
the Reformation have received an impulse alike powerful, though in
different directions, has not yet fulfilled the work marked out
for him in the counsels of Divine Wisdom. He serves as a bond of
union between the two antagonistic sections of Western
Christendom, and encourages the hope that a time may come when the
injustice and bitterness of strife will be forgiven and forgotten,
and the discords of the past be drowned forever in the sweet
harmonies of perfect knowledge and perfect love." May this
dream be realized!
III. AUGUSTINISM
IN HISTORY
The influence of
the Doctor of Hippo has been so exceptional in the Church, that,
after having indicated its general characteristics (see above), it
is proper to indicate the principal phases of the historical
development of his doctrine. The word Augustinism designates at
times the entire group of philosophical doctrines of Augustine, at
others, it is restricted to his system of grace. Hence, (1)
philosophical Augustinism; (2) theological Augustinism on grace;
(3) laws which governed the mitigation of Augustinism.
(1) Philosophical
Augustinism
In the history of
philosophical Augustinism we may distinguish three very distinct
phases. First, the period of its almost exclusive triumph in the
West, up to the thirteenth century. During the long ages which
were darkened by the invasion of the barbarians, but which were
nevertheless burdened with the responsibility of safeguarding the
sciences of the future, we may say that Augustine was the Great
Master of the West. He was absolutely without a rival, or if there
was one, it was one of his disciples, Gregory the Great, who,
after being formed in his school, popularized his theories. The
rôle of Origen, who engrafted neo-Platonism on the Christian
schools of the East, was that of Augustine in the West, with the
difference, however, that the Bishop of Hippo was better able to
detach the truths of Platonism from the dreams of Oriental
imagination. Hence, a current of Platonic ideas was started which
will never cease to act upon Western thought. This influence shows
itself in various ways. It is found in the compilers of this
period, who are so numerous and so well deserving of recognition —
such as Isidore, Bede, Alcuin — who drew abundantly from the
works of Augustine, just as did the preachers of the sixth
century, and notably St. Cæsarius. In the controversies,
especially in the great disputes of the ninth and twelfth
centuries on the validity of Simoniacal ordinations, the text of
Augustine plays the principal part. Carl Mirbt has published on
this point a very interesting study: "Die Stellung Augustins
in der Publizistik des gregorianischen Kirchenstreits"
(Leipzig, 1888). In the pre-Thomistic period of Scholasticism,
then in process of formation, namely, from Anselm to Albert the
Great, Augustine is the great inspirer of all the masters, such as
Anselm, Abelard, Hugo of St. Victor, who is called by his
contemporaries, another Augustine, or even the soul of Augustine.
And it is proper to remark, with Cunningham (Saint Austin, p.
178), that from the time of Anselm the cult of Augustinian ideas
exercised an enormous influence on English thought in the Middle
Ages. As regards Peter Lombard, his Sentences are little else than
an effort to synthesize the Augustinian theories.
While they do not
form a system as rigidly bound together as Thomism, yet Father
Mandonnet (in his learned study of Siger de Brabant) and M. de
Wulf (on Gilles de Lessines) have been able to group these
theories together. And here let us present a summary sketch of
those theses regarded in the thirteenth century as Augustinian,
and over which the battle was fought. First, the fusion of
theology and philosophy; the preference given to Plato over
Aristotle — the latter representing rationalism, which was
mistrusted, whilst the idealism of Plate exerted a strong
attraction — wisdom regarded rather as the philosophy of the
Good than the philosophy of the True. As a consequence, the
disciples of Augustine always have a pronounced tinge of
mysticism, while the disciples of St. Thomas may be recognized by
their very accentuated intellectualism. In psychology the
illuminating and immediate action of God is the origin of our
intellectual knowledge (at times it is pure ontologism); and the
faculties of the soul are made substantially identical with the
soul itself. They are its functions, and not distinct entities (a
thesis which was to keep its own partisans in the Scholasticism of
the future and to be adopted by Descartes); the soul is a
substance even without the body, so that after death, it is truly
a person. In cosmology, besides the celebrated thesis of rationes
seminales, which some have recently attempted to interpret in
favour of evolutionism, Augustinism admitted the multiplicity of
substantial forms in compound beings, especially in man. But
especially in the impossibility of creation ab æterno, or
the essentially temporal character of every creature which is
subject to change, we have one of the ideas of Augustine which his
disciples defended with greater constancy and, it would appear,
with greater success.
