Sixteen Centuries Later, Augustine of Hippo Still Speaks

Last week I began listening to a series of lectures from The Great Courses series titled Books That Matter: The City of God. The author of that massive tome was the Fourth Century luminary Augustine of Hippo. The lectures are by Charles Mathewes who earned his PhD in Religion from the University of Chicago.

Several decades ago I read Augustine's Confessions, and perhaps ten years ago listened to a lecture series on Augustine himself. This series is entirely dedicated to Augustine's opus.

In both the church and the Dylan song that references him (John Wesley Harding album) he's referred to. as St. Augustine. He lived from 354 to 430, which in those days was a pretty full life.  

Keep in mind that all his writings were produced in the era before printing presses, so it is unlikely that such a volume as The City of God, which is more than a thousand pages in length, would have been a bestseller in its day. They didn't have typewriters, and it's probable that the scribes he dictated the book to got writers cramp from time to time. 

The City of God was one of Augustine's later works. He lived during the fall of the Roman empire and saw the sack of Rome in 410 A.D., events that no doubt influenced his ideas about what matters most in the grand scheme of things. According to Mathewes, The City of God, is one of the most important books in Western civilization. You may not have even heard of it, but it's been highly influential in the 1600 years since it was written.  

This book is not about the fall of Rome and collapse of its empire. It was only written with that as a backdrop. 

If you're like me, you've probably pictured the invasion of the Visigoths from the North as violent warriors coming down into Roman territories with unsheathed swords, violent and terrifying. Eventually they pillage the Capitol of the Empire. The reality was quite different. 

First, by the time the empire was collapsing, Rome wasn't even the capitol any more. Constantine had moved the Capitol of the empire to Constantinople in 330, decades before the sack of Rome. 

Second, the Visigoths were not "giant, ignorant cavemen wearing animal skins" who plundered the countryside and then the City of Rome itself. Rather, they came to Rome decades earlier with their families as immigrants and refugees striving to escape the Huns. This began in 376 and by the 400s they were Arian Christians who were quite at home in this civilized culture. (I find this quite interesting in light of our current debates over immigration policy.)

Much more can be said, but my intent here was to more or less give a little background on Augustine to give context to these quotes from an "Early Church Father." 

Ten Quotes from St. Augustine

1. "Love the sinner, hate the sin."

2. "Patience is the companion of wisdom."

3. "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you."

4. "As a youth I prayed, 'Give me chastity and self-restraint, but not right now.'"

5. "I have become a question to myself."

6. "Doubt is the origin of wisdom."

7. "What is love's perfection? To love our enemies, and to love them to the end that they may be our brothers."

8. "Anger is a weed; hate is the tree."

9. "I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are very wise and very beautiful; but I never read in either of them, 'Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden.'"

10. "I do not know what I do not know."

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Related Links

I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine and Thoughts on Being Human

I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine: An Early Dylan Morality Play

Augustine's Influence

"Our hearts are restless till they find their rest in Thee." ~ St. Augustine

Our philosophy club has been listening to a series of lectures called The Great Ideas of Philosophy by Professor Daniel N. Robinson. A little over a year ago we discussed a lecture titled "Augustine and the Light Within." Augustine's influence on the development of Western Christianity was significant.

One of the most influential writers of the first millennium A.D., his significance comes from taking an intellectual approach to the sacred texts which had become the canon of Christian faith, the Old & New Testaments. He was fluent in the ideas of Greek philosophy and brought together this foundation of Greek thought and spiritual insight to produce two significant written works, his Confessions and The City of God.

His first encounter with the Bible did not, however, impress him. It was a bad translation, and failed to convey the literary beauty and ideas contained in this profound book. The writings of Cicero, on the other hand, startled and captivated him with the fluid wonder contained in both the writing and ideas. It would be another ten years before he discovered the power of the Bible.

After leaving North Africa Augustine was offered a professorship in Milan where he came under the influence of Neoplatonism as well as the preaching of St. Ambrose. Inwardly he was in a great turmoil, which he relates in his vivid and introspective Confessions. Robinson refers to him as a bon vivant, a rascal and debauch. Until he met his Savior and embraced the faith he had earlier rejected.

After Rome was pillaged by the Visigoths in 410 he returned to North Africa where he spent fourteen years on the twenty-two books which comprise The City of God. This latter work contrasted two cities, God's city where the saints abide in joyful submission to God's will, and the earthly city where worldly selfishness reigns.

Augustine's primary positive influence was to show that being a Christian and an intellectual was not a contradiction. The predominant attitude up till Augustine's time was that you only need to know the Bible and that's all. Every other book is irrelevant. God's Word is all that matters.

St. Augustine recognized that truth is truth wherever it is found and there was much good in the works of Greek thinkers like Aristotle and those who followed up on those foundations. This was not an easy position to adopt and he wrestled with it until he saw what he believed was God's perspective on the matter. He used the example of Moses and the Israelites taking the gold from Egyptians when the left Egypt after Passover. "Gold is gold wherever it comes from," Augustine said, and in the realm of ideas the same holds true.

Likewise, how can Christians challenge ideas like Epicureanism, Stoicism and Hedonism if they have never read or tried to understand what the writers who proposed these views meant by them?

For what it's worth Augustine was, like ourselves, a man of imperfect understanding and some of what he wrote had negative consequences later. Like many writers, context can have an impact on the message. Augustine wrote during the period of Rome's decline and fall. In one section of his epic The City of God he thus argued in favor of using force to preserve the truth against the dark hordes. Unfortunately, a thousand years later these passages were used to justify the Spanish Inquisition.

Nevertheless, he is recognized as an important writer and thinker in the history of ideas, and in cultural history as reflected in Bob Dylan's tribute which can be heard on his John Wesley Harding album.

I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine

I dreamed I saw St. Augustine,

Alive as you or me,

Tearing through these quarters

In the utmost misery,

With a blanket underneath his arm

And a coat of solid gold,

Searching for the very souls

Whom already have been sold.

"Arise, arise," he cried so loud,

In a voice without restraint,

"Come out, ye gifted kings and queens

And hear my sad complaint.

No martyr is among ye now

Whom you can call your own,

So go on your way accordingly

But know you're not alone."

I dreamed I saw St. Augustine,

Alive with fiery breath,

And I dreamed I was amongst the ones

That put him out to death.

Oh, I awoke in anger,

So alone and terrified,

I put my fingers against the glass

And bowed my head and cried.