Augustine and Aquinas
- by: Ray Ciervo 03/1/2002
Introduction
Augustine, Bishop of Hippo and St. Thomas Aquinas offer great understanding in confronting opposing contemporary worldviews. Although they live eight hundred years apart both demonstrated an insightful and courageous approach to defending the Christian faith. Using Christian philosophy, both Augustine and Aquinas provide insights into how to engage those who challenge you. And both do engage the opposing worldviews.
The challenges that each faced were considerably different than each other. Augustine answered the critics of Christianity. Although a brief period in the history of Rome, the church had received a place of significant influence and honor. However, social ills and catastrophe helped the critics emerge. Pagan prophets and senators alike began to tell the story of how Rome was before the Christian era. In City of God, Augustine enters into the challengers story and then retells it comparing the city of Rome with the true Eternal City in Heaven.
Aquinas was challenged quite differently. Never before did the Church have another religion of the size and force of Islam come against it. Aquinas was faced with the problem the increasing Muslim influence. For centuries the Roman Catholic church was the educator and the interpreter of religion and politics. Now the Muslims arrived on the scene with Aristotle as their mentor countering Christian claims to knowledge and understanding.
Augustine
Aurelius Augustine was born in A.D. 354 in North Africa. His mother, Monica was a devout Christian who was later declared a saint. Augustine was a studious youth who excelled in the study of Latin classics and his parents sent him to Carthage to study rhetoric. Seeking spiritual and intellectual enlightenment, Augustine turned to the Manichaeans, a religious cult. After Augustine became disillusioned with the cult he went to Rome to further his career. He later went to Milan as a professor of rhetoric. There under his mother's influence, he was befriended by Ambrose, the bishop of Milan. Although he was impressed by Ambrose's Christianity, he read the literature of the Neo-Platonists seeking spirituality.
Augustine was moved when he heard of the conversion of Victorinus, a renowned teacher of the Manichaeans to Christianity. Although he struggled with inner turmoil he was converted himself in the summer of A.D. 386. He gave up his rhetoric and returned to North Africa and in 396 was made Bishop of Hippo. His ministry and writings had great influence on the church and the Roman world. The period he ministered and wrote in was extremely significant for the centuries which followed.
Augustine was faced with a post-Christian era. After several centuries of Roman rule throughout the Mediterranean and European world, the great empire began to show cracks in its foundations. In 410 A.D. Rome was attacked, sacked and parts of the city were burned. This was a first for what was known as the Eternal City. Augustine found himself defending Christianity because the pagans in Rome were blaming the Christian faith for the downfall of the city. Nearly all the social ills of the day were blamed on Rome's acceptance of Christianity and the only way to resolve the problems was to return to the pagan religions.
Nearly a hundred years earlier the emperor Constantine had been converted and began to christianize the empire. In his book, The End of Ancient Christianity, R. A. Markus tells us that Christians were almost "lured into believing a new messianic age" had dawned upon them.
The conversion of an emperor, followed by a large-scale christianisation of their society within a few generations, seemed to transform the conditions of Christian existence dramatically, and certainly more visibly than the Incarnation. The miracle which turned a persecuting empire into a political embodiment of their religion, into its protector, promoter and enforcer, almost succeeded in seducing Christians from their sense of the homogeneity of these ‘last times'.
At the end of the third century Christians believed that Rome was being blessed because it had "turned" to God. What was once the persecutor of the faith was now helping to spread and protect it. One could see how easy the church could think it had entered a new era. In fact, the church had not simply entered society, it became society, the only society.
In spite of the success of Christianity after long periods of martyrdom, when Rome was sacked in 410 A.D. the pagan population blamed it on the Christians. In City of God, Augustine sarcastically makes his point known, "No rain! It's all the fault of the Christians. The well educated who are fond of history...wish to inflame the hatred of the illiterate mobs against us." The opponents of Christianity took advantage of the time to begin to voice their discontent with the religions' influence on Roman society.
Since the Roman Empire was not founded on Christian beliefs, and the marriage of Christianity to Rome was never fully accepted by some of its population, the church now found itself in an unpopular position. Those opposed to Christianity were re-writing, or better, reconstructing the history of Rome. Curtis Chang writing on this challenge to Augustine states, "Although the pagan challenge involved physical violence, the conflict was most consistently fought in the intellectual realm." He goes on,
Augustine's approach in encountering his opponents is to write for them their own history. In writing City of God he creates his own meta-narrative and beckons them to enter into it. Augustine does not want to simply defeat his opponents; he wants to win them. The way Augustine does this is meritorious.