A second period
of very active struggles came in the thirteenth century, and this
has only lately been recognized. Renan (Averroes, p. 259) and
others believed that the war against Thomism, which was just then
beginning, was caused by the infatuation of the Franciscans for
Averroism; but if the Franciscan Order showed itself on the whole
opposed to St. Thomas, it was simply from a certain horror at
philosophical innovations and at the neglect of Augustinism. The
doctrinal revolution brought about by Albert the Great and Thomas
Aquinas in favour of Aristotle startled the old School of
Augustinism among the Dominicans as well as among the Franciscans,
but especially among the latter, who were the disciples of the
eminent Augustinian doctor, St. Bonaventure. This will explain the
condemnations, hitherto little understood, of many propositions of
St. Thomas Aquinas three years after his death, on the 7th of
March, 1277, by the Bishop of Paris, and on the 18th of March,
1277, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Kilwardby, a
Dominican. The Augustinian school represented tradition; Thomism,
progress. The censure of 1277 was the last victory of a too rigid
Augustinism. The happy fusion of the two methods in the two orders
of Franciscans and Dominicans little by little brought about an
agreement on certain points without excluding differences on
others which were yet obscure (as, for instance, the unity or the
multiplicity of forms), at the same time that it made for progress
in all the schools. We know that the canonization of St. Thomas
caused the withdrawal of the condemnations of Paris (14 February,
1325). Moreover, the wisdom or the moderation of the new school
contributed powerfully to its triumph. Albert the Great and St.
Thomas, far from being adversaries of St. Augustine, as they were
reported to be, placed themselves in his school, and while
modifying certain theories, took over into their system the
doctrine of the African bishop. How many articles in the "Summa"
of St. Thomas have no other object than to incorporate in theology
this or the other theory which was cherished by St. Augustine (to
take only one example, that of exemplar ideas in God). Hence,
there was no longer any school strictly Augustinian, because every
school was such. They all eliminated certain special points and
retained the same veneration for the master.
From the third
period of the fifteenth century to our days we see less of the
special progress of philosophical Augustinism than certain
tendencies of an exaggerated revival of Platonism. In the
fifteenth century Bessarion (1472) and Marsilio Ficino (1499) used
Augustine's name for the purpose of enthroning Plate in the Church
and excluding Aristotle. In the seventeenth century it is
impossible to deny certain resemblances between Cartesianism and
the philosophy of St. Augustine. Malebranche was wrong in
ascribing his own ontologism to the great Doctor, as were also
many of his successors in the nineteenth century.
(2) Theological
Augustinism
The history of
Augustine's system of grace seems to blend almost
indistinguishably with the progressive developments of this dogma.
Here it must suffice, first, to enumerate the principal phases;
secondly, to trace the general laws of development which mitigated
Augustinism in the Church.
After the death
of Augustine, a whole century of fierce contests (430-529) ended
in the triumph of fierce contests (430-529) ended in the triumph
of moderate Augustinism. In vain had Pope St. Celestine (431)
sanctioned the teachings of the Doctor of Hippo. The Semipelagians
of the south of France could not understand the predilection of
God for the elect, and in order to attack the works of St.
Augustine they made use of the occasionally exaggerated formulæ
of St. Fulgentius, or of the real errors of certain isolated
predestinationists, as, for example, Lucidus, who was condemned in
the Council of Arles (475). Happily, Prosper of Aquitaine, by his
moderation, and also the unknown author of "De Vocatione
omnium gentium," by his consoling thesis on the appeal
addressed to all, opened the way to an agreement. And finally, St.
