Adult Education Spring 2012 – Augustine of Hippo
Class 1 – April 15: Augustine’s Life and World
I. WHO WAS AUGUSTINE? Born in Thagaste, a Roman town in North Africa (what is now Souk Ahras, Algeria) in A.D. 354. Augustine was nine when Julian the Apostate, the last pagan emperor, died and fifty-six when Alaric sacked Rome. His life spans the last generations of roughly six hundred years of Roman society in the West.
A. Timeline of Major Events in Augustine’s Life and Roman History
Life of Augustine / Roman History312 – Constantine makes Christianity the official Roman religion
325 – Council of Nicaea (Nicene Creed)
354 – Born on November 28 in Thagaste, Roman Africa to Christian mother, Monica, and pagan father, Patricius
361-3 – Julian the Apostate returns Rome briefly to paganism
371 – First visit to Carthage
373 – Reads Cicero, becomes a Manichean
375 – Begins teaching rhetoric in Carthage
379 – Theodosius becomes emperor
380 – Edict of Thessalonica establishes Nicene Christianity as official religion
383 – Meets Faustus, abandons Manichaeism
384 – Becomes professor of rhetoric for the imperial court at Milan
386 – Converts to Christianity
387 – Baptized by Ambrose of Milan
391 – Returns to Africa to found a monastery at Hippo Regius
395 – Ordained Bishop of Hippo
398 – Writes The Confessions
410 – Alaric sacks Rome
413-427 – Writes City of God
430 – Dies August 28
B. Major Works
1. The Confessions (398): An autobiographical work outlining Augustine’s sinful youth and his eventual conversion to Christianity.
2. De Trinitate (417): Discusses the Trinity in the context of the Logos.
3. De Doctrina Christiana (397, 426): Four books outlining the interpretation and teaching of the Scriptures.
4. Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans (413-427): Augustine’s master work that outlines Christianity’s relationship to the competing religions and philosophies of the world
5. Numerous sermons and commentaries
II. AUGUSTINE’S WORLD – THE DECLINING ROMAN EMPIRE:
A. For Citizens of the Roman Empire, the World is Falling Apart:
1. Rome as the Eternal City: Most equated Rome with civilization itself, and the increased threats from the Goths, culminating in the sack of Rome in 410, raised serious questions about the end of civilization. Augustine wrote The City of God in part to defend Christianity against the pagan claim that it was responsible for the fall of Rome – a claim later advanced by Edward Gibbon in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
2. Church and Empire: Christianity has had a 300-plus year relationship with the Roman Empire, going from persecution and martyrdom to being recognized under Constantine and made official by both Constantine and, later, Theodosius. Rome is now “Christian,” yet it is rapidly failing. This raises the question of the relationship between Christianity and Rome. For some, Rome was God’s vehicle for bringing the Kingdom of God to earth. Augustine will refute this claim.
III. WHY AUGUSTINE? Why spend ten weeks studying the work of a man who died almost sixteen hundred years ago? Because he is responsible for much of what we consider “orthodox” Christianity today.
A. Theological/Philosophical Anthropology (Human Nature)
1. Man as Fallen: For Augustine, man is not perfectible, but is broken and desperately in need of God’s grace
2. The Emergence of the Self: Augustine’s Confessions marks perhaps the first deeply introspective autobiographical work in the West.
3. The Human Problem and the Will: For the classical world (i.e. Plato and Aristotle) the problem man faces is noetic – a problem of knowledge and the rational mind. Augustine, relying on the Apostle Paul, recasts this as a problem of the will, sin and the heart. The concept of the will re-emerges in the counter-Enlightenment work of the romantic philosophers.
B. Theological Influence: Augustine may be the single most influential Christian theologian since the Apostolic Age in setting forth the orthodox position of the church. Both Catholics and Protestants, Aquinas and Luther, draw heavily on Augustine’s thought. Doctrines as diverse as original sin and just war have their roots in Augustinian thought; often these doctrines developed as a result of specific theological controversies as Christians struggled to work out the meaning of their faith
1. Original Sin (the Pelagian Controversy): Can man earn his salvation?
2. Theology of the Body: Is the body separate from the mind and spirit? Is the body evil and the mind good? What does the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament teach?
3. Ecclesiology: The Role of the Church (the Donatist Controversy): Is the church totally set apart from the world? How does it interact with the rest of life? Must it insist on total purity from all its members?
4. Doctrines of the Trinity: What is the Trinity and how does it relate to mankind?
5. Providential History and Eschatology: What is the meaning of history? How does Scripture illuminate that meaning? Idea of a “universal history”
C. Political Life: Augustine’s anthropological account and his theology lead to a “chastened,” limited view of political possibility that contrasts starkly with the classical idealization of the polis. The result is the “two cities” analogy in which citizens of the Kingdom of God are only pilgrims in the earthly city.
D. Trajectories/Philosophical Influence:
1. Medieval Catholicism (Aquinas, Just War Theory)
2. The Reformation (Luther, Calvin, others)
3. Philosophical Liberalism (Hobbes)
4. Phenomenology (Husserl)
5. Existentialism (Kierkegaard, Heidegger)
6. Hermeneutics (Gadamer, Ricoeur)
7. German Romanticism and Postmodern Thought (Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Arendt)
Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee.
—Augustine, Confessions, Book I
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