Augustine quotes dozens of pagan authorities in the first ten books of City of God. What he does with this is to re-tell their story of how Rome came to be. What he is attempting to do is to unveil the allusions created by the pagan authorities. His main objective is to unveil the difference between the city of men and City of God, "...so that my readers may observe both cities and mark the contrast between them." The wicked and the righteous will be made distinct. The imagery of taking right roads and false paths dominates Augustine's writings throughout the book.
The main plot of City of God may be divided into three sub-plots, Rome's political, theological, and philosophical history. As far as Augustine is concerned all were corrupted.
The Political Sub-plot
In the political sub-plot Augustine seeks to show that those who founded Rome were not honorable men but men who sought for glory. Rome's real desire was to dominate. Augustine uses their history to unveil this also.
Now according to the witness of the historians, the ancient Romans -those of the earliest epoch- no doubt worshipped false gods, like all the other races (except only the Hebrew people) and sacrificed victims not to God, but to demons; nevertheless they were greedy for praise, generous with their money, and aimed at vast renown and honorable riches.
Augustine tells us that the Romans were passionately devoted to glory; it was for this they would live and die. For the Roman to be subjected to someone else would be shameful but glorious for her to have dominion and empire. Their goal was to make Rome free and then sovereign.
The Theological Sub-plot
From the theological side he tells the Romans from the start that they entrusted the care for the eternal city to fallen gods. Referring to the story of how the ‘gods' came to protect Rome he quotes from Virgil, the most revered Roman poet in his work Aeneid. It appears Aeneas calls the gods already conquered and vanquished having failed to defend the city of Troy. Augustine writes,
He goes on to say, "To worship ‘vanquished' gods as protectors and defenders is to rely not on divinities but on defaulters." Later in Book Four of City of God Augustine shows how before Christianity became established in the empire the Romans had suffered defeat many times and boundaries of the Rome were pushed back. These gods whom the Romans depended upon were not dependable at all. Augustine made this point very clear.
The Philosophical Sub-plot
Augustine goes to the Neo-Platonists but first retraces the philosophy all the way back to the ancient Greeks. He is seeking common ground. The Romans were fond of Plato and so was Augustine. He commends specific Platonic insights as the understanding that the Supreme Good is God, that human beings need God's light to truly see, and that a philosopher is to love God. Augustine went so far as to suggest that Plato may even have learned from the Hebrew prophets. At first he suggests that Plato may have read Jeremiah. At one point he mentions he may have met Jeremiah on a trip to Egypt. He goes on to deny the possibility because Plato's visit to Egypt was considerably after Jeremiah's captivity. Also the Old Testament Scripture's were not translated into Greek for about another one hundred years. However, he does maintain the possibility that Plato may have gotten information by word of mouth. Augustine even believed Plato understood general revelation and therefore had revelation of God's eternal attributes and infinite nature. Augustine explains Plato and Neo-Platonic thought this way because he is looking for common ground. Once again, he is seeking to win the opponent.
In attempting to enter into the pagans world view through their own story of history, Augustine seeks to reveal his knowledge and understanding of their position. He also re-tells their story to show their flaws and that he definitely has a different position. Even in doing this Augustine knows he has not done enough. There must be more to bring the opponent to his position.
Essentially, Augustine's strategy has been to show the City of God is the Christian city of heaven, the real Eternal City. However, he has not tried to destroy all Roman philosophy. What can be redeemed he redeems. What he presents in City of God is a wider version of reality but does not withhold from unveiling the flaws of the Roman sub-plots. In reviewing the history of Rome, Augustine shows that the Christian God is the God of history. Rome has been subject to that God all along. The main problem with the Romans' idea of itself is pride. Its quest for glory is to dominate and never be subjected to anyone. The real answer to the Roman struggle for its own future is what Christ exhibited in His earthly life-humility.
