was whether we must simply believe the Christian revelation or whether we can approach the Christian truths with the help of reason. What was the relationship between the Greek philosophers and what the Bible said? Was there a contradiction between the Bible and reason, or were belief and knowledge compatible? Almost all medieval philosophy centered on this one question.”
Sophie nodded impatiently. She had been through this in her religion class.
“We shall see how the two most prominent medieval philosophers dealt with this question, and we might as well begin with St. Augustine, who lived from 354 to 430. In this one person’s life we can observe the actual transition from late antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. Augustine was born in the little town of Tagaste in North Africa. At the age of sixteen he went to Carthage to study. Later he traveled to Rome and Milan, and lived the last years of his life in the town of Hippo, a few miles west of Carthage. However, he was not a Christian all his life. Augustine examined several different religions and philosophies before he became a Christian.”
“Could you give some examples?”
“For a time he was a Manichaean. The Manichaeans were a religious sect that was extremely characteristic of late antiquity. Their doctrine was half religion and half philosophy, asserting that the world consisted of a dualism of good and evil, light and darkness, spirit and matter. With his spirit, mankind could rise above the world of matter and thus prepare for the salvation of his soul. But this sharp division between good and evil gave the young Augustine no peace of mind. He was completely preoccupied with what we like to call the ‘problem of evil.’ By this we mean the question of where evil comes from. For a time he was influenced by Stoic philosophy, and according to the Stoics, there was no sharp division between good and evil. However, his principal leanings were toward the other significant philosophy of late antiquity, Neoplatonism. Here he came across the idea that all existence is divine in nature.”
“So he became a Neoplatonic bishop?”
“Yes, you could say that. He became a Christian first, but the Christianity of St. Augustine is largely influenced by Platonic ideas. And therefore, Sophie, therefore you have to understand that there is no dramatic break with Greek philosophy the minute we enter the Christian Middle Ages. Much of Greek philosophy was carried over to the new age through Fathers of the Church like St. Augustine.”
“Do you mean that St. Augustine was half Christian and half Neoplatonist?”
“He himself believed he was a hundred-percent Christian although he saw no real contradiction between Christianity and the philosophy of Plato. For him, the similarity between Plato and the Christian doctrine was so apparent that he thought Plato must have had knowledge of the Old Testament. This, of course, is highly improbable. Let us rather say that it was St. Augustine who ‘christianized’ Plato.”
“So he didn’t turn his back on everything that had to do with philosophy when he started believing in Christianity?”
“No, but he pointed out that there are limits to how far reason can get you in religious questions. Christianity is a divine mystery that we can only perceive through faith. But if we believe in Christianity, God will ‘illuminate’ the soul so that we experience a sort of supernatural knowledge of God. St. Augustine had felt within himself that there was a limit to how far philosophy could go. Not before he became a Christian did he find peace in his own soul. ‘Our heart is not quiet until it rests in Thee,’ he writes.”
“I don’t quite understand how Plato’s ideas could go together with Christianity,” Sophie objected. “What about the eternal ideas?”
“Well, St. Augustine certainly maintains that God created the world out of the void, and that was a Biblical idea. The Greeks preferred the idea that the world had always existed. But St. Augustine believed that before God created the world, the ‘ideas’ were in the Divine mind. So he located the Platonic ideas in God and in that way preserved the Platonic view of eternal ideas.”
“That was smart.”
“But it indicates how not only St. Augustine but many of the other Church Fathers bent over backward to bring Greek and Jewish thought together. In a sense they were of two cultures. Augustine also inclined to Neoplatonism in his view of evil. He believed, like Plotinus, that evil is the ‘absence of God.’ Evil has no independent existence, it is something that is not, for God’s creation is in fact only good. Evil comes from mankind’s disobedience, Augustine believed. Or, in his own words, ‘The good will is God’s work; the evil will is the falling away from God’s work.’ “
“Did he also believe that man has a divine soul?”
“Yes and no. St. Augustine maintained that there is an insurmountable barrier between God and the world. In this he stands firmly on Biblical ground, rejecting the doctrine of Plotinus that everything is one. But he nevertheless emphasizes that man is a spiritual being. He has a material body—which belongs to the physical world which ‘moth and rust doth corrupt’—but he also has a soul which can know God.”
“What happens to the soul when we die?”
“According to St. Augustine, the entire human race was lost after the Fall of Man. But God nevertheless decided that certain people should be saved from perdition.”
“In that case, God could just as well have decided that everybody should be saved.”
“As far as that goes, St. Augustine denied that man has any right to criticize God, referring to Paul’s Epistle to the Romans: ‘O Man, who art thou that replies! against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it; why hast thou made me thus? or Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor?’ “
“So God sits up in his Heaven playing with people? And as soon as he is dissatisfied with one of his creations, he just throws it away.”
“St. Augustine’s point was that no man deserves God’s redemption. And yet God has chosen some to be saved from damnation, so for him there was nothing secret about who will be saved and who damned. It is preordained. We are entirely at his mercy.”
“So in a way, he returned to the old belief in fate.”
“Perhaps. But St. Augustine did not renounce man’s responsibility for his own life. He taught that we must live in awareness of being among the chosen. He did not deny that we have free will. But God has ‘foreseen’ how we will live.”
“Isn’t that rather unfair?” asked Sophie. “Socrates said that we all had the same chances because we all had the same common sense. But St. Augustine divides people into two groups. One group gets saved and the other gets damned.”
“You are right in that St. Augustine’s theology is considerably removed from the humanism of Athens. But St. Augustine wasn’t dividing humanity into two groups. He was merely expounding the Biblical doctrine of salvation and damnation. He explained this in a learned work called the City of God.”
“Tell me about that.”
“The expression ‘City of God,’ or ‘Kingdom of God,’ comes from the Bible and the teachings of Jesus. St. Augustine believed that all human history is a struggle between the ‘Kingdom of God’ and the ‘Kingdom of the World.’ The two ‘kingdoms’ are not political kingdoms distinct from each other. They struggle for mastery inside every single person. Nevertheless, the Kingdom of God is more or less clearly present in the Church, and the Kingdom of the World is present in the State—for example, in the Roman Empire, which was in decline at the time of St. Augustine. This conception became increasingly clear as Church and State fought for supremacy throughout the Middle Ages. There is no salvation outside the Church,’ it was now said. St. Augustine’s ‘City of God’ eventually became identical with the established Church. Not until the Reformation in the sixteenth century was there any protest against the idea that people could only obtain salvation through the Church.”
“It was about time!”
“We can also observe that St. Augustine was the first philosopher we have come across to draw history into his philosophy. The struggle between good and evil was by no means new. What was new was that for Augustine the struggle was played out in history. There is not much of Plato in this aspect of St. Augustine’s work. He was more influenced by the linear view of history as we meet it in the Old Testament: the idea that God needs all of history in order to realize his Kingdom of God. History is necessary for the enlightenment of man and the destruction of evil. Or, as St. Augustine put it, ‘Divine foresight directs the history of mankind from Adam to the end of time as if it were the story of one man who gradually develops from childhood to old age.’ “
Sophie looked at her watch. “It’s ten o’clock,” she said. “I’ll have to go soon.”
“But first I must tell you about the other great medieval philosopher. Shall we sit outside?”
