Augustine of Hippo, Saint, Bishop of Hippo

AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO, Saint, Bishop of Hippo. - One of the four great Doctors of the Western Church.

I. THE MAN.

1. TAGASTE AND MADAURA

Aurelius Augustinus was born at Tagaste (today Souk-Ahras) in proconsular Numidia on 13 Nov. 354. If he was not of Roman blood, as Fr. Concetti maintained (Sant'A. antipapiniam, Tolentino 1930, p. 1 ff.), he was Roman in language and education. In book IX of the Confessions, he paints the portrait of his mother Monica, a most pious woman, who instilled in him the first Christian truths and chiefly the transcendent authority of Jesus Christ. His father, Patricius, was a pagan, but later converted to Christianity. After his first studies at Tagaste, the boy was sent to Madaura, where he received that classical formation which he would later severely censure for the place it gave to the mythology of the Greek and Latin poets. His Christian faith weakened in that environment to such an extent that, having returned to Tagaste and remaining there at leisure waiting for his father to gather sufficient means to send him to Carthage, he could not resist the passions then awakening and began that dissolute life which he recounts and bewails in his Confessions.

2. CARTHAGE

These moral disorders persisted still at the beginning of the following year, when he was already continuing his studies in the African capital. The faults of A.'s youth are not to be denied nor too much diminished, against his own explicit testimony, but neither are they to be exaggerated, since it does not appear that they surpassed or even equaled what was unfortunately the conduct of the majority. Indeed, not many months seem to have passed of his stay in Carthage before he bowed to a certain rule by uniting himself, without marriage, but with fidelity, to the woman who was the mother of his son Adeodatus, of whom he says to the Lord: «tu bene feceras eum» (Confess., IX, 6). He thus reached his nineteenth year, in which, reading Cicero's Hortensius, a book now lost, which exhorted to philosophy, he felt a profound emotion, to the point of changing the direction of his life and taking as his ideal the search for wisdom. To whom, however, should he turn? The philosophers did not speak of Christ, and A. had retained too much of Monica's lessons to be able to do without him: «everything that was without that name, however polished and truthful in style, did not wholly win me over» (Confess., III, 4, trans. O. Tescari, 4th ed., Turin 1946, p. 69).

He opened the book of the Scriptures: he found in it little elegance of style and much obscurity of thought. Having come into contact with a sect that called itself Christian and that at the same time claimed to account for everything by reason and without demanding any faith (the Manicheans, whose leader, Mani, professed himself «apostle of Jesus Christ» [*Contra epist. Manich.*, 5, n. 6]), A. allowed himself to be won over and remained nine years in the sect, though he stayed in the lower grade of hearers and was quite restless and doubtful, despite his proselytism. Like the Manicheans, he thought that every being, even God, was material; that evil was a substance originating from a first evil principle; that our acts did not proceed from our freedom, but from the struggle that the good and evil elements wage within ourselves. He was struck, however, by the answers that a Catholic named Elpidius gave to the attacks of the Manicheans; he did not see how the Manichean cosmogony agreed with the doctrines of the physicists, so that when a certain Faustus, a renowned Manichean, who should have resolved his difficulties, confessed to him that he did not know how to do so, he began to detach himself from the sect.

3. ROME AND MILAN

Precisely at that time (autumn of 383) he left his turbulent pupils of Carthage to go to Rome to open a school. There he had occasion to learn of the low morality of the leaders of Manicheism, which distanced him from it still further. He then asked himself whether wisdom might not be in the possession of the New Academy, illustrated by Carneades and Cicero, which, despairing of finding the truth, contented itself in everything with adhering to the most probable. Poorly paid by the students of Rome, A. attempted and won a competition for a chair of rhetoric at Milan. He paid a visit to Bishop Ambrose, formerly prefect of the city, and every Sunday, for two consecutive years (384-86), he listened to his sermons to the people. The word of St. Ambrose stirred in the mind of the African rhetorician those reflections that gradually led him back to the faith of St. Monica. He began by recognizing that the spiritual interpretations that the bishop gave to the Old Testament made the difficulties accumulated by the Manicheans disappear; and this was enough for him to resume his place as a Catholic catechumen. Yet certainty was still lacking to him.

It was then that God led him to see, on the one hand, that an authority charged with teaching us the necessary truths was not only not to be rejected a priori, but rather, since we are so incapable of finding the truth in ourselves, one had to think that some religious authority had been established by Providence, and on the other hand, that no religious authority existed in the world comparable to the Catholic Church and its Holy Scriptures. The conversion of the empire, the depth and at the same time the simplicity of the sacred books, the miracles and the deeds of the martyrs, all indicated that the help necessary to humanity had been given in the doctrine preached by St. Ambrose (Confess., VI, 4, n. 6).

Thus A. had returned to the Church of his childhood and adhered to it firmly, despite the difficulty he then experienced of reconciling Catholic doctrine with his philosophical principles, which had remained the materialistic ones of Manicheism. He believed that God is spirit, but could not conceive of him as such; he believed in freedom, but did not understand how it was possible. In short, he had recovered the faith (Confess., VII, 7, n. 11), but intellectual peace was lacking to him. This came to him from the Neoplatonists. An enthusiastic Plotinian put into his hands the works of the Alexandrian master, and reading them, he had the revelation of the spiritual world: «I entered, with you as guide, into my inmost self... I entered and saw with the eyes of the soul, whatever they were, I saw above them and above my intelligence an immutable light» (Confess., VII, 10, n. 16, trans. G. Capello, Turin 1945). He understood that every substance, as such, is good, and that evil, consisting only in the privation of good, cannot be a first principle. It was a joy, but it was also a danger, that of becoming proud in the manner of so many philosophers.

Indeed, A. still had to bring his conduct into harmony with his faith. Monica had succeeded in sending away the mother of Adeodatus and was preparing a suitable marriage for A., but the latter, while waiting, had taken another concubine and groaned at not being able to break the chains of sin. The victory, even more beautiful than he thought, was the result of reading St. Paul, of his fervent prayers and of the many examples that were proposed to him. He discovered in the Apostle's letters, in their true sense, the mystery of the incarnate Word and the necessity, in order to rise again, of man's humility and of God's grace, and he began to supplicate for his own healing. He later learned of so many men and women who had aban-

donated everything in order to live solely for God, and he ended up exclaiming: "The unlearned rise up and take heaven by storm: and we, with all our learning, devoid of sense, continue to wallow in flesh and blood!" (Confess., VIII, 8, n. 19). He withdrew into the garden, struggling with his thoughts and weeping, until he heard the singsong of a child repeating: take up, read. He opened the book of the Apostle and came upon this sentence: "Not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy: but put on the Lord Jesus Christ"

(Confess., VIII, 12, n. 29, trans. O. Tescari, Turin 1946, p. 284). Every uncertainty fell away in that instant: "You had converted me to Yourself, persuading me to seek neither a wife nor any other hope of the world" (ibid., n. 30, ibid., p. 285).

4. CASSICIACUM

The autumn holidays soon arrived, and A., with Monica, Adeodatus and a few friends, went to a villa at Cassiciacum (today Cassago in Brianza; cf. F. Meda, La controversia sul «Rus Cassiciacum», in Miscell. Agost., II, Rome [1931], pp. 49-59), where, while tending the property and giving lessons to two young men, he wrote several Dialogues and prepared for Baptism. Having received it from St. Ambrose, at Easter of 387, A. wished to return to Africa, but while he was waiting for the ship his mother Monica, a few days after the famous ecstasy she had had with her son, died at Ostia. Then A. stayed on another year in Rome, but finally, in the autumn of 388, he returned to Africa for good.

5. HIPPO

In his native Tagaste, he joined with some friends to form a community, but one day, when he had gone to Hippo, the acclamation of the people forced him to accept the priesthood in order to assist the aged bishop Valerius (in 391). The latter, four years later, had him consecrated bishop (in 396) and, dying the following year, left him bishop of Hippo (cf. A. Casamassa, s. v. in Enc. Ital., I, pp. 913-23; S. Zarb, De anno consecrat. episcop. s. Aug., in Angelicum, 10 [1933] pp. 261-85).

By now his history is indistinguishable from that of his works: sermons, letters, polemical treatises, theological studies. Add to these his pastoral cares, the direction of the Hippo clergy who lived in community with their bishop, the journeys forced upon him by the struggle against heretics, and one will have the balance sheet of one of the most usefully occupied lives there has ever been. A. had reached the age of 76 when the Vandals came to storm Hippo; in the third month of the siege, meditating on the penitential psalms, he serenely breathed his last.

His memory was at once held in veneration: he is commemorated by the Martyr. Hieronymianum (p. 472), the Calendario Cartaginese, Victor of Vita, Prosper (Martyr. Romanum, p. 365).

His body, laid in his Hippo, was withdrawn from the danger of Vandal profanation and carried to Sardinia by refugee African bishops. Liutprand, king of the Lombards, ransomed it "magno pretio" from the Saracens and transferred it to Pavia, to the monastery of S. Pietro in Ciel d'oro (Bede, Chronicon, in MGH, Script. Antiquiss., XIII, p. 321; Paul the Deacon, Histor. Langob., VI, 48), where in the 14th century a marvelous mausoleum was erected for him.

II. THE WORKS.

It is not necessary to list here all the works of A., of which various indexes are found in PL 46 (cf. Casamassa, s. v. in Enc. Ital., I, pp. 913-23; S. M. Zarb, Chronologia operum s. Aug., Rome 1934). PL 32-46 reproduces the Maurist edition (11 vols., Paris 1679-1700); the CSEL is preparing a new one, of which 17 vols. have appeared (Vienna 1887-1922). Here are the principal ones.

A) Polemical works. - 1. Against the "neo-Academicians" were written chiefly the dialogues of Cassiciacum: Contra Academicos, De beata vita, De ordine, Soliloquia, De immortalitate animae (PL 32). A controversy begun at the end of the last century and prolonged for many years concerned the relationship of these early works of A. to his Confessions. After Harnack (Augustin's Confessionen, Giessen 1888) and G. Boissier (La conversion de saint Augustin, in Rev. des Deux Mondes, 85 [Jan. 1888]), many saw an opposition between the penitent of the Confessions and the philosopher of the Dialogues. But a series of historians (F. Wörter, J. Martin, E. Portalié, J. Nørregaard, J. Mausbach, U. Mannucci, etc.) have truly demonstrated that this opposition does not exist; indeed, that the Dialogues cannot be properly understood except in the light of the Confessions.

2. Against the "Manichaeans" A. wrote, even before returning to Africa, the De moribus Ecclesiae catholicae et de moribus Manichaeorum (PL 32). The principal anti-Manichaean works are then (all in PL 42): Acta contra Fortunatum manichaeum (392); Contra epistolam quam dicunt fundamenti (397); Contra Fustum manichaeum libri 33 (397-98); Contra Secundum manichaeum (395). Other works, more apologetic than polemical, also target Manichaeism: De vera religione (390: PL 34), De utilitate credendi (391: PL 42). Other writings against Marcionism and Priscillianism confute the same errors (PL 42): Ad Orenium contra Priscillianistas et Origenistas (415), Contra adversarium legis et Prophetarum (420), De libero arbitrio (395: PL 32), De Genesi contra Manichaeos (389: PL 34).

3. Against the "Donatists", schismatics who troubled the African Church throughout the 4th century, until 411, when they were defeated by Augustinian argument and by imperial decrees, the holy Doctor wrote many works (PL 43), of which we indicate the principal ones: Psalmus contra partem Donati (394), a curious didactic and popular poem composed of verses of 16 syllables, ending with the same assonance, in the modern manner; Contra epistolam Parmeniani (400), De baptismo (401), Contra litteras Petiliani (401-405), Breviculus collationis cum Donatistis (411).

4. Against the "Pelagians" were written the works contained in PL 44 and 45. Here are the principal ones: De peccatorum meritis et remissione (411), De spiritu et littera (412), De natura et gratia (415), De gestis Pelagii (417), De anima et eius origine (420), Contra Iulianum libri 6 (421), Contra secundam Iuliani responsionem imperfectum opus, a work cut short by death.

5. Against the "semi-Pelagians", both of Hadrumetum and of southern Gaul: De gratia et libero arbitrio (420), De correptione et gratia (426), De praedestinatione sanctorum (428), De dono perseverantiae (428). A. also wrote against the Arians (PL 42): Contra Maximinum haereticum (428), Contra sermonem Arianorum (418), and collected critical notices on all heresies: De haeresibus (428: PL 42).

B) The works devoted by A., at least predominantly, to the tranquil study of problems rather than to polemics, can be divided into philosophical, biblical and dogmatic.

1. Philosophical works

After the dialogues written at Cassiciacum, there are few Augustinian writings of pure philosophy. The philosophy of A. is to be extracted from works whose principal purpose is not philosophizing. We note, however: De immortalitate animae (387), De quantitate animae (388), De musica libri 6 (389), De magistro (389).

