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Augustinianism is the philosophical and theological system of Augustine of Hippo and its subsequent development by other thinkers, notably Boethius, Anselm of Canterbury and Bonaventure.Rogers, Katherine. The Neoplatonic Metaphysics and Epistemology of Anselm of Canterbury (Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press. 1997). Saint Bonaventure Prayer after Augustine: A study in the development of the Latin tradition Among Augustine's most important works are The City of God, De doctrina Christiana, and Confessions.
Originally, Augustinianism developed in opposition to Pelagianism; Augustinism in McClintock and Strong Biblical Cyclopedia] it was widespread in medieval western philosophy until the arrival of Thomism and Aristotelianism. Augustinianism Encyclopedia.com
Plato and Plotinus influenced Augustine in many ways, and he is considered a Neoplatonic philosopher. The Significance of Neoplatonism Saint Augustine The Augustinian theodicy and other Augustinian doctrines such as the divine illumination and the invisible church show a strong Platonic influence. Wallace M. Alston, The Church of the Living God: A Reformed Perspective (Westminster John Knox Press, 2002 ), p. 53 De deo Socratis, XVII–XIX)
Pope Benedict XVI cautioned that all of the Western Church teaching leads to him:
According to Augustine, even the world and corporeal entities, being fruits of divine love, have their value and meaning, while the some Platonists tended instead to devalue them.Tina Manferdini, Comunicazione ed estetica in Sant'Agostino, p. 249, Bologna, ESD, 1995 This attempt to place history and earthly existence within a heavenly perspective, where even evil finds explanation in some way, always remained at the center of its philosophical concerns.
For Augustine, God does not give us certain information, but rather gives us insight into the truth of the information we received for ourselves.
Thomas Aquinas criticizes the divine illumination, denying that in this life we have divine ideas as an object of thought, and that divine illumination is sufficient on its own, without the senses. Aquinas also denied that there is a special continuing divine influence on human thought. People have sufficient capacity for thought on their own, without needing "new illumination added onto their natural illumination". Summa theologiae 1a2ae 109.1c
Augustine's favourite figure to describe body-soul unity is marriage: caro tua, coniunx tua – your body is your wife.Augustine of Hippo, Enarrationes in psalmos, 143, 6.CCL 40, 2077 46 – 2078 74; 46, 234–35.Augustine of Hippo, De utilitate ieiunii, 4, 4–5. According to N. Blasquez, Saint Augustine's dualism of substances of the body and soul doesn't stop him from seeing the unity of body and soul as a substance itself. El concepto del substantia segun san Agustin, pp. 305–350. Following ancient philosophers he defined man as a rational mortal animal – animal rationale mortale. De ordine, II, 11.31; CCL 29, 124 18; PL 32,1009; De quantitate animae, 25,4ХнНЧ
7–49; CSEL 89, 190–194; PL 32, 1062–1063Cf. Ch. Couturier SJ, p. 543
Augustine's understanding of the consequences of original sin and the necessity of redeeming grace was developed in the struggle against Pelagius and his Pelagianism disciples, Caelestius and Julian of Eclanum, who had been inspired by Rufinus of Syria, a disciple of Theodore of Mopsuestia.Marius Mercator Lib. subnot.in verb. Iul. Praef.,2,3; PL 48,111 /v.5-13/; They refused to agree that original sin wounded human will and mind, insisting that human nature was given the power to act, to speak, and to think when God created it. Human nature cannot lose its moral capacity for doing good, but a person is free to act or not to act in a righteous way. Pelagius gave an example of eyes: they have capacity for seeing, but a person can make either good or bad use of it.Augustine of Hippo, De gratia Christi et de peccato originali, I, 15.16; CSEL 42, 138 v.; Ibid., I,4.5; CSEL 42, 128 v.15–23.