Augustine uses the idea of Pax Romana, The Peace of Rome. He emphasizes the idea that all men everywhere long for universal peace. The Romans subjugated untold thousands in order to attain that peace. Augustine writes, "Think of the cost of this achievement! Consider the scale of those wars, with all the slaughter of human beings, all the human blood that was shed." Augustine wants Rome to retain its hunger for universal peace but renounce its tragic method of attaining it. "For pride hates the fellowship of equality under God, and seeks to impose its own dominion on fellow men, in place of God's rule. This means that it hates the just peace of God and loves its own peace of injustice." The closing chapters of City of God Augustine lays out the fork in the road. Down one road lies Rome, the earthly city, the other leads to Christ, the Eternal One which gives the real peace.
Summary on Augustine
Augustine's writing of the City of God is an example of sound Christian apologetics. Although some things Augustine says about Plato may not fit with orthodox Christianity his method of engaging the pagans' story is one that should be followed.
Two responses could have been taken by Augustine and any Christian who is confronted with opposing worldviews. First, one could blend in and compromise the faith. The other would be to retreat form culture. Augustine had the example of the Donatists in his day.
Unlike the Donatists of ancient Rome who were afraid to be contaminated by the pagan culture and therefore sought to retreat from culture, the example Augustine put forth was not to be afraid of the Romans' teaching or philosophy. His position was one that held him securely because he knew the superiority of his faith and philosophy. Neither did Augustine promote watering down your faith and conscience and compromising one's beliefs. What Augustine did was to engage the culture and show through historical evidence the failure of his opponents political, theological and philosophical worldviews.
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas was born in a castle in Roccasecca, Italy around 1224-25, to a noble Italian family. His father was the Count of Aquino, a prominent man in politics. Thomas was groomed for a career in the church. His family had motives for Thomas to "...rise to a position of ecclesiastical authority where he would be politically influential and even wealthy." At the age of 14 Thomas was sent to the University of Naples. There he was exposed to the recently discovered texts of Aristotle and their Arabian commentaries. However, while there Thomas came under the influence of the newly formed Dominican order which he later joined to his family's disappointment. So much were they disappointed, they kidnapped Thomas and held him captive in a tower for over a year. His family later realized the seriousness of his commitment and later released him.
After this interruption, Thomas went to Paris to study theology and philosophy where he came under the Dominican theologian, Albert the Great. At Paris, Thomas earned the highest degree in theology and spent the rest of his life lecturing and writing. Pope Gregory X summoned Thomas to the Council of Lyons. Thomas died on March 7, 1274 on his way to the council of Lyons to carry out church his diplomatic mission.
Summa Contra Gentiles
Aquinas' apologetic work, Summa Contra Gentiles was written in response to the advance of Islam into the Roman world. As tradition states it, Thomas was asked by St Raymond of Penaforte to write an apologetic for missionaries in Spain who were encountering Muslims who were espousing Aristotle. The Summa Contra Gentiles (SCG) is a "...manual of apologetics against the intellectual picture of the universe created for the Western world by the translation of Aristotle and his followers into Latin in the course of the 12th and 13th centuries." SCG is part of the Christian intellectual reaction against Arabian intellectual culture, and especially against Arabian Aristotelianism.
The occasion for Thomas was challenging. Arab philosophers such as Averroes had already commented on Aristotle. For Thomas to comment on Aristotle he would have to tread dangerous ground. On the one hand he could learn from Averroes' interpretation of Aristotle. In doing so he might suppose as Averroes supposed, that philosophy was what Aristotle taught philosophy was in the 4th century before Christ. Aquinas knew not all that Aristotle taught was in line with Christian beliefs. However, he did believe philosophy was not necessarily subject to error, that truth was one and came from God, and that "...nothing that was philosophically demonstrable could ever contradict or be contradicted by anything taught to man by the Christian revelation." Thomas' task was enormously challenging.
The challenge presented to Thomas was one that challenged the Christian worldview. In effect, the Islamic commentators laid out a path of knowledge that was outside Christian understanding and learning. For centuries the Church was the source of knowledge and learning. Now this knew source came upon the scene. This was a new instance of religious pluralism. How Thomas responds is an example of how all challenges must be responded to. In Thomas time Crusaders fought back with physical violence. The Crusades were bloody wars which effected no lasting peace or persuasion.
Thomas was also faced with the challenge which arose at the University of Paris where Thomas taught. The University was organized into the Faculty of Theology where Thomas taught and the Faculty of Arts consisting of Science, the humanities and philosophy. The Faculty of Arts sought to teach the Islamic commentators on Aristotle but the Faculty of Theology banned it.