2. Biblical works

The holy bishop meditated continuously on Sacred Scripture. He attempted four times a commentary on the first chapters of Genesis, and the fourth time in the important work De Genesi ad litteram libri 12 (401-15: PL 34). He wrote a harmony of the passages apparently in contradiction in the Gospels: De consensu evangelistarum libri 4 (400). He explained to the people, in sermons spoken or written, St. John: Tractatus 124 in Ioannis evangelium; Tractatus 10 in epistolam Ioannis ad Parthos (around 416: PL 35) and the Psalms: Enarrationes in Psalmos (PL 36-37). (For the chronology, v. S. M. Zarb, in Angelicum, 12-17 [1935-40]).

3. Dogmatic works

Especially important are: De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum (397: PL 40); De Trinitate libri 15 (400-16: PL 42), Enchiridion ad Laurentium (423-24), De civitate Dei libri 22 (413-27: PL 41), whose first books are polemical against the pagans, but the others are an exposition of the doctrine and the destinies of the Church. In the field of morals: De bono coniugali (400); De sancta virginitate (401); De adulterinis coniugiis (420); Contra mendacium (422: PL 40).

C) Sermons. - Today, after the recent discoveries of dom Morin, dom Lambot, dom Wilmart, more than 500 sermons of A. are counted (PL 38-39). For the chronology, still established only incompletely, v. A. Kunzelmann, Die Chronologie der Sermones des Hl. Aug., in Misc. Agost., II, Rome 1931, pp. 417-520.

Two Augustinian works teach the art of preaching and of teaching usefully: De doctrina christiana, principally in the fourth book (397-426: PL 34), De catechizandis rudibus (400).

D) Letters (PL 33). - The Benedictine edition counts 270 of them, of which 53 are addressed to A. and 9 by A. inserted among the opuscula; moreover, another 6 have been discovered and 3 are among the works, so that the number of A.'s letters is 217. They are almost all doctrinal, and not a few have the extent and importance of true treatises.

E) Original and most precious are the two works that make known St. A. himself and his works (PL 32): the Confessiones (397-98), written to praise God and his grace; the Retractationes (426), or critical review of his own writings.

III. THE DOCTRINE.

In order to conform to the internal order of Augustinian thought, there is discussed here successively: certainty, God one and triune, creation, illumination, original sin, the incarnate Word, grace, the Church, the sacraments, the Christian life and finally the life to come.

I. CERTAINTY

1. Reason

A. had passed through the neo-Academic milieu and known the bite of doubt. Skeptical difficulties barred the entrance to philosophy. A. wished to remove them: an important task, since in that struggle against the historical forms of skepticism and probabilism, the fundamental problem of the value of knowledge was at stake.

He begins by bringing the classical arguments against skepticism to bear, showing the impossibility of thinking without resting on some certainty. In every affirmation the universal principles of thought are implicated, to which assent cannot be refused. Human action is nothing if it is not illuminated by some certainty (Contra Acad., III, 9 ff.). The task is to draw attention from the ever-changing sensible impressions to the reasons that the intellect intuits.

There is, however, one privileged case of intellectual intuition, which the most exaggerated attempts of the skeptics cannot obscure: the case of the cogito. On this point, A. rests with the same assurance that Descartes would later have, and coins formulas almost identical to those of the French philosopher. On any hypothesis, he who thinks knows that he thinks and that he is, and in affirming this he cannot err: "Never, therefore, can he err or lie who says that he knows he lives" (De Trin., XV, 12, n. 21). Here one cannot fear error: "In those truths I fear no argument of the Academics who tell me: and what if you are perhaps mistaken? If I am mistaken, I am. He who is not cannot certainly be mistaken: for that very reason, I am, if I am mistaken." ("Per hoc sum si fallor", De civit. Dei, XI, 26). Descartes in his second meditation says: "Sum si me fallit" (the evil genius). The difference from Descartes lies in this, that A. does not consider the certainty of his own existence as the only one that resists methodical doubt, nor as the first that the philosopher can affirm. The cogito for the Bishop of Hippo is only one of the truths that we necessarily know, with this property, that we grasp it in every one of our thoughts and therefore can oppose it more effectively to the skeptic.

The observation that matters for A., and that Descartes passes over, is not that we know a truth, but that we know the truth, that is, not only what appears, but what is absolutely and for every mind. We become aware of it in perceiving our own existence, but also in apprehending many other truths not logically connected with the certainty of our existence and which nonetheless we know naturally. Just as reasoning is nothing other than an ordered succession of intellectual visions, so the certainties obtained by deduction are no less authentic nor less firm than immediate certainties. Whenever, in short, an intellection occurs, it is witness and guarantee to itself (In Ioan., tr. 5, n. 4). The intellect, when it knows, knows that it knows: "No one knows the false, except when he knows that it is false, and knowing this he knows the true" (De Trin., XV, 10, n. 17). The existence of certainty is a fact, and from this fact reflection takes its starting point to discover the highest truths: "If you do not see what I say, or if you doubt that it is true, see at least that you do not doubt that you doubt it, and if it is certain that you are in doubt, seek whence it is certain" (De vera relig., 39, n. 73). To seek this is the same as to seek the causes of the universal and the necessary. A. will use this point as a starting point to know the spiritual nature of the soul, to arrive at God, to find in ourselves the image of the divine Trinity. The fact of intellectual intuition is therefore a foundational stone in Augustinian thought.

2. Faith

a) Necessity. - There exists, then, a knowledge whose principle is reason. There is, however, another source of knowledge, to be kept always in mind, namely the faith taught by the Catholic Church. A. had returned to this faith driven by two sets of thoughts: on the one hand, the impotence of reason alone to resolve the fundamental problems, and on the other the manifest authority of the Church. His apologetics is founded on these same thoughts. To the Manicheans, who claimed to be satisfied with reason, he demonstrates the necessity of faith. Every human knowledge that is at all determinate begins from faith, that is, from adherence to some testimony, whether human or divine. Reason, however, absolutely speaking, always precedes faith, because it is its task to say whether one ought to believe. "No one believes, unless he has first thought that he ought to believe" (De praedestinatione SS., 2, n. 5). To believe is therefore a reasonable act (cf. Epist. 120, n. 34). It suffices then to consult one's own experience, even that of an A., and the history of human thought, to show that there must be in the world an authority established by Providence to instruct men in the most essential truths. For indeed so few, even among philosophers, have succeeded in forming a right idea of God, in demonstrating the immortality of the soul, in discovering the nature of happiness.

b) The Church. - Now, that providential authority is manifestly the Catholic Church. Three considerations above all struck our Doctor: the light contained in the Scriptures, the miracles, the rapid expansion of the Church. The Bible answers our questions, and its teaching is so clear that all can understand it, and so profound that the most learned always find in it new lights (Confess., VI, 5, n. 8; cf. Epist., 137, 5, n. 17). The purity of its doctrine demonstrates its transcendence (De civit. Dei, X, 18).

The miracles contained in the Bible are attested with every guarantee of truth and have continued down to our own days, as, for example, on the occasion of the translation of the relics of St. Stephen. Miracles are not the effect of the natural exercise of cosmic forces, but they are not for this reason to be believed impossible: the omnipotence of God is as manifest and as wonderful in natural effects as in miracles: could not the Word of God who feeds us every day have multiplied the bread for a few thousand men who had followed him on a mountain of Galilee? (cf. Sermo 257; In Ioan., tr. 9, n. 1). Miracles were prepared at the first instant of creation: that is, in the unfolding of natural forces, the possibility was foreseen and ordered that at a certain moment, through the intervention of God, the extraordinary event called a miracle should be produced. This results both from a special orientation of the forces already existing and from the insertion of a new force (cf. De Gen. ad litt., VI, 17, n. 28). In any case, miracles are signs: often they are performed to manifest divine approval in favor of a person or a doctrine; they are also symbols in which a teaching is contained: mira sunt videntibus, vera sunt intelligentibus. One must, however, eliminate the possibility of the intervention of demons, by which are explained, when they are authentic, the miracles that occurred in paganism (De civit. Dei, XXI, 6). A. also insisted greatly on the prophecies, principally on the fact that the whole Old Testament announces the New (Sermo 43, 4, n. 5; De civit. Dei, XVII).

Among the signs of divine intervention for the founding of Christianity, the one to which A. devotes the most attention is the very existence of the Church. The correspondence of the Church's doctrine to the needs of the heart, the rapidity and extent of its spread, the conquest it made of elevated minds, the consent that peoples give to its moral doctrine, even if they then observe it poorly, the heroism of its martyrs, the holy life of so many of its members; that whole cannot but be providential: God could not have permitted, and still less continually favored, Christianity if it were an illusion and a deception (De moribus Ecclesiae catholicae. Cf. Despiney, Le chemin de la foi d'après s. A., Vézelay 1930).

c) Holy Scripture. - Where is the doctrine of the Church? It is found in Holy Scripture. A. recognizes the authority of the deuterocanonical books (De doctrina christiana, 2, 13), although he has doubts about the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and he holds all of Scripture to be inspired and consequently without error. He wrote the De consensu evangelistarum to reconcile the apparent contradictions that the different Gospels present. If a text, he says, seems to me false, I must think either that the reading is inexact, or that it is badly interpreted, or that I do not understand it (Contra Faustum, XI, 5). A single sentence of Holy Scripture can have different meanings all intended by the Holy Spirit; this is understood of allegorical meanings, but A. admits that the useful meanings that one finds in reading the sacred book are also meanings of Holy Scripture (Confess., XII, 31, n. 42). In practice, however, he made little use of this doctrine; in his didactic works, he seeks the literal sense with difficulty (cf. De Gen. ad litt.). He is freer in the Sermons and in the Enarrationes in psalmos. It must be recognized in general that many of his interpretations are not accepted by modern exegetes, and furthermore his care to avoid any contrast between the sacred text and human science is to be noted. He gravely warns against giving interpretations that could merit the mockery of unbelievers (ibid., I, 19, n. 39).

d) Tradition. - Scripture is not the only source of faith; not everything that was revealed to the Apostles was written (De baptismo, V, 29, n. 31). What the Church has always believed can only come from the Apostles (ibid., IV, 24, n. 31). Tradition is the voice of the Church, which is manifested in its councils (De baptismo, II, 4, n. 5). The very faith in the inspiration and infallibility of Scripture is guaranteed to us by the authority of the Church: "I would not believe the Gospel if the authority of the Catholic Church did not persuade me" (Contra epist. Manich., 5, n. 6). The path followed is clearly indicated: one first believes the Church (for various reasons, but also for reasons drawn from the Gospel considered as a simple historical document accepted with human faith) and then one believes of the Gospel what the Church teaches about it.

II. DIG

1. Existence

In the Soliloquies, A., dialoguing with himself, said: "I want to know God and the soul. Nothing else? No, nothing else" (Solil., I, 2, n. 7). Indeed he says almost nothing that cannot be referred to one or the other of these two subjects; on the contrary, he most often treats of the two together, using the knowledge of one to penetrate the other better. Let us first look at the doctrine on God.

The existence of God can be admitted by a certain faith, indeed one usually begins by admitting it in that way, but it can also be demonstrated rigorously. God is admitted by faith when one relies on the universal belief of men, and also when one adheres without much reflection to the natural inclination of reason, which finds in God the cause of the universe. God is demonstrated when accurate reasonings arrive at Him as their necessary conclusion, that is, when one can say: "God exists, truly exists, supremely. Not only do we hold it firmly by faith, but now, it seems to me, we understand it with a certain knowledge, though a very faint one" (De lib. arb., II, 15, n. 39).

There has been discussion as to whether A. proposed several arguments for the existence of God. It seems that in a certain way he uses a single manner of arguing, sometimes set out more explicitly, sometimes abbreviated or contracted; but since this manner is quite complex, all the classical proofs for the existence of God are found in it and from time to time appear clearly recognizable.

Here first is a text written around 395, which seems to us to contain all the articulations of the Augustinian reasoning: "The human mind, when it judges visible things, can recognize that it is itself better than all visible things. But since, because of its defects and its progress in wisdom, it confesses its mutability, it discovers that above itself stands immutable truth; and clinging to this, as was said: My soul clings to you, it becomes happy, finding within itself Him who is also the Creator and Lord of all visible things. Then it no longer seeks visible things outside, not even in the firmament, which either are not found, or are found without profit and with great labor, unless, through the beauties that are outside, it finds the artist who is within, who works first in the soul the higher beauties and then in the body the lower ones" (De div. quaest. LXXXIII, q. 45, n. 1).

