RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Augustine
him. The great struggle between the rival chiefs of medieval Christendom, the pope and the emperor, is explicable in its deepest meaning, intelligible in its course, only from his De civitate Dei; when medieval theology was most active, then it was most under his influence, and the scholastic movement was determined, not only in its speculations but in its very method, by him. From him, again, medieval mysticism, in both its authorized and its heretical forms, received its most decisive impulse; Augustinian influences must be taken into account in the study of all the so-called precursors of the Reformation. When, however, we have called him the father of medieval Catholicism, we have not yet said all. The effect of his teaching in the East has been, to be sure, slight and indirect; but the Reformers made an ally of him. The characteristic notes of what are specifically called the Reformed Churches, in contradistinction to the Lutheran, are especially founded upon Augustinian tradition. In the history of philosophy, too, he has been a force far beyond the Middle Ages; in both Descartes and Spinoza his voice may be distinctly heard.
Space forbids any attempt to trace all the causes of these abiding effects ; and in what remains to be said, biographical interest must be largely our guide. We know a considerable number of events in Augustine's episcopal life which can be surely placed — the so-called third and eighth 4. Events synods of Carthage in 397 and 403, at of His which, as at those still to be men- Episcopate, tioned, he was certainly present; the disputation with the Manichean Felix at Hippo in 404; the eleventh synod of Carthage in 407; the conference with the Donatists in Carthage, 411; the synod of Mile ve, 416; the African general council at Carthage, 418; the journey to Caesarea in Mauretania and the disputation with the Donatist bishop there, 418; another general council in Carthage, 419; and finally the consecration of Eraclius as his assistant in 426. None of these events, however, marks a decisive epoch in his life, which flowed on quietly and evenly during the whole time of his episcopate, except the last few months. Thus it will require careful study to determine the epochs in his intellectual development during this period.
II. Theology: His special and direct opposition to Manicheanism did not last a great while after his consecration. About 397 he wrote a tractate Contra epistolam [Manichcei] quam vocant fundamenti; in the De agone christiano, written about the same time, and in the Conjessiones, a little later, numerous anti-Manichean expressions occur. After this, however, he only attacked the Manicheans on some special occasion, as when, about 400, on the request of his "brethren," he wrote a detailed rejoinder to Faustus, a Manichean bishop, or made the treatise De natura boni out of his discussions with Felix; a little later, also, the letter of the Manichean Secundinus gave him occasion to write Contra Secundinum, which, in spite of its comparative brevity, he regarded as the best of his writings
1. His Anti Manicheanism.
on this subject. In the succeeding period, he was much more occupied with anti-Donatist polemics, which in their turn were forced to take second place by the emergence of the Pelagian controversy.
It has been thought that Augustine's anti- Pelagian teaching grew out of his conception of the
Church and its sacraments as a means
2. His Anti- of salvation; and attention was called
Pelagian- to the fact that before the Pelagian
ism. controversy this aspect of the Church
had, through the struggle with the Donatists, assumed special importance in his mind. But this conception should be denied. It is quite true that in 395 Augustine's views on sin and grace, freedom and predestination, were not what they afterward came to be. But the new trend was given to them before the time of his anti-Donatist activity, and so before he could have heard anything of Pelagius. What we call Augustinianism was not a reaction against Pelagianism; it would be much truer to say that the latter was a reaction against Augustine's views. He himself names the beginning of his episcopate as the turning-point. Accordingly, in the first thing which he wrote after his consecration, the De diversis qucestionibus ad Simplicianum (396 or 397), we come already upon the new conception. In no other of his writings do we see as plainly the gradual attainment of conviction on any point; as he himself says in the Retractationes, he was laboring for the free choice of the will of man, but the grace of God won the day. So completely was it won, that we might set forth the specifically Augustinian teaching on grace, as against the Pelagians and the Massilians, by a series of quotations taken wholly from this treatise. It is true that much of his later teaching is still undeveloped here; the question of predestination (though the word is used) does not really come up; he is not clear as to the term "election"; and nothing is said of the " gift of perseverance." But what we get on these points later is nothing but the logical consequence of that which is expressed here, and so we have the actual genesis of Augustine's predestinarian teaching under our eyes. It is determined by no reference to the question of infant baptism — still less by any considerations connected with the conception of the Church. The impulse comes directly from Scripture, with the help, it is true, of those exegetical thoughts which he mentioned earlier as those of others and not his own. To be sure, Paul alone can not explain this doctrine of grace; this is evident from the fact that the very definition of grace is non-Pauline. Grace is for Augustine, both now and later, not the misericordia peccata condonans of the Reformers, as justification is not the alteration of the relation to God accomplished by means of the accipere remissionem. Grace is rather the misericordia which displays itself in the divine inspiratio, and justification is justum or pium fieri as a result of this. We may even say that this grace is an interna illuminatio such as a study of Augustine's Neoplatonism enables us easily to understand, which restores the connection with the divine bonum esse. He had long been convinced
AugTistine