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Augustine (Thought-Criticism) (02)
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Augustine (Thought-Criticism) (02).
(2) Ecclesiastical Thinking
A. Augustine's greatness and limitation lie in the "originality" of his conception of ecclesiastical authority.
(1) Dissatisfaction with philosophy made him a Christian, obedient to the authority of the Church:
1) "I should lend no credence to the Gospel if the authority of the Catholic Church did not impel me to do so."
2) Perhaps it will be asked whether Augustine was a philosopher or a theologian. (Catholic or Protestant?)
3) In regard to a man of Augustine's day, the distinction is not yet applicable.
4) He was both in one, not one without the other.
5) He knew that his thinking was free only by virtue of his faith in divine revelation.
6) For him there was no a priori antagonism between authority and reason, faith and knowledge.
(2) In Augustine's experience, free philosophy was empty and conferred no happiness.
1) He abandoned it in favor of revealed faith, whose meaning and blessing he conceived to be embodied in theological dogma.
2) But for Augustine, unlike later dogmatists, theology was still in process of development.
3) He did not deduce his ideas from dogmatic principles. For he was still faced with the task of elaborating the dogmatic contents of faith, of developing the unclear sources into a definite faith.
4) His thinking is often independent, philosophical, original, though moving in the area and atmosphere of revealed faith.
5) It is a thinking that penetrates and makes for awareness. It is philosophy.
(3) As a Christian, Augustine became a philosopher who interpreted the Church and the Bible.
1) He did not forsake reason but used it to build up a knowledge rooted in faith.
2) With him the authoritarian thinking which we are bound to regard as opposed to philosophy, becomes philosophical, that is to say, original.
(4) His attitude raises questions that are still alive today, only seemingly solved.
B. For Augustine, the authority of the Church was supreme because initiated by the Creator of all things in His revelation.
(1) The authority of the Church was also a source of security in the most reliable of communities, based not on human contract but on God's incarnation.
(2) For this reason, all men belong to it (church authority). The proof of its truth is that it embraces the whole world from Spain to the Orient (the ancient idea of a consensus gentium);
(3) It must never be forgotten that all Augustine's ideas are grounded in his unshakable confidence in the authority of the Church, which alone leads to Christ and through Him alone in turn to God. (church authority)
(4) His philosophical thinking culminates in dogmatic thinking, and both are justified only in Church thinking.
(5) Defiance of the Church would have been self-destruction for Augustine. To renounce it was so impossible that it could not even have been regarded as a temptation.
(6) He never came into conflict with Church authority, for he himself was one of its spiritual creators.
(7) The Church was above any antagonism that might have resulted in a conflict.
C. Both ecclesiastical faith and philosophical faith profess their non-knowledge.
(1) Augustine had taken the step from a materialistic, Manichaean, skeptical attitude to the transcendent spirituality of Plotinus, the reality of the spiritual as such.
(2) Augustine's nature demanded something tangible even in transcendent reality. (the spirit had to take on body)
(3) This it did through the authority of the Church and through the Church in Christ, the incarnate God.
(4) Political philosophy had been the quest for a state in which individuals might thrive.
D. By his philosophy Augustine contributed appreciably to three characteristics of the Church: “its power,” “its methods of thought,” “its magic.”
① He believed that God's sovereignty as embodied in space and time should be unlimited.
② Augustine was part and parcel of the vast spiritual and political development of this institution that dominated the Western world until the beginning of the modern era.
③ And in this development the inwardness of the beginnings was astoundingly reversed.
(1) All this, added to a sense of power, intensified the claim of catholicity, the demands "upon all."
1) The pagans believed the Roman Empire to be eternal, and even the Christians thought (that) it might well endure as long as the world itself.
2) This eternity of the Empire, it is held, was reflected in the eternity of the Catholic ecumenical Church.
3) The Church vastly enhanced its concept of authority, which it extended to the innermost soul through its claim to be the sole mouthpiece of God.
4) As Augustine saw it, this meant that the state itself was under obligation to help the Church enforce its demands.
(2) This Church aspired to be all things to all men, to be catholic.
1) Whatever is humanly possible must have its justification and at the same time its order and hence limitation.
2) From the outset this was implicit in the spirit of ecclesiastical thinking.
3) In practice, this means that everything has its place: the ascetic monk and the emperor who rules the world, celibacy and marriage, contemplation and worldly activity.
4) But in his many systematic operations and in the actual contradiction that extends to every sphere of his thinking, Augustine gave ecclesiastical thinking its most valuable and effective tools
(3) If the Church is to embrace all men, its corporeal manifestations must meet all needs.
1) By his ecclesiastical thinking, Augustine increased the currency of superstition.
2) With his doctrine that the sacrament of baptism gives even the newborn babe purification, rebirth, and eternal bliss (which are denied the child who dies unbaptized), he promoted the magical conception of the sacrament.
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Introduction
Theology 