The argument takes its starting point from the sensible world. Here is how A. once developed this dialectical moment: "The beauty of the earth is like the voice of the mute earth. You reflect and you see its beauty, you see its fertility, you see its powers, how it conceives the seed, how it often produces what was not sown: you see this and with your consideration in some way you question it: the very examining is a questioning. And when, admiring, you have examined it and scrutinized it and have discovered in it great power, great beauty, wonderful virtue, since it could not in itself and from itself have such virtue, it comes immediately to your mind that it could not have been from itself, but from that Creator... Is it not true that considering all the beauty of this world, that very beauty answers you unanimously: Not I, but God made me?" (In ps. 144, n. 13. See also Sermo 141, ch. 2).

It is manifest that here are expressed both the cosmological argument, drawn from the contingency of beings, and the teleological one, moving from the order of beings. The recourse to the principle of causality is also explicit, though not distinct, nor should this arouse wonder: the human mind cannot do without it.

One could already conclude to a cause of the world, distinct from sensible truths. But could this cause not perhaps be found in the intelligible realities that experience reveals? To exclude this, A. proceeds on his itinerary, and seeking what stands above the sensible universe he finds first the senses, which with their sensations in some way judge things. But the intellect is manifestly superior to the senses, since it judges them, regulates them, measures them, and brings forth judgments that state not only how things are, but how they ought to be. Neither time nor space is capable of limiting its domain.

Now, will there be nothing above the intellect?

Are we the ultimate source of the ideas that govern everything? It is manifest that we are not. Each of us is limited to his individuality, in time, in space: he is therefore not the source of the universal and the necessary. Each of us has to learn and to progress; he often errs, corrects himself, struggles to see clearly: he is therefore not himself the measure of truth, but rather stands continually measuring himself against rules that he has not made and by which all his activity is judged. Above him, therefore, resides truth, that is, an absolute reality, the exemplar of every other reality, without whose existence he could pass no judgment, not even that of his own existence: "I would more easily have doubted my life than the existence of the truth, which is seen by understanding it through the things that have been made" (Confess., VII, 10, trans. O. Tescari, Turin 1946, p. 224).

2. Nature

One cannot ascend to God by those paths without at the same time learning much about His nature. In Him the ideas must be realized in their fullness: otherwise, they would be measured and would no longer be the measure itself. What God is, He is truly, that is, perfectly, with identity of idea and being. He is therefore nothing sensible. He is the Truth. From this follow the attributes with which our Doctor is wont to consider the divine essence: infinity, immutability, eternity. Where there is the fullness of being, no becoming, no change, no perfecting can be conceived. In thinking God, we must raise to that height the poor realities, truth, beauty, goodness that we know. For example, if one thinks of God's knowledge: "I shall leave only the splendor of a certain and immobile truth that illumines everything with a single and eternal contemplation; indeed I shall not leave it, since human knowledge does not have it, but I shall think it as best I can; then the knowledge of God will be insinuated into me in some way, and this name, since even to man with knowledge something is revealed, can be common to those two realities" (De div. quaest. ad Simplicianum, II, q. 2, n. 3). Real knowledge, but very imperfect. The being of God surpasses every intellect other than His own. In short, one must say that "we think God with more truth than we express Him, but He is with more truth than He is thought" (De Trin., VII, 4, n. 7).

III. THE TRINITY

1. The dogma

This is as much as reason can understand of God considered in himself: he is one, simple, absolute. Now, the Christian faith teaches that in that one God there are the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, three distinct persons. How is this possible, or at least how is it not evidently impossible?

Perhaps A. did not at first see the difficulty of the problem. Indeed, reading the Enneads, he believed he had found there the Father and the Word, of whom St. Ambrose spoke. As Plotinus does for his hypostases, he seems in his writings to demonstrate the great mystery by the light of nature (cf. De div. quaest. LXXXIII, q. 18). In any case, he soon came to recognize the impotence of the human intellect to give an account of the Trinity (De lib. arb., III, n. 60) and directed the acumen of his mind to expounding the mystery contained in Sacred Scripture in such a way that no contradiction might be found in it. Thus he rejected a manner of arguing that certain Greek Fathers, and perhaps he himself (De div. quaest. LXXXIII, q. 16), had opposed to the Arians to prove the eternity of the Son, saying that if the Son is the wisdom of the Father, as the Father was never without wisdom, so he was never without the Son. A. observes, among other things, that if the Father received wisdom from the Son, he would receive his nature from him and thus would be the son of his own Son... (De Trin., VII, 1, n. 1). The difficulty of the Arians must therefore be resolved otherwise, which was this: what is said of God cannot be said except according to substance, since in him there are no accidents; therefore if the Son is begotten, he is so according to substance: he therefore has a substance different from that of the Father, and inferior. A. answers: in God, it is true, nothing is said as an accident, but it does not follow that everything is said according to substance; for there is a third mode: that which is said according to relation. "The same substance, wisdom and other attributes, are found in the Father and in the Son, but in the Father they are found with the relation of begetter and in the Son with that of begotten" (De Trin., V, 5, n. 6). Thus that predicament of relation, which previously was employed only in an implicit manner or with less emphasis, became explicit and central in trinitarian theology. What in God is said according to the absolute, that is, as A. puts it, what is said of each of the three divine Persons "ad se", all three have in common, not merely equal but numerically identical; what instead is said of the persons according to the relative, "ad alium", is what opposes and distinguishes them. Thus the wisdom of the Father and of the Son is one and the same; yet the Father is not the Son. It is the doctrine that was later expressed with rigor of terms in the Council of Florence (cf. Denz-U., n. 703). The mystery is not unveiled, but it is removed from every evident contradiction.

Fr. Th. de Régnon (Études de théologie positive sur la S. Trinité, 4 vols., Paris 1892-98) insisted on the novelty of the Augustinian exposition, which starts from the unity of the divine nature and then proceeds to the distinction of the persons, whereas the Greek Fathers start from the distinction of the persons and then arrive at the unity of the nature. Let us observe only that A. too sometimes starts from the distinction of the persons in order to move toward the unity of nature (cf. De Trin., XV, 13-14), and that the Greek Fathers distinguish the persons only by the sole opposition of the relations (cf. St. Gregory the Great, Orat., 30, n. 17). Let us see in our Doctor merely a progress of precision and coherence.

2. The image of the Trinity

Having set out the dogma, how does one progress in the understanding of it? A. makes use of the word of Genesis, that God made man in his image. The human mind is the image of the Most Holy Trinity. Scrutinizing therefore our spirit in the light of the mystery of the three divine persons, he discovers a profound psychology, in which the unity and at the same time the distinction and the relations of our higher faculties are wonderfully illustrated. He assigns the terms of our trinity in two ways: the first that presents itself to him is: mens, notitia, amor (De Trin., II); but his reflections lead him to another, more perfect and of superior homogeneity: memoria, intellectus, voluntas (ibid., X). In the unity of the substance, these our faculties are distinct and have among themselves the order and in some way the nature of the relations that we know to exist in God. The word of the intellect proceeds from the memory, that is, from our knowledge which it expresses, and is an image and a first-born of it; from the memory and the intellect proceeds the love of the will, as from the Father and the Son proceeds the Spirit of charity (De Trin., XIV). Two are the objects that are always found in the soul and that are therefore the terms of knowledge and of love in our interior trinity: the soul and God. The love of the soul, however, must be referred to the love of God. The more therefore God will be in our memory, in our knowledge, in our love, the more perfect will his image be in us, and that is, the more beautiful and holy will our soul be (ibid.). A. nevertheless insists on the distance that will always exist, even in the other life, between the created image of the Trinity and the perfection of the three divine Persons.

It is to be noted, against a too widespread opinion, that in this treatment A. shows that he considers the faculties of the soul as really distinct from the substance; and it would suffice to prove it, among other reasons, that he speaks of their inequality among themselves: now if they were identical with the substance, how could they not be equal? (De Trin., XV, 23, n. 43).

IV. THE CREATION

1. God the Creator

God willed that outside His Trinitarian life there should be other beings, and He created the universe. The idea of creation was already very clear in Christian thought before A.; he accepts it as a believer, and, without removing its mystery, he nonetheless demonstrates its necessity, which had appeared to him in reading Plotinus. There is nothing in the world that does not have from God everything that it is and insofar as it is, both in its formed state and in its formable state (act and potency).

God drew everything from nothing: «de nihilo» (De fide et symbolo, 2, n. 2; Confess., XII, 15, n. 21). The reason is manifest: what is, is not without unity, without determination, without order, without goodness, without beauty, or at least without the capacity to have these forms. But the lower and limited degrees of a perfection cannot be anything other than participations in the supreme and perfect degree of the same perfection. It follows that every degree of unity, of goodness, of beauty, and in short of being, comes integrally from the supreme and perfect Being, that is, is created by Him.

A. does not deny that a creation made from all eternity would have been possible, as the Neoplatonists wanted: he merely calls it barely intelligible («modo quodam vix intelligibili»: De civit. Dei, XI, 4, n. 2). He is content to prove that creation in time, that is, with a beginning of time, is not impossible, and he teaches that according to the Christian faith, the world truly began (ibid., 6). According to A., the manner of creation is indicated by Genesis, but its interpretation is not easy. He first gave allegorical interpretations of it, but then attempted to discover its literal sense, in accordance with the very title of the work: De Genesi ad litteram. Now, here is what he thought was to be found in the text, ad litteram.

God did not take a week to create the world, but made it in an instant. The days of which Moses speaks do not signify time, both because it is said elsewhere: God created all things at once («Deus creavit omnia simul», Eccl. 18, 1), and because the order of the second chapter of Genesis could not be reconciled with that of the first. The «day» here signifies an intellectual light, that is, the knowledge that God communicates to the angels of the things He creates: evening knowledge, insofar as it terminates in created things; morning knowledge, insofar as they see them in the Word of God. This intelligible day is multiplied six times, because in the single cognition of the angels the universe presents itself with as many degrees of increasing perfection, from inanimate earth up to man, the image of God. On the other hand, it is manifest that what the Bible narrates, especially in ch. 2 of Genesis, could not have been accomplished in an instant: a certain time was needed.

The solution is this: although everything was made in the first instant, not everything could yet appear: one part of the universe was already produced in its perfect form, but another part still existed only in its seminal or causal reasons. These reasons are not visible germs, but signify the active and passive forces that are preparing the appearance in proper form of what was previously hidden. As times run their course, the seminal reasons develop their powers and thus the beings destined for the various times attain their perfect and visible form. Such a conception is certainly evolutionistic, but it is not the evolutionism of the moderns: the latter consists in the transformation of one determined species into another; instead, the evolution of which A. makes mention takes place only within the limits of a single species (cf. De Gen. ad litt., IV-V). He applies the same exegesis to the case of man. In the first instant, the soul of Adam was created in definitive form (since it seems difficult to speak of a seminal reason of the soul), but the body was so only in its seminal reason. The body of man was therefore prepared by the forces of the universe, which, however, prepared nothing but the slime, which remained slime, until the moment of the divine intervention that animated it and made it a human body: we are therefore far from the Darwinian thesis. It follows, however, that the Doctor of Hippo would not have been disturbed by modern evolutionism: but to each of the established facts he would have assigned a proportionate cause and an intervention of God, both in the instant of creation and also, according to the case, in the course of evolution.

2. God as Providence

A. asserts that he had always believed in Providence (Confess., VI, 5, n. 7). He adhered to it by faith, listening to St. Ambrose, and gained some understanding of it by reading Plotinus. His doctrinal struggles then forced him to deepen its notion throughout his life. Indeed, he first defended it against the Manicheans, demonstrating that the existence of evil does not contradict that of a single good principle of the universe, since evil is not a substance to be created separately, but a privation that follows from the fact that created good is not the supreme good. Against the Pelagians, he then defended Providence by explaining that God was not unjust in maintaining certain consequences of original sin. The order that shines in the universe is not merely static; but since the permanence and unfolding of things proceeds from the activity of the Creator, it is necessary that rationality and harmony appear in the history of the world, both in the whole and in the parts and in individuals. A., like Plotinus, admits in God the ideas of individuals.

It is therefore clear to reason, as it is to faith, that everything is subject to Providence and that the universe is like a song that unfolds harmoniously in the variety of sounds and silences (cf. Epist. 138, 1, n. 5; Epist. 166, 5, n. 13). How then does evil arise? To understand it, A. develops three orders of considerations. The most universal reason lies in the necessary imperfection of the creature; either one denies God the possibility of creating, or one must admit imperfect beings; indeed the desirable variety of created things demands a certain gradation among them and consequently that some be more imperfect than others. These imperfections must not make one forget the great good of the perfections that they come to limit. Now, imperfection, which by its nature is merely the absence of a greater good, will often cause, in the interactions of beings, privations that are, properly speaking, evil. For example, the generation and evolution of living things constitute one of the beauties of nature: yet they bring with them the disappearance of living things that came before, to make room for those to come (cf. De lib. arb., III, 15, n. 42). Physical or rational suffering brings with it, if strongly endured, great moral goods and can be compensated (De civit. Dei, I).

