Rev. José Mario O. Mandía
jmom.honlam.org
Saint Augustine can be considered the greatest philosopher of early Christianity. Moreover, his authority in theological matters exerts great influence even in our times. So abundant were the writings of Saint Augustine that Saint John Paul II himself said that it was almost impossible to summarize his thought. In his Apostolic Letter Augustinum Hipponensem (28 August 1986), the Holy Father pointed out five salient features of his teachings: namely, (1) Reason and Faith; (2) God and man; (3) Christ and the Church; (4) Freedom and grace; and (5) Charity and the ascent of the spirit.
(1) REASON AND FAITH. Saint Augustine grappled with the problem of the relationship between faith and reason and concluded that both must work together. Thus, he said, “Believe that you may understand,” but also affirmed, “Understand that you may believe” (Homily, 43, 9). Pope John Paul II reiterated this principle when he wrote, “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth” (Fides et Ratio, 14 September 1998). Augustine argued that “no one believes anything, unless he has first thought that it is to be believed,” because “to believe is itself nothing other than to think with assent…if faith is not thought through, it is no faith” (De praedestinatione sanctorum 2, 5). Faith is to accept or assent to some truths, but before one can accept them, he must first ask why those truths are worthy of acceptance: he must examine their credibility.
Augustine expands this discussion to the relationship between faith and culture. In his widely-read De civitate Dei (City of God), Augustine refutes the accusation that Rome fell to the barbarians because of Christianity. He argued that pagan cultures have some good elements and Christianity “neither suppresses nor destroys anything of these, but rather preserves and fosters them” (City of God 19, 17).
(2) GOD AND MAN
“What are You for me…. What am I myself for You?” (Confessions 1, 5, 5). This was another one of the main themes we find in Augustine. Starting from man’s awareness of himself as existing, as thinking and as loving, he arrives at God as “the Being from whom every being proceeds through creation from nothing, the Truth which enlightens the human mind so that it can know the truth with certainty, the Love that is the source and the goal of all true love” (John Paul II, Augustinum Hipponensem).
Man will not be able to understand himself without God and will never be able to find fulfillment without Him. “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you” (Confessions Lib 1,1-2,2.5,5).
(3) CHRIST AND THE CHURCH. Saint John Paul II wrote: “One may rightly say that the summit of the theological thinking of the Bishop of Hippo is Christ and the Church; indeed, one could add that this is the summit of his philosophy too…. The Church is inseparable from Christ” (Augustinum Hipponensem).
Saint Augustine defends the hypostatic union – Christ is “one…person in both [human and divine] natures” (Homily 294.9). Without this union, he argues, there can be no redemption. Both natures united in one Person (the Word) make it possible for Christ to be a real Mediator between God and man.
The Church is the mystical body of Christ, and the Holy Spirit is its soul. Through baptism, “we have become Christ. Just as He is the head, we are the members” (Treatise on John 21, 8). Regarding the role of the Holy Spirit, he wrote that “what the soul is to the body of a man, the Holy Spirit is for the body of Christ, which is the Church” (Homily 267, 4). The Holy Spirit unites the faithful to the Trinity and to each other and is thus the source of communion. Moreover, the Church is also mother and teacher.
(4) FREEDOM AND GRACE
The interplay between freedom and grace is a deep mystery.
The Bishop of Hippo “always defended freedom as one of the bases of a Christian anthropology, against his former coreligionists (On free will 3, 1, 3), against the determinism of the astrologers whose victim he himself had once been (Confessions 1, 3, 4), and against every form of fatalism (City of God 5, 8); he explained that liberty and foreknowledge are not incompatible (On free will 3, 4, 10-11), nor liberty and the aid of divine grace” (Augustinum Hipponensem).
Grace, however, is also necessary. “God does not command what is impossible; but when He commands, He exhorts you to do what you can and to ask for what you cannot do” (On nature and grace 43, 50). He reassures us that God “does not abandon us unless we abandon Him first” (On nature and grace 26, 29).
(5) CHARITY AND THE ASCENT OF THE SPIRIT. Saint Augustine taught that Christian perfection consists essentially in charity (On nature and grace 70, 84). Saint Paul lists it as the first fruit of the Holy Spirit (cf. Galatians 5:22). “Have charity, and you will have them all; because without charity, whatever you have will be of no benefit” (Treatise on John 32,8). It is this charity that drove Augustine to strive for contemplation.
Let us conclude with some words from Pope Benedict XVI. “When I read St Augustine’s writings, I do not get the impression that he is a man who died more or less 1,600 years ago; I feel he is like a man of today: a friend, a contemporary who speaks to me, who speaks to us with his fresh and timely faith. In St Augustine who talks to us, talks to me in his writings, we see the everlasting timeliness of his faith; of the faith that comes from Christ, the Eternal Incarnate Word, Son of God and Son of Man. And we can see that this faith is not of the past although it was preached yesterday; it is still timely today, for Christ is truly yesterday, today and for ever. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Thus, St Augustine encourages us to entrust ourselves to this ever-living Christ and in this way find the path of life” (Benedict XVI, General Audience, 16 January 2008).
Follow