Cæsarius of Arles obtained from Pope Felix IV a series of
Capitula which were solemnly promulgated at Orange, and gave their
consecration to the triumph of Augustinism (529). In the ninth
century, a new victory was gained over the predestinationism of
Gottschalk in the assemblies of Savonnières and Toucy
(859-860). The doctrine of the Divine will to save all men and the
universality of redemption was thus consecrated by the public
teaching of the Church. In the Middle Ages these two truths are
developed by the great Doctors of the Church. Faithful to the
principles of Augustinism, they place in especial relief his
theory on Divine Providence, which prepares at its pleasure the
determinations of the will by exterior events and interior
inspirations.
In the fourteenth
century a strong current of predestinationism is evident. Today it
is admitted that the origin of this tendency goes back to Thomas
Bradwardin, a celebrated professor of Oxford, who died Archbishop
of Canterbury (1349), and whom the best critics, along with Loofs
and Harnack, recognize to have been the inspirer of Wyclif
himself. His book "De causâ Dei contra Pelagium"
gave rise in Paris to disputes on Augustinian "predetermination,"
a word which, it had been thought, was invented by Banes in the
sixteenth century. In spite of the opposition of theologians, the
idea of absolute determinism in the name of St. Augustine was
adopted by Wyclif (1324-87), who formulated his universal
fatalism, the necessity of good for the elect and of evil for the
rest. He fancied that he found in the Augustinian doctrine the
strange conception which became for him a central doctrine that
overthrew all morality and all ecclesiastical, and even civil,
government. According as one is predestined or not, everything
changes its nature. The same sins are mortal in the non-elect
which are venial in the predestined. The same acts of virtue are
meritorious predestined, even if he be actually a wicked man which
are of no value in the non-elect. The sacraments administered by
one who is not predestined are always invalid; more than that, no
jurisdiction exists in a prelate, even a pope, if he be not
predestined. In the same way, there is no power, even civil or
political, in a prince who is not one of the elect, and no right
of property in the sinner or the non elect. Such is the basis on
which Wyclif established the communism which aroused the socialist
mobs in England. It is incontestable that he was fond of quoting
Augustine as his authority; and his disciples, as we are assured
by Thomas Netter Waldensis (Doctrinale, I, xxxiv, § 5), were
continually boasting of the profound knowledge of their great
Doctor, whom they called with emphasis "John of Augustine,"
Shirley, in his introduction to "Zizaniorum Fasciculi,"
has even pretended that the theories of Wyclif on God, on the
Incarnation, and even on property, were the purest Augustinian
inspiration, but even a superficial comparison, if this were the
place to make it, would show how baseless such an assertion is. In
the sixteenth century the heritage of Wyclif and Hus, his
disciple, was always accepted in the name of Augustinism by the
leaders of the Reformation. Divine predestination from all
eternity separating the elect, who were to be snatched out of the
mass of perdition, from the reprobate who were destined to hell,
as well as the irresistible impulse of God drawing some to
salvation and others to sin — such was the fundamental
doctrine of the Reformation. Calvinism even adopted a system which
was "logically more consistent, but practically more
revolting," as Schaff puts it (St. Augustine, p. 104), by
which the decree of reprobation of the non-elect would be
independent of the fall of Adam and of original sin
(Supralapsarianism). It was certain that these harsh doctrines
would bring their reaction, and in spite of the severities of the
Synod of Dordrecht, which it would be interesting to compare with
the Council of Trent in the matter of moderation, Arminianism
triumphed over the Calvinistic thesis.