More difficult certainly to justify is the existence of moral evil, which proceeds against the very rule of reason. It is necessary therefore to add the consideration of a new element: created freedom. A., when he followed the Manichees, had denied our free will, and therefore, after his conversion, he strove with all his might to defend it. Struggling later against the Pelagians, he emphasized its limits, but, as we shall see, he maintained it vigorously. Our sins are truly ours: "I do not see what I shall call mine, if the will by which I will and do not will is not mine; if therefore with it I do something evil, to whom should it be attributed, if not to me?" (De lib. arb., III, 1, n. 3). The Doctor of grace will acknowledge higher degrees of freedom, in which the good is done freely, without the imperfection of being able to do evil (De corrept. et gratia, 11, n. 30). However, in its lower degrees, that is, when it is the power to do good, while one could do evil, freedom is a good worthy of being created by God: this is the thesis of the De libero arbitrio. Sin is nothing other than a deficiency that should not be there. Now, the creature can be the ultimate cause of a deficiency, and thus moral evil appears, without its responsibility going back to the Creator. "The root of all evils is concupiscence: I cannot seek the root of the root." (Contra Faust., XXII, 98).

There remains, however, still a difficulty. If freedom can exist without this imperfection of being able to sin, why was it not created in that way? To answer, A. has recourse to the consideration of the universe as such. Those more perfect degrees that we desire exist; why not permit others, less perfect but still good, to be created? The order of the whole results more complete from it (cf. De Gen. ad litt., II, 9, 11). To this order, moreover, the occurrence of sin can also contribute, which, once it has occurred, often becomes the occasion of a great good. For God "has judged that there is more power and more perfection in drawing good from evil than in preventing evil from being" (De civit. Dei, XXII, 1, n. 2). All these reflections, one of the most ingenious efforts to solve the problem of evil, do not abolish the mystery, but help to place trust in Providence and to entrust oneself to the divine freedom itself (cf. De Gen. ad litt., II, 10: "penes ipsum est").

Providence applied to men is God's part in history, which results from the exercise of human freedom, directed and not diminished by the divine designs. The Augustinian philosophy of history is essentially contrary to idealistic immanentisms. The immutable, the perfect, the eternal cannot in any way be confused with this world that lies entirely in motion, in becoming and in time. On the other hand, freedom belongs to each individual man, and God, who gave it to him, respects it. It can be said that everything in history that means good and progress comes from an inclination given by God both in nature and in individual wills that have not rejected it; while what deserves the name of decadence, of disorder, of misdeed is the effect of men's resistance to the divine impulse. No resistance, however, can prevent the fulfillment of God's plans. His foreknowledge, his wisdom, his power are such that He moves free wills, permits or prevents, makes even the wicked and their wickedness serve his ends. Whoever saw the whole of history would admire it as a beautiful poem or a harmonious song. "The Lord knows what is suitable for each time, what and how much he must give, add, take away, subtract, increase, diminish, He who is so much governor as immutable creator of mutable things, until the beauty of all the ages, of which things suitable each to its time are parts, is completed like the immense song of some ineffable singer" (Epist. 166).

3. Creatures in particular

a) The Angels. — "We know through faith the existence of the angels" (Enarr. I in ps. 103, n. 15). They were created in the single instant of the universal creation: however, A. leaves one free to believe them created earlier. Some authors (Petavius, De angelis, I, 2; G. Bareille, s. v. Angéologie d'après les Pères, in DThC., I, col. 1198) affirm that he attributed a subtle body to the angels. The truth is that he knows on this point a diversity of opinion: he inclines perhaps more to give them a body "sicut doctis hominibus visum est," but he does not assert it, and at least twice he leaves the matter uncertain (De civit. Dei, XV, 23; XXI, 10, n. 1). He confessed that he did not know what difference there was between the different orders of angels (Enchir., 58). The angels were all created in grace and in charity; those who sinned did so through pride (De civit. Dei, XII, 6). The angels who remained good are part of the City of God and, as fellow citizens, help us to reach the common fatherland (In ps. 62, n. 6).

b) The physical world. — The change that manifests itself everywhere in experience and also the circumstance that in the Bible the chaotic earth is described as "invisible and disordered" led A. to a concept of prime matter very close to the Peripatetic concept. The formless earth of Genesis, he had first imagined it as clothed with some very imperfect form, but always with a form. How to conceive it without any form? He explains it thus: "And although right reason advised me to subtract any remnant of form, if I wanted truly to think the formless, I could not succeed; for it seemed to me easier to deny the existence of what was deprived of every form than to think something that was between form and nothing, something that was neither provided with forms nor nothing, a formless almost-nothing. Therefore I ceased to question my spirit in this direction, filled as it was with images of formed bodies, which it changed and varied at its pleasure, and I paid attention to the bodies themselves and considered deeply their mutability, by which they cease to be what they were and begin to be what they were not. And a suspicion flashed upon me that the same passage from form to form took place through something formless, not precisely through nothing. But the suspicion did not suffice for me, eager as I was to arrive at a knowledge. However, as I have said, none of the readers would have the patience to listen to me, if with voice and pen I confessed before You all that, on the subject of this question, you have gone

Omne opus seruise in eo non sanctis.
Prropter quod & per Ezechielem, pphe-tam dicitur. Et sabbata mea dedi eis: in
signu inter me & inter eos: ut serene ga
ego domin?g sanctifico eos. Hoc pfecte
tunc sciemus: quado perfecte uacabim?:
et perfecte uidebumus quia ipse est deus.
Ipse etia numerus statum uelui dierum:
siscam eos articulos temporis cōputentur
qui i scripturus uidenti expressi: iste sab-batismus cuidentius apparebit: quomā
seprimus inuenitur. Ve prima etas tang
prim? dies sit ab Adam usq ad diluuiū.
Secunda inde usq ad Abmam: nō equalitate temporum sed numero generanōnū.
denas quippe habere: operantur. Hine tā
sicut Marheus euangelista determiat:
tres states usq ad christi subsequentur
aduentum: quē singulē denis & quernis
generatōibus explicantur. Ab Abmam
usq ad David uia. Altera inde usq ad
transmioranōnem in babioniam. Terna domino reddidisse. Quibus parum uel
gbus nimium ē: mihi ignoscan. Quibus
aùt satis est: non mihi sed deo mecū gras
congratulantes agant. Gloria & honor
pri et filio & spiritui sancto: omipotenti
deo in excelsis in secula seculoy. Amen.

AVRELII. AVGVSTINI. doctoris
egregii acq Episcopi ypponensis de ciui-tate dei liber uicesimussecundus explicite
contra paganos. Sub anno a nativitate
domini. M.CCCC.LXVII. Pontificat?
PAVLI Papē secundi anno eius terno.
Terno regnante Romanoz Impatore
FREDERICO. Indichōe. XV. die uero
duodecima mensis lumi.

GCD
DEO GRATIAS. AL.

AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO, saint - De civitate Dei; colophon of the editio princeps (Subiaco 1467).

(Int. Enc. Catt.)

exposing myself. Yet my soul will not cease to render you honor and songs of praise for all this that it is unable to set forth. Yes, it is the mutability of mutable things that is capable of all the forms into which mutable things are changed. But this mutability, what is it? Perhaps a soul? perhaps a body? perhaps an aspect of the soul or of the body? If I could say: a nothing that is something, a being that is not, I would call it in that manner" (Confess., XII, 6, n. 6, trans. O. Tescari, 4th ed., Turin 1946, pp. 481-82).

It is clear that a reality so indigent never exists alone: we know that in the first instant everything was created: "both that which was made and that from which it was made were created together" (De Gen. ad litt., I, 15, n. 20).

The world of experience exists in space and in time. A. knows that, once extended bodies are removed, space would not exist, and that, once motion is suppressed, time would not exist. We can, however, imagine spaces indefinitely. Quantities really exist, but they are relative: one is not large unless it is placed in relation to another that is smaller (De musica, VI, 7, n. 10; De civit. Dei, XI, 5).

What is time? "If no one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain it to one who asks me, I no longer know" (Confess., XI, 14, n. 17, trans. cit., p. 417). Time is not the same as the movement of bodies, but is its measure: indeed, it is a measure that we measure, since we speak of short time and of long time. There is therefore, as it were, an archetypal time, to which we refer all other times. That time is in the soul, intuited immediately; it is the duration of the soul, and to this duration we refer that of every other thing (Confess., XI, 14-31). It would be an error to take this doctrine for a subjectivism. Time is real, both that outside and that within. Its measure is sought, and it is this measure that is found in the soul, whose duration is felt and measured without intermediaries.

c) Man. - A. gives as a manifest truth that man is composed of soul and body. The union of two such different principles appears to him as a miracle (Epist. 137, 3, n. 11). How is it to be conceived? It is certain that he does not reduce it to that of a mover and the mechanism set in motion by him, nor even to that of the rider and the horse, although, like everyone, he sometimes uses similar comparisons: otherwise, he would not find it so mysterious. Perhaps he did not push it as far as Aristotle and St. Thomas, at least when he admitted that the soul of Adam was created without the body, into which it then came by natural inclination. But it remains beyond doubt that he constantly thought of the union of the rational soul and the body as substantial. The soul alone is not man; in the very nature of man there is also the body: "Bodies are not made to adorn or to help, as something used externally, but belong to the very nature of man" (De cura pro mortuis gerenda, 3, n. 5). For him, man is not two substances, but "a rational substance composed of soul and body" (De Trin., XV, 7, n. 11). The body lives because it receives life from the soul (Confess., X, 6, n. 10). It remains, however, that the manner "in which spirits are united to bodies and become living beings is absolutely wonderful and man cannot understand it; and this is man himself" (De civit. Dei, XXI, 10, n. 1). It follows from this doctrine, contrary to the teaching of Plato, that the soul, for its full happiness, must be united to the body, and thus the dogma of the resurrection of the dead is illustrated (De Gen. ad litt., XII, 35). Indeed, from this reunion with the body great effects will result in the other life.

V. ILLUMINATION

Passing to the activity of creatures, we speak first of the existence of illumination and then of its nature.

1. The fact

According to St. Augustine, the certainty of our knowledge, established above, demonstrates the natural union of the human mind with the first Truth. This is the light without which we could see nothing with the eyes of the intellect. Here is the doctrine of illumination, for which three principal reasons may be adduced.

The first of these reasons is taken from the nature of our judgments, which are never without some affirmation of absolute and universal value. We call one thing true and exclude another as false; even if it is a contingent truth, such as "I think," this is understood in such a way that, once granted, it remains eternally and necessarily true that it was granted. When, moreover, we apply a concept of value to actions — for example, when we say that they are just — it is clear that we mean, indeed that we know, a justice that does not depend on us nor on any contingent thing, but is founded on the idea of justice that lives in God. Our idea of justice is therefore a reflection of the divine one. The concepts we use and with which we judge would bring us no real knowledge if they were not founded in the divine being, that is, if they were not lights kindled in some way at the sun of God: "It belongs to a higher reason to judge of these corporeal things according to the spiritual and eternal reasons, which, if they were not above the human mind, would certainly not be immutable, and to which, if we were not joined by some part of our being, we could not judge of corporeal things according to them" (De Trin., XII, 2, n. 2). Thus the universality of truth is also explained. All men have the same primitive notions of being, unity, good, evil; they know the same principles of reason. "Where are these rules written, in which even the wicked man recognizes what is just and sees that he ought to have what he does not have? Where are they written if not in the book of that light which is called truth?" (De Trin., XIV, 15, n. 21).

Another demonstration, which is rather an application of the first, consists in examining the conditions of teaching. The human teacher cannot communicate knowledge from within: he can only propose signs. When it is a matter of sensible realities, it is possible to point to the thing of which the sign is given; but when it is a matter of abstract, intelligible things, such as justice, truth, or again the most general principles, they cannot be shown. The disciple must find them in himself; the signs do nothing but admonish and guide him. They are questions to which he must respond, finding the answer in himself. Such is the case of the slave in the Meno, who discovers geometrical truths in himself. In short, both the teacher and the disciple perceive truths because they are illuminated by the first and absolute Truth. "In everything we understand, we consult the Truth, not as speaking from without, but as presiding within the mind, after, for example, our words have admonished us to consult it" (De magistro, 11, n. 38).

Finally, illumination is a corollary of creation. "Since our nature has

God as its author in order to exist, there is no doubt that in order to know the true we must have God as our teacher" (De civit. Dei, XI, 24). If indeed creation is conceived as the participation granted to the finite of the perfections that are infinite in God, the human intellect participates in the divine intellect and possesses in itself, albeit with ineffable gradation and with rigorous limitations, the same truth that lives in God. It is not without confirmation of this doctrine to see that, just as A. deduced from the existence of God that of immutable laws and their participation by man, so today J. P. Sartre from the denial of God concludes to the non-existence of any moral law. (L'existentialisme est un humanisme, Paris 1946, p. 35).