In response to that a group called the Latin Averroists petitioned the university to the Aristotelian writings as part of the curriculum. Siger of Brabant a leading Latin Averroist was seeking to divide the university and separate philosophy from theology. Although the Latin Averroists were not the target of SCG, they haunted Thomas. He wrote tract upon tract countering the separation that Siger and his movement were proposing.
Thomas' response to the Islamic challenge was to engage them in dialogue, what he called Summa Contra Gentiles. His response was to meet the challengers on their own ground, the ground of philosophical argument and to move them to his ground of theological argument. He would do this by showing them that God is the God of reason. Where Augustine employed the idea that God was the God of history, Aquinas demonstrated God as the God of reason.
SCG is written in four books. The first book is titled simply, God. The second is titled, Creation. The third is Providence, and the fourth, Salvation. Aquinas believed that he could meet those who were challenging on the ground of truth. He writes this,
It has clearly apparent, from what has been said, that the intention of the wise man ought to be directed toward the twofold truth of divine things, and toward the destruction of the errors that are contrary to this truth. One kind of divine truth, the investigation of the reason is competent to reach whereas the other surpasses every effort of the reason.
The second kind of truth that Thomas was implying was truth that could not be reached by reason but only through faith. Therefore the structure of SCG in Book One: God demonstrates God as the "home of all blessedness" who has always existed. Book Two: Creation mainly reveals the human soul and that it originated from the creative act of God. Book Three: Providence, reveals God created from His will freely not out of necessity. Through most of these Aquinas quotes many Arabic philosophers and Aristotle. His main weapon is reason. For Aquinas, reason is the compass which points to north. What he attempts to show is how the compass of the Arab philosophers is defective. Then in Book Four: Salvation, Aquinas moves from reason to faith which is necessary to complete the course. In effect, what Aquinas has done has made a circle to reunite man with God. According to Curtis Chang, if Augustine's key word in City of God is unveil, Aquinas' key word is reunite.
Throughout the book Aquinas seeks to reunite one potentially fractured pairing after another. He connects faith and reason, philosophy and theology, Aristotle and Christian doctrine, soul and body, head and heart, intellect and senses, knowledge and experience, thought and being.
Aquinas' pursuit is exemplary by trying to resolve and reunite the seeming categorical differences rather than avoid or separate them. His main pursuit is to reunite man with God which is the over all theme of SCG. An underlying theme of SCG is that Aristotle has mastered Aristotle. Chang states, "Aquinas has so devoted himself to his challengers' material that he knows it intimately; he can best grasp its dimensions and capabilities." He goes on,
Aquinas demonstrates his mastery of Aristotle by interpreting the philosopher and bringing Aristotle's own meanings to new heights. Also, unlike the Catholic polemicist's of Aquinas' day, Aquinas refuses to project all kinds of evil onto the Arabic philosophers. He willingly acknowledges the nobility of the Islamic effort at knowledge but points out the limitations of human reason and the senses. He writes,
Again he says,
He continues,
Aquinas has taken on the Arabic philosophers and their subjects without rejecting them. He has approached them intelligently and where he can, acknowledges their accomplishments. However, he has also posited his metaphysics and epistemology as more encompassing. As Augustine did in City of God putting forth a wider perspective of history, Aquinas has in SCG put forth a wider philosophy. If reason is the compass that points north, Aquinas has shown that the Arabic philosophers have used a defective compass. They can not truly find their way unless they change their compass. Aquinas has not put down reason, he has put down defective reasoning. Neither has he exalted reason to a place equal to faith. Nothing could be further from the truth. As Chang points out, reason is only a "pointer to God." He goes on to say that philosophical error stems from "defects in particular exercises of reason, and not in the reliability of reason itself."
In the first three books of SCG he has set the stage for Book Four: Salvation in which he will switch from quoting Aristotle and the Arabic philosophers to quoting Scripture. "When book 4 opens, references to Aristotle drop off precipitously, technical terms of philosophy fade, and the biblical story takes center stage." All through the first three books Aquinas is issuing a correct view of God, the God of Sacred Scripture, the human soul and how God runs His universe. He is leading his readers to see that mankind is separate from God and cannot achieve his ultimate end with God's interaction, namely the Incarnation of Christ. This is where Book 4 opens.