We must note here
that even Protestant critics, with a loyalty which does them
honour, have in these latter times vindicated Augustine from the
false interpretations of Calvin. Dorner, in his "Gesch. der
prot. Théologie," had already shown the instinctive
repugnance of Anglican theologians to the horrible theories of
Calvin. W. Cunningham (Saint Austin, p. 82 sqq.) has very frankly
called attention to the complete doctrinal opposition on
fundamental points which exists between the Doctor of Hippo and
the French Reformers. In the first place, as regards the state of
human nature, which is, according to Calvin, totally depraved, for
Catholics it is very difficult to grasp the Protestant conception
of original sin which, for Calvin and Luther, is not, as for us,
the moral degradation and the stain imprinted on the soul of every
son of Adam by the fault of the father which is imputable to each
member of the family. It is not the deprivation of grace and of
all other super-natural gifts; it is not even concupiscence,
understood in the ordinary sense of the word, as the struggle of
base and selfish instincts against the virtuous tendencies of the
soul; it is a profound and complete subversion of human nature' it
is the physical alteration of the very substance of our soul. Our
faculties, understanding, and will, if not entirely destroyed, are
at least mutilated, powerless, and chained to evil. For the
Reformers, original sin is not a sin, it is the sin, and the
permanent sin, living in us and causing a continual stream of new
sins to spring from our nature, which is radically corrupt and
evil. For, as our being is evil, every act of ours is equally
evil. Thus, the Protestant theologians do not ordinarily speak of
the sins of mankind, but only of the sin, which makes us what we
are and defiles everything. Hence arose the paradox of Luther:
that even in an act of perfect charity a man sins mortally,
because he acts with a vitiated nature. Hence that other paradox:
that this sin can never be effaced, but remains entire, even after
justification, although it will not be any longer imputed; to
efface it, it would be necessary to modify physically this human
being which is sin. Calvin, without going so far as Luther, has
nevertheless insisted on this total corruption. "Let it
stand, therefore, as an indubitable truth which no engines can
shake," says he (Institution II, v, § 19), "that
the mind of man is so entirely alienated from the righteousness of
God that he cannot conceive, desire, or design anything but what
is weak, distorted, foul, impure or iniquitous, that his heart is
so thoroughly environed by sin that it can breathe out nothing but
corruption and rottenness; that if some men occasionally make a
show of goodness their mind is ever interwoven with hypocrisy and
deceit, their soul inwardly bound with the fetters of wickedness."
"Now," says Cunningham, "this doctrine, whatever
there may be to be said for it, is not the doctrine of Saint
Austin. He held that sin is the defect of a good nature which
retains elements of goodness, even in its most diseased and
corrupted state, and he gives no countenance, whatever to this
modern opinion of total depravity." It is the same with
Calvin's affirmation of the irresistible action of God on the
will. Cunningham shows that these doctrines are irreconcilable
with liberty and responsibility, whereas, on the contrary, "St.
Austin is careful to attempt to harmonize the belief in God's
omnipotence with human responsibility" (St. Austin, p. 86).
The Council of Trent was therefore faithful to the true spirit of
the African Doctor, and maintained pure Augustinism in the bosom
of the Church, by Its definitions against the two opposite
excesses. Against Pelagianism it reaffirmed original sin and the
absolute necessity of grace (Sess. VI, can. 2); against Protestant
predestinationism it proclaimed the freedom of man, with his
double power of resisting grace (posse dissentire si velit —
Sess. VI, can. 4) and of doing good or evil, even before embracing
the Faith (can. 6 and 7).
In the
seventeenth century Jansenism adopted, while modifying it, the
Protestant conception of original sin and the state of fallen man.
No more than Luther did the Jansenists admit the two orders,
natural and supernatural. All the gifts which Adam had received
immortality, knowledge, integrity, sanctifying grace — are
absolutely required by the nature of man. Original sin is,
therefore, again regarded as a profound alteration of human
nature. From which the Jansenists conclude that the key to St.
Augustine's system is to be found in the essential difference of
the Divine government and of grace, before and after the Fall of
Adam. Before the Fall Adam enjoyed complete liberty, and grace
gave him the power of resisting or obeying; after the Fall there
was no longer in men liberty properly so called; there was only
spontaneity (libertas a coactione, and not libertas a
necessitate). Grace, or delectation in the good, is essentially
efficacious, and necessarily victorious once it is superior in
degree to the opposite concupiscence. The struggle, which was
prolonged for two centuries, led to a more profound study of the
Doctor of Hippo and prepared the way for the definite triumph of
Augustinism, but of an Augustinism mitigated in accordance with
laws which we must now indicate.