2. Nature of illumination

If the existence of illumination is clear in the Augustinian texts, it is very difficult to penetrate its nature and mode. The interpretations are many and diverse: a) Malebranche, the ontologists of the 19th century, and one or another historian of today (v. J. Hessen, Augustus Metaphysik des Erkenntnis, Berlin-Bonn 1931) have thought that St. Augustine attributed to us here below the immediate vision of God, in which we would see everything. This interpretation is rejected by almost all contemporary critics (v. M. Grabmann, Der göttliche Grund menschlicher Wahrheits-erkenntnis, nach Augustinus u. Thomas v. Aquin, Münster in W. 1924; E. Gilson, Introduction à l'étude de saint Augustin, 2nd ed., Paris 1945; G. Sestili, Augustini philosophia pro existentia Dei, in Miscell. Agostin., II, Rome 1931, p. 765 ff.; A. Masnovo, L'ascesa verso Dio in s. Agostino, Milan 1931). It is true that in many passages there is talk of the vision of God or of vision in the eternal reasons; but the sense imposed by the context or by the body of the texts excludes its being a matter of immediate vision. When A. speaks with greater precision and attempts to explain the relation of our intellect to the divine one, he employs expressions that are opposed to an intuition of God: he says, for example, that the intelligibles are imprinted in the mind; the intellect is connected with divine realities, or linked to them: "It is rather to be believed that the intellectual mind is of such a nature that it is linked (subiuncta) according to an order disposed by God to intelligible realities" (De Trin., XII, 15, n. 24). He explicitly distinguishes the light that is in our mind from the divine light: "If the light of our spirit is inaccessible to carnal eyes, how much more so will be a light that surpasses it beyond comparison" (Epist. 147, n. 45). Once the holy Doctor had the occasion to deny us in the most explicit way the immediate vision of God and to assert that in this life we see him only in the images that are creatures and especially the human soul. In book XV of the De Trinitate, a work in which in the earlier books he seems to have said that we see the very Truth, the very Good, he assures us, with St. Paul, that God "we see now through a mirror in an image, but then we shall see face to face," and continues: "But if we ask what and how this mirror is, it immediately becomes clear to us that in a mirror nothing is seen but an image." And he further specifies that it is truly a matter of a mirror, and hence of seeing only the images of the Creator, and not of a specola, from which God himself would be seen, albeit as from afar and confusedly. (De Trin., XV, 8, n. 14). And it is for this reason that for a great part of his work on the divine Trinity he sought the most perfect image of it available in our experience, namely the human soul.

b) With the same certainty one must reject the interpretation of certain medieval doctors, taken up again by Grabmann, according to which to the created light of the intellect illumination would add a special ray that would give knowledge the characters of necessity and universality. But of this there is no trace in the Augustinian texts. If that supplementary ray is created, it is superfluous, since the intellect is already capable of the act of intellection; and if it is said to be uncreated, whoever sees it sees God, and thus one has returned to ontologism.

c) Others (E. Gilson, op. cit., p. 124) have thought of an influence of the divine ideas added to the intellect's own activity, whose effect, however, would be merely regulative, somewhat like the Kantian categories. But this interpretation does not correspond to the texts cited above, and moreover it multiplies the difficulties: if that regulative function results from some created effect intrinsic to the mind, why would it not be the work of the intellect itself? And if it is a divine light, how is it possible that thought should be immediately regulated by it without knowledge of the regulator, that is, without the ontologism that is not admitted?

d) Nor can the interpretation of Fr. Portaliè (in DThC, I, col. 2336 ff.) be accepted as genuine, although it is closer to the truth. It consists in attributing to God the function that, in the doctrine of St. Thomas, the agent intellect fulfills. Instead of our intellect abstracting from phantasms and impressing on the judging intellect the species abstracted from things, God himself would directly place those species in the intellect. That theory, which Fr. Portaliè believed to be quite common in the Middle Ages, was held by Roger Bacon, and perhaps by no one else. Now A. has indeed continually described the divine idea, in which we participate, as extrinsic to the intellect and independent of it, but he has never said anything to make one believe that our intellect, under the influence of the divine ideas, does not itself form its own ideas. God, according to him, "governs all the things he has created in such a way as to leave them to exercise and carry out their own motions" (De civit. Dei, VII, 30). On the other hand it is manifest that he requires the presence of the sensible for the formation of our ideas. His starting point is always experience and consequently a judgment about things existing and perceived in their singularity: I think, you live, these two arcs are beautiful, this action is just, and other similar observations. One could strictly understand the necessity of experience even for Platonic recollection (which A. explicitly rejected: De Trin., XII, 15, n. 24), but it is in no way justified if the ideas are infused into us by God ready-made. Here is one text among others that clearly highlights the activity of the intellect together with its dependence on divine illumination: "I have traversed all those fields and have striven to distinguish and evaluate, according to their worth, the individual things, some I received by way of the senses as messengers and questioned them, others I felt as one with myself and distinguished and enumerated the messengers themselves, and, once among the vast riches of memory, some things I examined, others I stored away, others I brought to light: I myself, I say, in the very act of doing this, that is, my energy with which I did this, not even it was you, because you are the light that remains, to which I asked light to know whether those things were, what they were, of what account they were to be held; and I listened to its teachings and its commands" (Confess., X, 40, n. 65, trans. O. Tescari, ed. cit., p. 416).

e) It is to be believed, therefore, that the true understanding of the mode of Augustinian illumination results from the reasons by which its existence is demonstrated. The less one adds to it, the more certain one is of grasping the thought of the great Doctor. Now the proofs of illumination oblige us only to admit a connection between the human intellect and the divine. But what more intimate connection can be conceived than that of participation, by which the created intellect receives all its being and all its potentialities, and at the same time has nothing that is not a reflection of the first Light? If one gives to the words all the ontological sense that belongs to them, one has the illumination that A. teaches, when one conceives the intellect itself as the light kindled in us by subsistent Truth, not only once, at the beginning of existence, but continually sustained in being and moved in its activity. Thus our intellect, an imperfect but real image of the supreme Intellect; a force derived and deriving right now from God's cognitive power; an expression in the human mode of the ineffable Truth, is capable of knowing things, which are themselves lower degrees of the same reality. The human mind, therefore, placed by the senses in contact with the sensible world, forms in itself, by virtue of its ontological dependence on the divine ideas, its concepts with which it knows and judges. This is the doctrine of A. The Peripatetic theory of abstraction adds little to it, unless one imagines it in the manner of material extractions, such as that of gold from gold-bearing earths. (C. Boyer, Essais sur la doctrine de s. A., chaps. 5-6).

Thus is explained, for our Doctor, the knowledge of the first notions and of the general principles of reason, which then enter into all other knowledge. It is the knowledge of the transcendental ideas: being, unity, goodness, beauty, which is furnished to all men by nature. The conquest of universals, that is, of those determinate concepts, equally realized in all individuals of a certain species and constitutive of the various sciences, requires investigations and observations in the world of experience. True it is that the species and even individuals have their ideas in God, but those ideas, as such, do not of themselves, that is, by nature, impress their reflection on the human intellect. We do not see everything in the eternal reasons. Let us look at scientists: "Have they perhaps been able to see in the eternal reasons themselves or to deduce from these how many are the species of animals, what the individual seeds are, whence they spring, what is the process they follow in their development, what the numbers are in their conception, in their birth, in their age, in their death, what are the motions that regulate their appetites in desiring things according to their nature, and what the contrary motions for fleeing them? Have they not sought all this, not in the reasons of immutable wisdom, but through the unfolding of history in space and time, or have they believed in what was written or experienced by others?" (De Trin., IV, 16, n. 21; cf. trans. Montanari, I, Florence 1930, p. 252; cf. De Gen. ad litt., V, 12, 16, etc.).

The doctrine of illumination invites us to pray to God in the search for truth. If God is our teacher, if our knowledge always presupposes his actual influence, our prayer will ensure that this influence is not limited to the communication of light naturally granted to all, but becomes more precise and determinate. The true way of studying is the one that appears in the Confessions: prayer continually accompanies reflection.

3. Aesthetics

Aesthetics always stands in dependence on the doctrine of knowledge. Beauty is one of the perfections by which A. ascends to the first principle, which for him is properly beautiful. In this he departs from Plotinus, who places the beautiful in second place, below the One. But the divine hypostases are equal, according to Christian doctrine, and it cannot be that an attribute belongs to one and not to the others. The consequences are that the degrees of being are the degrees of beauty. Every being has its beauty as it has its being, but it is not perceived by us unless it has a certain perfection and unless we are prepared to grasp it. A. defines the beauty of bodies: "the fitness of the parts together with a certain sweetness of color" (Epist. 3, n. 4). Higher is intelligible beauty or moral beauty: beautiful was the Christ scourged and dying (In ps. 44, n. 3). Beauty is therefore an objective reality: "If I ask (the artist): are these works beautiful because they please, or do they please because they are beautiful, he will answer me without hesitation: it is because they are beautiful that they please!". The beautiful can also be found in the low regions of sin, but it is always a voice that speaks to us of Him who made it.

Art consists in producing the beautiful. In the mind of the artist, under the influence of the divine ideas, which is properly illumination, an ideal is formed, and this ideal directs the execution of the artistic work. On the one hand, whoever contemplates the work of art is led to reproduce in his own mind the artist's ideal and to raise himself up to the perfect degree of beauty, which is God. On the other hand, the artist, in love with the ideal that shines in his own mind, and conscious of not being the ultimate source of the beauty that shines therein, is invited to ascend to the source and experiences something of the contentment and the purification of the mystic (cf. De vera relig., 20. 32. 30; De civit. Dei, VIII, 6). The mystic cannot love anything other than the Beauty that has been revealed to him: « Late have I loved you, O Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you... » (Confess., X, 37, n. 38).

4. The soul

a) How it knows. — The fact of illumination makes us penetrate more deeply into the nature of the soul. In the eternal reasons, that is, under the influence of the divine ideas, we know souls in general and principally as they ought to be. But the individual soul is known otherwise, namely through immediate experience. This point deserves attention. In whatever act of its own, the soul is always present to itself and has consciousness of itself; yet it never apprehends itself alone, but always together with some sensible representation. If it knows itself immediately and through itself, it follows that by nature it possesses the science of itself, just as the man who, on being asked and without searching, is capable of demonstrating a difficult theorem possesses the science of mathematics. This is the habitual knowledge that the soul has of itself. Actual knowledge must be of the same nature, adding only actualization: that is, it is accomplished by the mere presence of the soul to itself and therefore by intuition. Thus is explained the certainty that the soul has of being, of thinking, of understanding, of willing: while it thinks and wills, it intuits from within its acts and their principle, which is itself. It also thus knows the permanence of its substantial identity. The most fundamental notions in philosophy — of being, of substance, of causality, of truth, of freedom, of obligation — are in that way assured and legitimized. (Cf. A. Gardeil, La structure de l'âme et l'expérience mystique, Paris 1927; C. Boyer, L'image de la Trinité, synthèse de la pensée aug., in Gregorianum, 26 [1945], pp. 173-99; 333-52).

b) Immortality of the soul. — Sure of perceiving the truth and of finding itself therefore especially joined to the supreme and eternal Truth, the human soul cannot cease to be: it is immortal. In his early writings, A. sets out the Platonic arguments with the modifications required by his faith: the act of seeing the truth, being a communication from on high, does not have its cause in material things, but only the ground of its exercise: it is therefore an immaterial act, whose principle, the intellectual soul, which acts without the body, can be without the body and does not disappear through the body's dissolution. Nor will it be destroyed by the action of God, which maintains everything according to the nature of each thing (De immortalitate animae, 6, n. 11). Another argument, more personal, indeed contrary to the Neoplatonic doctrines, was furnished to A. later by reflection on the conditions of happiness. For happiness, which is the natural aspiration of men, would not be possible if the soul were not assured of its immortality; a happiness that must perish is no longer happiness. Nature wills it without end « and it will not be fully and perfectly blessed, except by having what it wills » (De civit. Dei, IV, 25; cf. De Trin., XV, 8, n. 11). Reason therefore demonstrates the immortality of the soul. A., however, observes that outside the believers, only a very few philosophers of great genius have seen it. « But if there is faith, which those have to whom Jesus gave the power to become sons of God, there is no longer any question » (ibid., n. 12).

c) Origin of the soul. — More difficult for the bishop of Hippo was the question of the origin of the soul. Adam's soul was certainly created: Eve's soul was also created, though with less certainty. But the soul of their descendants? Two possibilities existed: either each soul is created by God at the instant in which it comes into its body, or the soul of the children is generated in some spiritual way by the soul of the parents. It seems to A., who discussed the matter with St. Jerome, that Holy Scripture does not define the question. He knows the difficulties of a spiritual generation of souls and gives to understand that his reason would prefer the origin of souls by creation. There exists, however, in favor of the generation of souls an argument that impresses him greatly and that suffices to maintain the balance between the two hypotheses: with generation, the transmission of original sin is easily explained; if instead each soul is created by God, how can Adam's sin be transmitted to it? Let us not therefore claim to know what we do not know, and let us leave the two possibilities open: such was, to the end, A.'s position on this problem (cf. Epp. 143; 166; 188; 190; De anima et eius origine).