Aquinas has moved through his philosophy of being as a master chess player. He has not attacked where he knew it would end in a draw. He has gone after the places where he knew the Arabic philosophers were vulnerable, namely their limited reasoning. Now he moves in for the final discourse: The need for a Savior.
Aquinas has moved to the ultimate reason of reuniting. Where philosophy was dissecting everything causing undue separation, Aquinas sought for the unity of things as mentioned above. In that lie the way to true knowledge and understanding. Now he moves to the One who reveals real knowledge and uniting with him as the ultimate end. "In Aquinas' metanarrative of knowledge, then, epistemological surety is gained not by splitting reality into ever more fragmented shards but in reunion with a Person. Jesus Christ is God's personal guarantor of true knowledge."
Aquinas concludes SCG with the final resurrection where mankind behold the beatific vision. In that he finds his consummation of knowledge and truth. It is a suitable end to the process Aquinas set out on to give an apologetic for the Christian faith.
He gives us this quote,
Summary on Thomas Aquinas
Aquinas exemplifies meeting a challenger to the faith. Islam had come upon the Medieval period with a body of knowledge began to shake the Church of the Roman world. For centuries this church was challenged from within. However, the challenge of Islam was from outside. It challenged the church not only on theological grounds but philosophical and epistemological. Aquinas met the challengers on common ground and slowly shifted the place of encounter to more favorable ground.
He exemplifies apologetic procedure in not castigating his opponents but in honest acknowledgement. As Augustine didn't retreat from the challenge or compromise his beliefs to accommodate the challengers, neither did Thomas. Also as Augustine, Thomas was thoroughly familiar with his opponents argument. Although Thomas does not quote the Qu'ran, he does quote the Arabic philosophers extensively and also their source, Aristotle. Both Aquinas and Augustine engage their opponents on familiar ground.
Summary and Conclusion
One can learn greatly from the examples of Augustine and Aquinas. These giants in the faith were more than great theologians but also great apologists. Augustine met the challenge of living in a post-Christian era. One could ascertain that City of God preserved the Christian era in the Roman world. The church maintained its prominence of influence through the Middle Ages. City of God made a great impact on the society.
Thomas Aquinas, perhaps the greatest Catholic theologian stayed the forward progress of Islam, the first serious religious challenge to Christianity since Constantine's conversion. SCG as an apologetic for Dominican missionaries in Spain was a definitive statement of the plan of God through theological and philosophical treatise.
For Christian apologists today both of these men and their works are significant tools. America's society today is both post Christian and pluralistic. One the one hand Christian morality is blamed for psychological and social ills. Puritanism, a metaphor for Christian morality, is portrayed as limiting and distorting human behavior. America seeks a new freedom without responsibility. Through this Christianity has been marginalized at best by being seriously discredited.
The advance of religious pluralism has also marginalized Christianity as just another religion, another ‘truth'. Moral relativism and postmodernism has captured the western soul and led it into a wasteland destitute of any sound philosophy. The rejection of religious absolutes has created a vacuum which sucks in every ‘spiritual' concept as equally valid. The West has succumbed to religious pluralism which cannot produce any salvation.
The answer for this malaise in truth and philosophy can be found in the examples of Augustine and Aquinas. Both understood the value of the truth and where to find it. They knew the God of truth and his plans for humankind. Their examples take the Christian apologist to understand their opponent's story and the fallacies of their logic and philosophy.
Armed with correct reasoning and the knowledge of the truth, tempered with the Spirit of gentleness and patience, the Christian apologist can engage the challengers, meet them on common ground lead them to faith in Christ.
Reading Augustine and Aquinas provide more than ‘Christian classics." These saints of antiquity provide a pre-modern answer to the state of the western mind. They provide answers that call mankind to return to the true north - God Himself. Their examples of understanding the God of history and the God of philosophy and how to engage hostile challengers to the Christian message must not go unnoticed. Certainly, they must not go without serious examination and then, employment.
Selected Bibliography
Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles, Notre Dame, Notre Dame Press, 1975 in Five Volumes
Augustine, Concerning the City of God against the Pagans, London, Penguin Books, 1972
Brown, Peter, Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995
Chang, Curtis, Engaging Unbelief, Downers Grove, Intervarsity Press, 2000
Lawhead, William F., The Voyage of Discovery: A History of Western Philosophy, Belmont, Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1995
Markus, R.A., The End of Ancient Christianity, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990