(3) Laws which
governed the mitigation of Augustinism
In spite of what
Protestant critics may have said, the Church has always been
faithful to the fundamental principles defended by Augustine
against the Pelagians and Semipelagians, on original sin, the
necessity and gratuity of grace, the absolute dependence on God
for salvation. Nevertheless, great progress was made along the
line of gradual mitigation. For it cannot be denied that the
doctrine formulated at Trent, and taught by all our theologians,
produces an impression of greater suavity and greater clarity than
this or that passage in the works of St. Augustine. The causes of
this softening down, and the successive phases of this progress
were as follows:
+ First,
theologians began to distinguish more clearly between the natural
order and the supernatural, and hence the Fall of Adam no longer
appeared as a corruption of human nature in its constituent parts;
it is the loss of the whole order of supernatural elevation. St.
Thomas (Summa, I:85:1) formulates the great law of the
preservation, in guilty Adam's children, of all the faculties in
their essential integrity: "Sin (even original) neither takes
away nor diminishes the natural endowments." Thus the most
rigorist Thomists, Alvarez, Lemos, Contenson, agree with the great
Doctor that the sin of Adam has not enfeebled (intrinsece) the
natural moral forces of humanity.
+ Secondly, such
consoling and fundamental truths as God's desire to save all men,
and the redeeming death of Christ which was really offered and
accepted for all peoples and all individuals — these truths,
which Augustine never denied, but which he left too much in the
background and as it were hidden under the terrible formulas of
the doctrine of predestination, have been placed in the full
light, have been developed, and applied to infidel nations, and
have at last entered into the ordinary teaching of theology. Thus
our Doctors, without detracting in the least from the sovereignty
and justice of God, have risen to the highest idea of His
goodness: that God so sincerely desires the salvation of all as to
give absolutely to all, immediately or mediately, the means
necessary for salvation, and always with the desire that man
should consent to employ those means. No one falls into hell
except by his own fault. Even infidels will be accountable for
their infidelity. St. Thomas expresses the thought of all when he
says: "It is the common teaching that if a man born among the
barbarous and infidel nations really does what lies in his power,
God will reveal to him what is necessary for salvation, either by
interior inspirations or by sending him a preacher of the Faith"
(In Lib. II Sententiarum, dist. 23, Q. viii,a.4,ad 4am). We must
not dissemble the fact that this law changes the whole aspect of
Divine Providence, and that St. Augustine had left it too much in
the shade, insisting only upon the other aspect of the problem:
namely, that God, while making a sufficing appeal to all, is
nevertheless not bound to choose always that appeal which shall in
fact be efficacious and shall be accepted, provided that the
refusal of consent be due to the obstinacy of the sinner's will
and not to its lack of power. Thus the Doctors most eagerly
approved the axiom, Facienti quod in se est Deus non denegat
gratiam — God does not refuse grace to one who does what he
can.
+ Thirdly, from
principles taught by Augustine consequences have been drawn which
are clearly derived from them, but which he had not pointed out.
Thus it is incontestably a principle of St. Augustine that no one
sins in an act which he cannot avoid — "Quis enim
peccat in eo quod caveri non potest?" This passage from "De
libero arbitrio" (III, xviii, n. 50) is anterior to the year
395; but far from retracting it he approves and explains it, in
415, in the "De naturâ et gratiâ," lxvii, n.
80. From that pregnant principle theologians have concluded,
first, that grace sufficient to conquer temptations never fails
anyone, even an infidel; then, against the Jansenists, they have
added that, to deserve its name of sufficient grace, it ought to
give a real power which is complete even relatively to the actual
difficulties. No doubt theologians have groped about, hesitated,
even denied; but today there are very few who would dare not to
recognize in St. Augustine the affirmation of the possibility of
not sinning.