VI. ORIGINAL SIN

1. The primitive state of humanity

A. describes the primitive state as in Gen.: Adam and Eve were created by God in a state of happiness; they enjoyed interior peace, having the sensitive faculties subject to the will, and the will subject to God; they possessed a very profound knowledge, infused by God; they dwelt in a pleasant garden, without pain or error, at peace even with the universe, the animals being subject to them. God Himself, under a sensible form, visited them. They were not to die (De civit. Dei, XIV, 10-26; De Gen. ad litt., XI, 1). In them shone the image of God together with charity (De corrept. et gratia, 11, n. 32; De Gen. ad litt., VI, 24).

This harmonious state was destroyed by Adam's sin of pride and disobedience (Sermo, ed. in Miscell. Agostin., I, Rome 1930, p. 564); a sin more grave than we can imagine, as the punishment that chastised it demonstrates (Contra Iulian., VI, 12, n. 23).

2. Transmission of Adam's sin: original sin

Adam ruined not only himself, but transmitted to his posterity death, the rebellion of the lower faculties, and also a true sin. Against Pelagius, A. affirms the existence of original sin as a doctrine of the Church: "I did not invent original sin, which the Catholic faith has held since ancient times; but you who deny it are without doubt a new heretic" (De nuptiis et concupiscentia, II, 12, n. 25). And again: "In the fact of these two men, of whom one has sold us to the kingdom of sin and the other has freed us from sins... in the fact of these two men consists properly the Christian faith" (De peccato originali, 24, n. 28). He protests that he held that faith in original sin from the very beginning of his conversion (Contra Iulian., VI, 12, n. 39). Against Pelagius, who denied the transmission of a state of sin, A. set forth various texts of Scripture and principally the doctrine of St. Paul in the Letter to the Romans (5, 12-20); he also invoked the testimony of earlier Catholic writers and the already ancient practice of baptizing children "in remissionem peccatorum."

The state of sin was a state of condemnation, of damnation: Adam's posterity are therefore a "damned mass" (Enchir., 27). Children who die without baptism are damned. At one time, A. hesitated, seeking for them a lot that was neither a reward nor a punishment (De lib. arb., III, 23), but later he believed that they undergo a punishment which is, however, "most mild" (ibid., 93; Contra Iulian., V, 11, n. 44), so that he did not dare to say whether it would be better for them not to exist. Later Doctors have mitigated this sentence of the Bishop of Hippo and are today agreed in not admitting any positive punishment in that child, whom they place in an intermediate place, Limbo.

3. Nature

In what does the state of original sin consist? It is not simply concupiscence, that is, the tendency of the lower faculties to disobey reason, since this remains even after the disappearance of sin; it remains "actu," it ceases "reatu" (cf. Contra Iulian., II, 3, n. 5); but it is concupiscence taken together with that which makes it culpable, that is, with the absence of that rectitude of will, of that charity, in which God had created Adam and Eve. It is the sign and in some way the complement of the disorder caused in human nature by the sin of the first parents; just as the absence of concupiscence was in Adam the sign and completion of his justice. Once charity has returned through the effect of baptism, concupiscence is no longer harmful, provided that consent is not given to it (De peccatorum meritis, II, 4). The very privation of original justice would not be original sin, if it had not been caused by the free will of the first man (Contra Iulian., VI, 10).

4. The consequences of original sin

If it had remained without redemption, humanity would have been in great misery. To understand it according to A.'s thought, one must see on the one hand how he describes this misery against the denials of Pelagius and on the other how his conception is distinguished from the later one of the Protestants and the Jansenists.

Against Pelagius, the holy Doctor teaches that the present state is a state of decadence, since death, sorrow, concupiscence and the difficulty of doing good do not belong to the first institution made by God. Without the grace of Christ, not only would man not escape the universal condemnation, but he would not avoid personal sins and would be miserably lost.

The argument consists in showing the opposition that exists between our present state (although sustained by grace) and the state of Adam before sin, as it is described by Genesis. The evidence of the punishment then confirms the transmission of the guilt.

Straining with all his strength against the heresy of Pelagius, A. insists on the gravity of the effects of original sin. He remains, however, far from the interpretations of the Protestants, of Baius and of Jansenius, who understand the gifts bestowed on Adam (immortality, integrity, sanctifying grace) as due to innocent human nature, so that the sons of Adam are incapable of any good action; indeed, according to Luther, they sin continually and cannot here below receive an intrinsic justice. Now the primitive gifts are for A. graces (Contra Iulian., IV, 16, n. 82), not only gratuitously granted, like the goods of creation, but not owed, so that innocent nature could, with every justice and fitness on God's part, have been created without them. This the holy Doctor said with regard to concupiscence and ignorance, in the De libero arbitrio, and he repeated it up to his last works. (Wrongly Jansenius denied it, De statu naturae purae, III, 19; H. Noris, Vindiciae august., 3, n. 2, and recently Y. de Montcheuil, in Recherches de sc. relig., 23 (1933), p. 197 ff. Cf. C. Boyer, Essais sur la doctrine de saint Augustin, Paris 1932, pp. 237-71).

To justify God for causing Adam's descendants to be born in ignorance and concupiscence (ignorantia et difficultas), even on the hypothesis of the creation of individual souls, he maintains that such a condition is not unbecoming to an innocent soul. For it, it would be neither a penalty nor a punishment, but only a warning to progress with the help of the Creator ("non erit nascentibus animis ignorantia et difficultas supplicium peccati, sed proficiendi admonitio et perfectionis exordium"; De lib. arb., III, 20, n. 56). That this is the sense, A. confirms in his last works, saying that he demonstrated against the Manicheans that, even if ignorance and difficulty did not come from original sin, but were the primitive state of man, this would have nothing unjust about it: "even so God should not be accused, but praised" (Retract., I, 9, n. 6; cf. De dono perseverantiae, 11, n. 27). Against the Pelagians, on the contrary, one must defend the true cause of the present misery, which is original sin. We believe, however, that not a few texts suggest that A., while maintaining the possibility of concupiscence in an innocent nature, thought, if not with absolute certainty, at least with very great probability, that without original sin one cannot account for the many evils that oppress the sons of Adam (see especially the Opus imperfectum contra Iulianum).

The thought of St. A. is clearly that God must be praised whatever the degree of good that He grants to one of His creatures. It would therefore be to interpret him inexactly to claim that, according to him, the highest degree of good possible for man, the vision of the divine essence, cannot be denied to him without his fault. It is true that the holy Doctor insists on the principle that grace perfects nature, and that he considers man, already insofar as he is man, a rational being, as the image of God, whose ultimate perfection is the immediate possession of the Supreme Good (De Trin., XIV, 17, nos. 11 and 23: «tunc perfecta erit similitudo, quando perfecta erit visio»; cf. XV, 11; Retract., 24, no. 2). It is a question, however, of a degree of perfection that is a grace. The good will or charity given to Adam is the same as that which was given to the angels, in whom God was at once «condens naturam et largiens gratiam» (De civit. Dei, XII, 9, no. 2). God is by nature invisible; he makes himself seen when he wills and as he wills (Epist. 147, 15, no. 37); the knowledge of God per speciem will never be had except through grace and by those whom God will have made worthy («secundum Dei assumentis gratiam», De gen. ad litt., XII, 26, no. 54). A. is no less explicit than the Greek Fathers in considering our state as one of adoption, not of nature: only the Word is the natural Son of God; the others are so by his grace (In ps. 49, no. 2; In Ioan. tract., 1, no. 14).

The passage of the image from the state of nature to the perfection of heavenly happiness is entirely the work of grace (De Gen. ad litt., I, 5, nos. 9-10; De Trin., XV, 18, no. 14). In short: «posse habere caritatem, naturae est hominum..., habere caritatem, gratiae est fidelium» (De praedest. sanctor., 5). A. therefore knew the reality of the supernatural, that is, charity and the intuitive vision of God, and he expressed its gratuitous character, as of an elevation and an adoption that might not have been. On this fundamental point, A. is opposed to the Protestants, the Baians and the Jansenists.

VII. THE INCARNATION AND THE REDEMPTION

1. The incarnate Word

"If man had not been lost, the Son of Man would not have come" (Sermo 174, 2). For A. the reason for the incarnation was the reparation of Adam's sin. Jesus Christ is the Incarnate Word; He is God and Man; whoever refuses to accept Him as man is a Manichaean; whoever does not believe Him to be God is a facile one (Sermo, 92, n. 3).

Christ is the Word made man: humanity is therefore joined to him in the unity of the person: the same Son of God is son of man, born of the Holy Spirit and of the Virgin Mary (Enchir., nn. 10 and 11). Therefore, Christ is equal to his Father (Sermo 183, n. 5); he is the Son (In Ioan. 7, n. 4); others can have the Word within themselves; he alone is the Word (De agone christiano, 20, n. 22). This is the doctrine that was proclaimed shortly afterward at the Council of Ephesus. The Augustinian texts clearly exclude Harnack's interpretation, which sought to see in St. A. the doctrine of Photinus and of Nestorius (Dogmengeschichte, III, 4, Tübingen 1909, p. 126 ff.). Of the single person of the Word one can predicate both human and divine attributes: the Son of God was crucified; the Son of man descended from the heavens (Contra serm. Arianorum, 8 ff.).

The two natures remain intact: the human did not change into the divine, nor the divine into the human (De Trin., I, 7, n. 14). The human nature was assumed in the very instant of its creation (Contra serm. Arianor., 8); for it this was a grace not preceded by any merit and a model of our predestination (De corrept. et gratia, 11, n. 30). The Word is man because in the unity of his person the rational soul and the flesh came to the Word (Enchir., 35).

The human nature of Christ is complete: in particular, Apollinarianism, which does not admit a human intellect in Christ, is refuted (De agone christiano, 19, n. 21). Christ took upon himself our infirmities, he was able to suffer and die, but he was without sin, without concupiscence, without ignorance, without error. The at least proximate reason why Christ was without any sin, whether original or actual, and also without concupiscence, is that he was conceived by the Holy Spirit and by the Virgin Mary (Contra Iulian., IV, 89; VI, 35). Christ was ignorant of nothing (In Ioan. 103, n. 2; In ps. 34, n. 2). When he showed admiration, this was merely an expression of praise (Epist. 162, n. 7; Contra Faustum, XXII, 13; De div. quaest., LXXXIII, q. 80): now, admiration does not belong to the divinity, but to the human soul. When the Son of man says that he does not know the day of judgment, he means to signify to us that it is not his mission to reveal it: "nescire dicitur quod nescire nos facit" (Enarrat. 2ᵃ in ps. 36, n. 1; In ps., 6, n. 1).

Knowing everything, he cannot err. The cause of such perfect knowledge is found in the vision of the divine essence, with which the human intellect of Christ was favored. While Lazarus, who represents us, was not released from the shroud until after coming out of the tomb, Christ left his folded in the tomb: this signifies that we do not have the vision facie ad faciem in this life, whereas Christ already had it (De div. quaest., LXXXIII, q. 65). The difficulties raised by Fr. Dubarle, in Epidem. Lovan., 18 [1941], pp. 5-25, against the common interpretation do not seem effective. If some passage of Scripture seems to deny Christ the intuitive vision, it must be understood not of Christ himself, but of the members of Christ (In ps., 15; cf. L. Richard, in Recherches de science relig., 12 [1922], pp. 85-87).

2. The Redeemer

St. A. indicates several ways by which the Redemption was brought about. Already the mere fact of the incarnation, the union of the Word with human nature, causes the actions of Christ to save humanity (Sermo 192, n. 1; De civit. Dei, IX, 15). The principal action, however, was the sacrifice of Christ, made so perfect by obeying the Father and by dying for the sins of men (De Trin., XIII, 10-16; Enchir., 41; Sermo 19, nn. 2-3). Thus God was appeased and our guilt was dissolved (De civit. Dei, X, 3). This reconciliation, however, was also brought about in such a way as to ransom us from the devil, to whom sin had given us over into slavery. By bringing it about that Christ was killed by the Jews, despite the fact that he was without sin, the devil overstepped the power that Adam's sin had placed in his hands, and for this injustice he was justly deprived of his power over all men (De Trin. XIII, 12-13; cf. J. Rivière, Le dogme de la Rédemption chez saint Augustin, Paris 1928).