The Catholic Church accepts the doctrine of original sin as Augustine taught. Original sin
Some Catholics dispute that Augustine believed predestination in the latter way, and claim that Augustine affirmed free will in the choice of being saved or not. Augustine Had It Right; Calvin Did Not
Augustine develops key ideas regarding his response to suffering. In Confessions, Augustine wrote that his previous work was dominated by materialism and that reading the works of Plato enabled him to consider the existence of a non-physical substance theory. This helped him develop a response to the problem of evil from a theological (and non-Manichean) perspective,
Augustine rejected the notion that evil exists in itself, proposing instead that it is a privation of (or falling away from) good, and a corruption of nature.Menn 2002, p. 170 He wrote that "evil has no positive nature; but the loss of good has received the name 'evil.'" The City of God, Augustine of Hippo, Book XI, Chapter 9 Both moral and natural evil occurs, Augustine argued, owing to an evil use of free will,Bennett, Peters, Hewlett & Russell 2008, p. 126 which could be traced back to the original sin of Adam and Eve.Svendsen & Pierce 2010, p. 49 He believed that this evil will, present in the soul, was a corruption of the will given to humans by God, making suffering a just punishment for the sin of humans.Menn 2002, p. 174 Because Augustine believed that all of humanity was "Preformationism", he argued that all of humanity inherited Adam's sin and his just punishment.Bennett, Peters, Hewlett & Russell 2008, p. 127 However, in spite of his belief that free will can be turned to evil, Augustine maintained that it is vital for humans to have free will, because they could not live well without it. He argued that evil could come from humans because, although humans contained no evil, they were also not perfectly good and hence could be corrupted.Menn 2002, p. 176
Original sin
Augustine wrote that original sin is transmitted by concupiscence and enfeebles freedom of the will without destroying it. (2025). 9780192802903, Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780192802903 For Augustine, Adam's sinAugustine taught that Adam's sin was both an act of foolishness ( insipientia) and of pride and disobedience to God of Adam and Eve. He thought it was a most subtle job to discern what came first: self-centeredness or failure in seeing truth. Augustine wrote to Julian of Eclanum: Sed si disputatione subtilissima et elimatissima opus est, ut sciamus utrum primos homines insipientia superbos, an insipientes superbia fecerit ( Contra Julianum, V, 4.18; PL 44, 795). This particular sin would not have taken place if Satan had not sown into their senses "the root of evil" ( radix Mali): Nisi radicem mali humanus tunc reciperet sensus ( Contra Julianum, I, 9.42; PL 44, 670) is transmitted by concupiscence, or "hurtful desire", "Original Sin". Biblical Apologetic Studies. Retrieved 17 May 2014. Augustine of Hippo (354–430) taught that Adam's sin is transmitted by concupiscence, or "hurtful desire", sexual desire and all sensual feelings resulting in humanity becoming a massa damnata (mass of perdition, condemned crowd), with much enfeebled, though not destroyed, freedom of will.William Nicholson. A Plain But Full Exposition of the Catechism of the Church of England, page 118. Retrieved 17 May 2014. resulting in humanity becoming a massa damnata (mass of perdition, condemned crowd), with much enfeebled, though not destroyed, freedom of will. When Adam sinned, human nature was thenceforth transformed. Adam and Eve, via sexual reproduction, recreated human nature. Their descendants now live in sin, in the form of concupiscence, a term Augustine used in a Metaphysics, not a Psychology sense.Thomas Aquinas explained Augustine's doctrine pointing out that the libido ( concupiscence), which makes the original sin pass from parents to children, is not a libido actualis, i.e. sexual lust, but libido habitualis, i.e. a wound of the whole of human nature: Libido quae transmittit peccatum originale in prolem, non est libido actualis, quia dato quod virtute divina concederetur alicui quod nullam inordinatam libidinem in actu generationis sentiret, adhuc transmitteret in prolem originale peccatum. Sed libido illa est intelligenda habitualiter, secundum quod appetitus sensitivus non continetur sub ratione vinculo originalis iustitiae. Et talis libido in omnibus est aequalis (STh Iª–IIae q. 82 a. 4 ad 3). Augustine insisted that concupiscence was not a being but a bad quality, the privation of good or a wound. Non substantialiter manere concupiscentiam, sicut corpus aliquod aut spiritum; sed esse affectionem quamdam malae qualitatis, sicut est languor. ( De nuptiis et concupiscentia, I, 25. 28; PL 44, 430; cf. Contra Julianum, VI, 18.53; PL 44, 854; ibid. VI, 19.58; PL 44, 857; ibid., II, 10.33; PL 44, 697; Contra Secundinum Manichaeum, 15; PL 42, 590. He admitted that sexual concupiscence ( libido) might have been present in the perfect human nature in paradise, and that only later it became disobedient to human will as a result of the first couple's disobedience to God's will in the* original sin.Augustine wrote to Julian of Eclanum: Quis enim negat futurum fuisse concubitum, etiamsi peccatum non-praecessisset? Sed futur-us fuerat, sicut aliis membris, ita etiam genitalibus voluntate motis, non-libidine concitatis; aut certe etiam ipsa libidine – ut non-vos de illa nimium contristemus – non-qualis nunc est, sed ad nutum voluntarium serviente (Contra Julianum, IV. 11. 57; PL 44, 766). See also his late work: Contra secundam Iuliani responsionem imperfectum opus, II, 42; PL 45,1160; ibid. II, 45; PL 45,1161; ibid., VI, 22; PL 45, 1550–1551. Cf. In Augustine's view (termed "Realism"), all of humanity was really present in Adam when he sinned, and therefore all have sinned. Original sin, according to Augustine, consists of the guilt of Adam which all humans inherit. Justo Gonzalez interprets Augustine's teaching that humans are utterly depraved in nature and grace is irresistible, results in conversion, and leads to perseverance.
Predestination
For Augustine God orders all things while preserving human freedom. Prior to 396, Augustine believed that predestination was based on God's foreknowledge of whether individuals would believe, that God's grace was "a reward for human assent". Later, in response to Pelagius, Augustine said that the sin of pride consists in assuming that "we are the ones who choose God or that God chooses us (in his foreknowledge) because of something worthy in us", and argued that it is God's grace that causes the individual act of faith.
Theodicy and Free will
The problem of evil is the question of how to reconcile the existence of evil with an Omnipotence, Omnibenevolence, and Omniscience God.The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, " The Problem of Evil", Michael TooleyThe Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, " The Evidential Problem of Evil", Nick Trakakis
Comparison
Augustinian philosophers
See also
Notes
Sources
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