+ Fourthly,
certain secondary assertions, which encumbered, but did not make
part of the dogma, have been lopped off from the doctrine of
Augustine. Thus the Church, which, with Augustine, has always
denied entrance into Heaven to unbaptized children, has not
adopted the severity of the great Doctor in condemning such
children to bodily pains, however slight. And little by little the
milder teaching of St. Thomas was to prevail in theology and was
even to be vindicated against unjust censure when Pius VI
condemned the pseudo-synod of Pistoja. At last Augustine's obscure
formulæ were abandoned or corrected, so as to avoid
regrettable confusions. Thus the expressions which seemed to
identify original sin with concupiscence have given way to clearer
formulæ without departing from the real meaning which
Augustine sought to express.
Discussion,
however, is not yet ended within the Church. On most of those
points which concern especially the manner of the Divine action
Thomists and Molinists disagree, the former holding out for an
irresistible predetermination, the latter maintaining, with
Augustine, a grace whose infallible efficacy is revealed by the
Divine knowledge. But both of these views affirm the grace of God
and the liberty of man. The lively controversies aroused by the
"Concordia" of Molina (1588) and the long conferences de
auxiliis held at Rome, before Popes Clement VIII and Paul V, are
well known. There is no doubt that a majority of the
theologian-consultors thought they discovered an opposition
between Molina and St. Augustine. But their verdict was not
approved, and (what is of great importance in the history of
Augustinism) it is certain that they asked for the condemnation of
doctrines which are today universally taught in all the schools.
Thus, in the project of censure reproduced by Serry ("Historia
Congregationis de Auxiliis," append., p. 166) the first
proposition is this: "In statu naturæ lapsæ
potest homo, cum solo concursu generali Dei, efficere opus bonum
morale, quod in ordine ad finem hominis naturalem sit veræ
virtutis opus, referendo illud in Deum, sicut referri potest ac
deberet in statu naturali" (In the state of fallen nature man
can with only the general concursus of God do a good moral work
which may be a work of true virtue with regard to the natural end
of man by referring it to God, as it can and ought to be referred
in the natural state). Thus they sought to condemn the doctrine
held by all the Scholastics (with the exception of Gregory of
Rimini), and sanctioned since then by the condemnation of
Proposition lvii of Baius. For a long time it was said that the
pope had prepared a Bull to condemn Molina; but today we learn
from an autograph document of Paul V that liberty was left to the
two schools until a new Apostolic decision was given (Schneeman
"Controversiarum de Div. grat.," 1881, p. 289). Soon
after, a third interpretation of Augustinism was offered in the
Church, that of Noris, Belleli, and other partisans of moral
predetermination. This system has been called Augustinianism. To
this school belong a number of theologians who, with Thomassin,
essayed to explain the infallible action of grace without
admitting either the scientia media of the Molinists or the
physical predetermination of the Thomists. A detailed study of
this interpretation of St. Augustine may be found in Vacant's
"Dictionnaire de théologie catholique," I, cols.
2485-2501; here I can only mention one very important document,
the last in which the Holy See has expressed its mind on the
various theories of theologians for reconciling grace and liberty.
This is the Brief of Benedict XIV (13 July, 1748) which declares
that the three schools — Thomist, Augustinian (Noris), and
Molinist — have full right to defend their theories. The
Brief concludes with these words: "This Apostolic See favours
the liberty of the schools; none of the systems proposed to
reconcile the liberty of man with the omnipotence of God has been
thus far condemned (op. cit., co1. 2555).
In conclusion we
must indicate briefly the official authority which the Church
attributes to St. Augustine in the questions of grace. Numerous
and solemn are the eulogies of St. Augustine's doctrine pronounced
by the popes. For instance, St. Gelasius I (1 November, 493), St.