The price of the redemption, however, was not paid to him; the redeeming sacrifice was offered to the Father (In ps. 64, n. 6). The wondrous humility of the Word, which in that sacrifice had its extreme exercise, taught and procured for men the remedy for their pride and the way of salvation (Confess., VII, 18-19; De Trin., VIII, 5, n. 7; G. Morin, Sermones s. Augustini editi ab A. Mai, n. 22, in Miscell. Agost., I, Rome 1930, pp. 314 ff.). Thus many are the aspects of the redeeming action; the principal one is that of the propitiatory sacrifice (Enchir., 108).

Christ is therefore our mediator with the Father: he is not so insofar as he is God, being equal to him, but insofar as he is man and insofar as he offers his sacrifice (In ps. 103, n. 8).

A. often insists on the Pauline doctrine of the mystical body of Christ, which is the Church. In the incarnation itself, Christ becomes our head; the acts of his life, his death, his resurrection are acts of the head that merit similar acts of his members (Sermo 45, n. 5; Sermo 114, 4, n. 5). This doctrine illustrates the precept of charity toward one's neighbor: to offend the members is to offend the head (In epist. Ioan., tr. 10, 5, n. 8; cf. S. Tromp, Corpus Christi quod est Ecclesia, Rome 1937, p. 202). Thus many texts of Scripture can be referred to Christ, as A. does principally in the Enarrationes in psalmos, because what would not be fitting to him in himself can be understood of him in his members.

3. The Virgin Mary

The Son of God is the son of Mary: Mary is therefore the mother of God (De Trin., VIII, 5, n. 7: "omnipotentem peperit", Sermo 191, 3, n. 4). She remained always a virgin, even in childbirth (Sermo 191, ibid.; Epist. 137, n. 8; Sermo 186, n. 1). A. several times contrasts Mary's role in the Redemption with that of Eve in the fall (De agone christiano, 22, n. 24; Sermo 51, n. 3; Sermo 191, 2, n. 3). While all the saints have come to commit some venial sin, the Virgin Mary is excepted, of whom it is to be thought that, "propter honorem Domini", she triumphed completely over sin by grace (De nat. et gratia, 36, n. 42). In this passage, the reference is to actual sin. As for exemption from original sin, that is, the immaculate conception of Mary, two texts seem to suppose and affirm it. In one it is said that if Christ had had original sin in his conception, he would have also committed actual sins (Contra Iulian., V, 15, n. 57): whence it follows that Mary, since she did not sin actually, could never have had original guilt. In the other, Julian, who accused Catholics of handing the Virgin over to the devil with the doctrine of original sin, is answered: "We do not ascribe Mary to the devil on account of the condition of her birth, but because this condition is dissolved by the grace of rebirth" (Opus imperf., IV, 121. Cf. E. Portalié, s.v. in DThC, I, col. 2375; Fr. Sal. Mueller, in Miscell. Agost., II, Rome 1931, p. 885 ff., on which see Gregorianum, 14 [1933], pp. 93-96; of the contrary opinion is dom Capelle, in Recherches de théol. médiév., 4 [1932], pp. 361-370). The answer would be null if it were granted that the Madonna had original sin for an instant; and it is to be noted how in the context there is talk of a preserving grace. It is true that A. says more than once that only Christ, among men, was without sin, and without the flesh of sin, but this can stand, admitting that Mary needed to be freed, by a preserving and redeeming grace, from the sin into which she would have had to fall as all the children of Adam do by natural conception.

VIII. GRACE

1. Necessity of grace

The fruit of the redemption is the grace of Christ. The merit of Christ procures for us grace, that is, a moral assistance from God, to which we have no right and which enables us to act rightly for our salvation. The necessity of this grace in the present state of humanity is defended by St. A. against Pelagius and against the Semi-Pelagians. Pelagius, denying original sin, said that man, by his own powers, can do all the good that is prescribed to him and save himself; he can avoid every sin, both grave and light. God can give his grace, but this must not directly touch the will, lest it suppress freedom, and, in any case, it is not necessary. The Semi-Pelagians admitted the necessity of grace for salvation, but they wanted it to be possible without it to begin in the ways of good, principally to adhere to the faith. Against these doctrines, A. taught the necessity of grace in order to be just, and also for the beginning of faith.

A certain evolution is found in this regard in his writings. Until the year 396, he thought that we are capable of arriving at faith and good will without grace (Expositio ep. ad Romanos, propp. 61-62; De div. quaest. LXXXIII, q. 68; Retract., I, 23, nn. 2, 4). But writing in 397 the De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum, he understood from the words of St. Paul "Quid habes quod non accepisti?" (I Cor. 4, 7) that even the beginning of salvation comes from grace. From that time on, one can say, as he himself declared, that he changed nothing essential in his doctrine of grace. Indeed Pelagius felt himself struck already in the Confessions.

To overcome sin, grace is necessary: "Without the help of God, we cannot overcome the temptations of this life" (In ps. 89, n. 4). The letter of the precept kills if the life-giving Spirit does not accompany it (Epist. 188, 11-12). Since Pelagius opposed to him the examples of virtue of the Roman heroes, A. denied to these, supposedly without grace, true justice for these reasons: Christ would have died in vain, if without him one could have salvation (Contra Iulian., IV, 3, n. 17); those pagans, worshippers of false gods, did not observe justice toward the true God (De civit. Dei, V, 12); indeed we see that often they triumphed over one base vice by the force of another, the love of vainglory (ibid., 13). However, he does not deny that the virtues of the pagans are to some extent good and worthy of a reward (ibid., 15); the saying that the virtues of the pagans are "splendida vitia" is not A.'s; they are gifts of God (Epist. 144, n. 2) and those who possess them are "good in their own way" (De civit. Dei, V, 12). Moreover, it is particularly to be noted that with the Pelagians the question was of the complete and total virtue that constitutes the just man: A. concedes that grace is not necessary for some good act and allows that St. Paul's saying (Rom. 2, 14) that the Gentiles observe naturally the precepts of the law be understood in this sense (although he prefers another) (De spiritu et littera, 28, n. 48).

Against the Semi-Pelagians, whom he treats with great delicacy, as brothers deceived on a difficult point, he proves with Holy Scripture that no one comes to the faith unless he is inwardly drawn by the Father (De praedest. sanctor., 8, n. 15; In Ioan., tr. 80, n. 2). Against the same he teaches that the perseverance of the just until death, that is, death in a state of grace, is a special grace of God. Now, this doctrine raises the difficult problems of the relations of freedom and grace, and of predestination.

2. Grace and freedom

a) Coexistence. - A. had defended freedom against the Manicheans in his De libero arbitrio and to the end he upheld its doctrine (Retract., I, 9). Even in his last years, while the anti-Pelagian struggle obliged him to proclaim the efficacy of grace, he wrote on purpose the opuscule De gratia et libero arbitrio, to maintain the coexistence of the one and the other. Two cases are to be considered, since the question is always of the state of man after original sin: the freedom of man who is supposed to be deprived of grace and who comes infallibly to sin, and the freedom of man under grace which leads him infallibly to good. In the first case, A. affirms the responsibility of the sinner: that each one "impute it to himself when he sins" (De gratia et lib. arb., 2, n. 4; De corrept. et gratia, 5, n. 7). The infirmity in which he finds himself, and with which he can perform some good act, does not take away his freedom. In the second case, he observes that the help of grace to free will presupposes that this exists (Epist. 157, 2, n. 10).

God precedes us with his grace, but "to consent to God's call or to dissent from it is proper to the will" (De spiritu et littera, 34, n. 60). When he says that grace moves us "insuperabiliter", the sense is that it gives us so much strength that we can avoid being overcome by any temptation (De corrept. et gratia, 12, n. 38; cf. J. Mausbach, Die Ethik des h. A., 2nd ed., Freiburg im Br. 1929, p. 35). Grace and freedom are two realities of which one must not deny the one in order to favor the other.

It is necessary, however, to examine what difference A. places between the grace of Adam and ours and whether it is opposed to freedom in the present state. Before original sin, man was given an assistance "sine quo non", such that without it one could not obtain that for which it was given, and with it one could obtain or not obtain according to the choice of freedom. After sin, in place of that assistance, another is given, "auxilium quo", with which one infallibly obtains that for which it is given, but it is not given to all. Some, like the Jansenists, identified the "auxilium sine quo non" with sufficient grace, and the "auxilium quo" with efficacious grace, so that, with the "auxilium sine quo non" suppressed, there would no longer be sufficient grace. But this interpretation is erroneous. Everything in the context shows that those assistances are not given for a single act, but that they are assistances for perseverance. Adam could not have persevered in grace without the "auxilium sine quo non" that was given to him and with which perseverance was easy for him; yet, even having this assistance, he sinned; if he had had the "auxilium quo" he would not have sinned. Now, the sons of Adam, amid so many temptations of this life, if they had only the assistance "sine quo non", would end by doing evil. But the same could remain a long time in good, performing good acts with only the assistance "sine quo non". They do not have the same gift that Adam had; but they receive assistances appropriate to their condition; it is manifest in the Augustinian texts that grace, even that of justification, is given to many who do not have the "auxilium quo" (cf. De corrept. et gratia, 9, n. 20) and is not owed to their merits; and that gift is procured by means of the "auxilium quo" (De corrept. et gratia, 6-13).

b) Explanation. - St. A. therefore at all times maintained the freedom of man in the present state of his nature. As for the manner in which he conceived the harmony of grace and free will, it is not understood in the same sense by everyone. It seems, however, and thus holds the Augustinian school, that he did not admit the metaphysical principle of the necessity of a physical predetermination for the performance of a good act. Speaking of the angels at the moment of their trial, he admits as possible that all were helped equally by God: only after the choice did the good receive as a reward a better assistance, that is, perpetual happiness. (This results from a comparison of no. 32 of the De corrept. et gratia with chap. 9 of book XII of the De civitate Dei. Cf. J. Schmucker, Die Gnade des Urstandes und die Gnade der auserwählten in Augustins De corr. et grat., Metten 1940; G. Vranken, Der göttliche Konkurs z. freien Willensakt des Menschen beim hl. Aug., Rome 1943).

The most explicit explanation is found in the Divers. quaest. ad Simplicianum: those to whom God shows mercy, He calls "in the manner that He knows to be fitting so that they do not reject His call" (I, q. 2, no. 13). God, knowing what would happen in the various possible cases (cf. De corrept. et gratia, 8, no. 19), and willing that man perform a determinate good act, acts internally upon his mind, precisely in that manner to which He knows consent will be given. It is a congruism similar to that which would later be Suarez's. The internal action consists in enlightening the intellect and in arousing the love of the good in the will. God draws to Himself by grace and yet leaves each one to choose as he pleases: and there are few who can understand this (Contra litt. Petiliani, II, 84, no. 186; cf. De praedest. sanctor., 8, no. 13; De spiritu et litt., 3, no. 5).

3. Predestination

Predestination is "the foreknowledge and the preparation of the grace of God, by which all those who are saved are most certainly saved" (De dono perseverantiae, no. 35). It belongs properly to the state that followed original sin, in which freedom needs special protection in order to persevere in good; predestination is, in short, the preparation of the gift of perseverance. A. demonstrates by Scripture and tradition the existence of a divine election to which the elect will owe the good use of their freedom (De corrept. et gratia, 7; Enchir., 98-99; Epist. ad Sixtum, 8; De dono perseverantiae, 8; De praedestinatione sanctor., 18-19). It seems that he did not consider the question as the theologians of the seventeenth century did, that is, disputing whether the first will of God predestining is to give grace or to give glory, but that he thought the one and the other as a whole (cf. Petavius, De praedestinatione, IX, 14, no. 16). Election is not caused by any merit of the elect, but it does not exclude the consideration of the use that he will make of his freedom; indeed the congruism of which we have just spoken supposes that election is enlightened by the knowledge of the acts that each will would choose to perform in the various possible cases. Predestination is not contrary, either by its nature or in St. A., to the free will of his elect, and it is not contrary to the granting made to them of sufficient helps to save themselves. Christ died for all men: A. affirms it and makes it an argument to prove that all have original sin (Contra Iulian., VI, 4, no. 8; cf. Opus imperf., II, 175; In ps. 95, no. 15). For Judas too the divine blood was shed (In ps. 68, no. 11). Among the many explanations that A. gives of the passage of St. Paul: "God wills that all men be saved" (I Tim. 2, 4), there is also this one, never retracted, that He wills it conditionally upon their free acceptance (De spiritu et littera, 33, no. 58); the other interpretations, which restrict God's salvific will to some only, understand the absolute divine will, which is always fulfilled (cf. De praedest. sanct., 8, no. 14; De corrept. et gratia, 14, nos. 44-45; 15, no. 47; Enchir. 103, no. 27; Contra Iulian., IV, 8, nos. 42-44). In short, the mystery of predestination lies in this, that God, who could, if He willed, absolutely save all, does not save all, but only the elect, and permits the others to be lost freely. Why He chooses this one and not that one, we do not know, but we know that the counsels of God are just.