Hormisdas (13 August, 520), Boniface II and the Fathers of Orange
(529), John II (534), and many others. But the most important
document, that which ought to serve to interpret all the others,
because it precedes and inspires them, is the celebrated letter of
St. Celestine I (431), in which the pope guarantees not only the
orthodoxy of Augustine against his detractors, but also the great
merit of his doctrine: "So great was his knowledge that my
predecessors have always placed him in the rank of the masters,"
etc. This letter is accompanied by a series of ten dogmatic
capitula the origin of which is uncertain, but which have always
been regarded, at least since Pope Hormisdas, as expressing the
faith of the Church. Now these extracts from African councils and
pontifical decisions end with this restriction: "As to the
questions which are more profound and difficult, and which have
given rise to these controversies, we do not think it necessary to
impose the solution of them." — In presence of these
documents emanating from so high a source, ought we to say that
the Church has adopted all the teaching of St. Augustine on grace
so that it is never permissible to depart from that teaching?
Three answers have been given:
+ For some, the
authority of St. Augustine is absolute and irrefragable. The
Jansenists went so far as to formulate, with Havermans, this
proposition, condemned by Alexander VIII (7 December, 1690): "Ubi
quis invenerit doctrinam in Augustino clare fundatam, illam
absolute potest tenere et docere, non respiciendo ad ullam
pontificis bullam" (Where one has found a doctrine clearly
based on St. Augustine, he can hold and teach it absolutely
without referring to any pontifical Bull). This is inadmissible.
None of the pontifical approbations has a meaning so absolute, and
the capitula make an express reservation for the profound and
difficult questions. The popes themselves have permitted a
departure from the thought of St. Augustine in the matter of the
lot of children dying without baptism (Bull "Auctorem Fidei,"
28 August, 1794).
+ Others again
have concluded that the eulogies in question are merely vague
formulæ leaving full liberty to withdraw from St. Augustine
and to blame him on every point. Thus Launoy, Richard Simon, and
others have maintained that Augustine had been in error on the
very gist of the problem, and had really taught predestinationism.
But that would imply that for fifteen centuries the Church took as
its guide an adversary of its faith.
+ We must
conclude, with the greater number of theologians, that Augustine
has a real normative authority, hedged about, however, with
reserves and wise limitations. In the capital questions which
constitute the faith of the Church in those matters the Doctor of
Hippo is truly the authoritative witness of tradition; for
example, on the existence of original sin, the necessity of grace,
at least for every salutary act; the gratuitousness of the gift of
God which precedes all merit of man because it is the cause of it;
the predilection for the elect and, on the other hand, the liberty
of man and his responsibility for his transgressions. But the
secondary problems, concerning the mode rather than the fact, are
left by the Church to the prudent study of theologians. Thus all
schools unite in a great respect for the assertions of St.
Augustine.
At present this
attitude of fidelity and respect is all the more remarkable as
Protestants, who were formerly so bitter in defending the
predestination of Calvin, are today almost unanimous in rejecting
what they themselves call "the boldest defiance ever given to
reason and conscience" (Grétillat, "Dogmatique,"
III, p. 329). Schleiermacher, it is true, maintains it, but he
adds to it the Origenist theory of universal salvation by the
final restoration of all creatures, and he is followed in this by
Farrar Lobstein, Pfister, and others. The Calvinist dogma is
today, especially in England, altogether abandoned, and often
replaced by pure Pelagianism (Beyschlag). But among Protestant
critics the best are drawing near to the Catholic interpretation
of St. Augustine, as, for example, Grétillat, in
Switzerland, and Stevens, Bruce, and Mozley (On the Augustinian
Doctrine of Predestination), in England. Sanday (Romans, p. 50)
also declares the mystery to be unfathomable for man yet solved by
God: "And so our solution of the problem of Free-will, and of
the problems of history and of individual salvation, must finally
lie in the full acceptance and realization of what is implied by
the infinity and the omniscience of God." These concluding
words recall the true system of Augustine and permit us to hope
that at least on this question there may be a union of the two
Churches in a wise Augustinism.
EUGÈNE
PORTALIÉ