The question has been raised whether the grace whose necessity A. defended against Pelagius was actual grace, given for each act, or sanctifying grace, a perfection permanently inherent in the soul. In truth, it was both the one and the other; it was a question of the assistance that heals, that justifies us, that makes us adopted sons, that enlightens us, that draws us, and the accent was placed only, according to the case, now on its actual aspect, now on its habitual one.

IX. THE CHURCH

1. Constitution

In order to save men and procure for them the grace merited by his death, Christ left an institution, the Church. A.'s doctrine on the Church was prepared by the writings of St. Cyprian and St. Optatus, and holds a very important place in his theology. The occasion for developing it came from the Donatist schism, against which it was necessary to maintain the notion and the rights of the Catholic Church. The Church is the kingdom of Christ, she is the bride of Christ, she is the mystical body of Christ, she is the mother of Christians (Epist. 34, n. 3; Sermo 22, n. 10). It is necessary to belong to the true Church. Schismatics can have the faith and the sacraments, but salvation is found only in the Catholic Church (Sermo ad Caesariensis ecclesiae plebem, n. 6). Outside the Church one can have the grace of God, as the centurion Cornelius had it, through the immediate and invisible action of God, but under the condition of good faith, that is, of not despising the visible intermediary, «nam contemptor eius invisibiliter sanctificari nullo modo potest» (Quaest. in Hept., III, q. 84). In the Church all the baptized are subject to the authority of the hierarchy, but so too are the catechumens, though not, however, schismatics and heretics. Sinners remain in the Church: «nunc malos habet permixtos» (Post collationem ad Donat., n. 11; De civit. Dei, XVIII, 48); yet there are dead members, and they belong to her only in an imperfect way (De bapt., IV, 2, n. 4).

The hierarchy, in which authority resides, is essential to the Church. It is for the pastors to direct souls, to preach and to administer the sacraments (Contra litt. Petil., III, 55, n. 67). Bishops stand above simple priests (Haer. 53). The Church is infallible because Christ assists her (In ps. 56, n. 1; Epist. 190, n. 22). When a universal council has settled a doctrinal point, every doubt must cease. A. appeals to a universal council, held before his birth (perhaps that of Nicaea in 325), to defend the validity of the baptism of heretics (De bapt., I, 7, n. 9; 9, n. 14). The plenary councils of all Africa have great authority, but one can correct another (ibid., II, 3, n. 4). The Church of Rome enjoys a privileged authority and an indisputable primacy (Epist. 143, 3, n. 7; De utilit. cred., 17, n. 35). The gates of hell cannot prevail against her (Ps. contra partem Donati). A. recognizes the doctrinal primacy of the bishop of Rome. When the Apostolic See approved the councils held in Africa against the Pelagians, he said: «causa finita est. Utinam aliquando finiatur error» (Sermo 130).

Outside the Church stand not only unbelievers, but also heretics and schismatics, although validly baptized. On the other hand, the concept of the Church as extended to all times, from creation onward, and as including even the angels, is frequent in the holy Doctor. She is composed of all rational creatures that were, or are, or will be sanctified and subjected to Christ as head (De catechiz. rud., 19; cf. G. B. Franzelin, De Ecclesia Christi, Rome 1887, pp. 8-21).

In the Church, bishops and presbyters have a true governing power, as well as a sacerdotal one: they have the responsibility to command, and the faithful owe them obedience (Sermo 146, n. 1). The excommunication that was given to penitents and that separated them from the table of the Lord did not separate them from the Church, in which they were cared for for the remission of their sins (Post collat., 20, n. 28).

2. Recourse to the State

Some, however, being incurable, are expelled from the Church (Epist. 157, 3, n. 22). At all times, A. admitted the right of the Church to call upon the power of the State for help against heretics and schismatics; but in an earlier period he believed it better that no use be made of it (Contra epist. Parmen., I, 8-14). Since, however, the emperor Honorius decided upon radical measures against the Donatists, which manifestly had good results, A. changed his attitude and became the defender of the legitimacy of the repression exercised by the State. Impunity encouraged the Donatists, who resorted to every excess against the Catholics. Experience then showed that the conversions obtained through the application of the laws were sincere and lasting: the laws were an occasion, for some, to accomplish what they already desired, and for others to reflect better on the state of the controversy. Even the less convinced were, after a short time, satisfied at having recovered unity. The laws, in short, were a help rather than an obstacle to freedom (Contra litt. Petil., II, 184). As for the obstinate, who by their deeds are a danger to the State, the State has the right to act against them. A., however, asks the civil magistrates to show indulgence and not to condemn them to death (Epist. 100, n. 1).

X. THE SACRAMENTS

For A., the word sacramentum means a sacred sign (De civit. Dei, X, 5) and can be said of many things, for example of the sign of the cross (In ps. 141, n. 9). A distinction must be made between those of the Old Testament, which announced the future coming of Christ and of the redemption, and those of the New, which signify Him as already come and give salvation (In ps. 73, n. 2). Jesus Christ did not abolish the ancient sacraments, but transformed them (Adversus Iudaeos, 3). The sacraments must have some resemblance to the thing represented (Epist. 98, n. 9) and have as their purpose to unite the religious society (Epist. 54, n. 1). They were instituted to confirm the hope of the future goods of eternal life (Enchir., 66). In the New Testament the sacraments are fewer in number, and among them some have a special importance and efficacy. Four are named together: Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, Penance (De bapt., V, 28), to which the Ordination of priests may certainly be added. Their function is to communicate charity, the Holy Spirit (In ps. 103, enarr. 1, n. 9).

1. Baptism

Baptism totally blots out original sin and also, in adults, all personal sins (De peccat. merit. et remis., II, 28, n. 48). It gives, even to children, the grace that is an insertion into the body of Christ (ibid., I, 9, n. 10).

It is administered with the invocation of the Most Holy Trinity (Sermo 149, n. 10). It had its preparation in many events of the Old Testament and in the baptism of the Baptist (De peccato orig., 32; De bapt. V, 10, n. 12). It is absolutely necessary, but if it cannot be received, even the desire for it suffices, in the case of martyrdom or of conversion of the heart (De bapt., IV, 21, nn. 28-29). It can be administered to a child as soon as it is born (Epist. 166, 7, n. 23), as also to a catechumen deprived of the senses (De coning. adult., I, 26, n. 33).

The schism of the Donatists forced A. to insist on the conditions of validity and efficacy of Baptism (as also of Order). He teaches that the sacrament administered by a sinful or even heretical minister is valid and must not be repeated. One must consider what is given (the sacrament) and not who gives it (De bapt., IV, 10, n. 16); or, if one wishes to look at who gives it, one must understand that it is Christ Himself who baptizes: the priest who administers the sacrament is only the visible instrument of Christ (Contr. litt. Petil., III, 49, n. 59). The baptized person receives the character or distinctive mark of his Head and keeps it even if he becomes a deserter (Contra litt. Petil., II, 108, n. 274). It is true that St. Cyprian, so admired by A., had taught the contrary, namely the necessity of rebaptizing heretics, but if he had erred in a question not yet sufficiently clarified in his time, he had not rebelled against the Church and had not caused schism (Epist. 93, 10, nn. 35-45).

It remains, however, that the baptism of heretics, received with a heretical heart, although valid, does not work the remission of sin. Only in the Catholic Church do the sacraments give the Holy Spirit, because whoever does not will unity cannot have charity (De bapt., VII, 3, n. 5).

2. Confirmation

Confirmation is a sacrament distinct from Baptism (Contra litt. Petil., II, 104, n. 239). In its administration there is the imposition of hands (De bapt. III, 16, n. 21) and there is also the anointing with chrism, which in the Old Testament anointed only kings and priests, but now anoints all Christians (Enarr. II in ps. 26, n. 2). It is not entirely clear what the essential rite is (v. J. Coppens, L'imposition des mains, Wetteren-Paris 1925, pp. 297-303); but it seems to consist in the anointing, as Sermon 227 indicates, where the oil is named, to complete the work of Baptism. In any case, to the matter is added an invocation (De Trin., XV, 26, n. 46).

3. The Eucharist

a) The real presence. — Regarding the eucharistic mystery, A.'s thought is rich in doctrine, but quite complex, and has often been misunderstood by Protestants and Modernists. He speaks in many texts of the presence of Christ and of the sacrifice of the altar. For a correct interpretation of the passages on the presence, it is necessary to adhere to three realities that he distinguishes: there is what is seen and what, before the Consecration, was bread and wine: this visible sign is the sacramentum corporis Christi; there is what is not seen, namely the true body and the true blood of Christ: « hoc agnoscite in pane quod pependit in cruce; hoc in calice quod manavit ex latere » (G. Morin, S. Augustini sermones, in Miscellanea Agost., I, Rome 1930; id., Guelferb. Serm. VII, ibid., p. 462; M. Denis, Serm. III, n. 2, ibid., p. 19), without, however, its being possible to divide the flesh of Christ into parts by eating, as the Capernaites foolishly understood (In ps. 98, n. 9); there is finally the effect of the sacrament, namely union with the mystical body of Christ. This union through faith and charity is the true eating for which the sacrament was instituted (« Crede et manducasti », In Ioan., tr. 25, n. 12; tr. 26, n. 13 ff.): without this, although one receives the flesh of Christ (Sermo 71, n. 17), one does not properly eat the body of Christ (Sermo 131, n. 1; De civit. Dei, XXI, 25, n. 3).

A. was led to these clarifications in order to combat crude conceptions and especially those of the Manicheans, who saw in foods the true body of Christ, imprisoned in them (Contra Faustum, XX, 11). The true and nourishing eating, the res sacramenti, being union with the mystical body of Christ, the reception of the physical body of Christ is ordered to this union and signifies it (it is res et sacramentum); the elements chosen for the mystery, namely bread and wine, signify the same effect, the union of the mystical body, that is the Church, that is ourselves in the Church (Sermo 272). Thus A., far from denying the traditional doctrine of the real presence, so explicit in the earlier Fathers, explained it in a theology already quite developed (cf. Th. Camelot, Réalisme et symbolisme dans la doctrine eucharistique de s. A., in Rev. de science phil. et théol., 31 [1947], pp. 394-410).

b) The Eucharist is also a sacrifice. — The sacrifice is, according to A., the visible sign of the invisible sacrifice, which is the oblation that the creature makes of itself to the Creator (De civit. Dei, X, 5-6). The sacrifices of the Old Testament announced that of the Cross and that of the altar in which the body of Christ is offered to God and distributed to the participants (De civit. Dei, XVII, 20, n. 2). The Christian supper presupposes the immolation of Calvary (Sermo 112). The same Christ who immolated Himself on the cross is immolated every day for the benefit of the faithful, because on the altar the sacrifice once offered in a bloody manner is renewed sacramentally through the oblation of the body and blood of Christ (Epist. 98, n. 9; Contra Faustum, XX, 18. 21; cf. M. de la Taille, Mysterium fidei, 3rd ed., Paris 1931, p. 243). Together with the oblation of the Head, the oblation of the members is made, since the fruit of the sacrifice is precisely the union of the members with the mystical Body. The Church, therefore, in her sacrifice offers herself through Christ (De civit. Dei, X, 20). The body of Christ is made through a consecration (Contra Faustum, XX, 13) or sanctification (Sermo 227), that is through a mystical prayer (De Trin., II, 4, n. 10).

4. Penance

The Church has received from its Founder the power to forgive sins committed after Baptism. It is the so-called power of the "keys," administered by priests (Enchir., 65; Sermo 392; Epist. 228, n. 8). The imposition of hands, as practiced in the Church to absolve sinners, is listed twice among the sacramental rites (In ps. 146, n. 8; De bapt., V, 20, n. 28). A. distinguishes three kinds of penance for three corresponding categories of sins: there is public penance, which is necessary in cases of public scandal for faults known by some civil or ecclesiastical judgment (Sermo de symbolo; Sermo 352, n. 2). Some sought it spontaneously, and indeed the number of penitents was considerable at Hippo. Then there is penance for venial sins, which A. calls daily, and which consists principally in prayers, as in reciting: "dimitte nobis debita nostra" (Epist. 265, ch. 8). Between these two penances there is "correptio," performed privately by the minister of the Church for the remission of certain grave sins, for which, for some reason, public penance is not imposed (De fide et operibus, 26, n. 48; De div. quaest. 83, q. 26): rightly, one sees in this practice an important step toward the subsequent modes of administering the sacrament (cf. K. Adam, Die kirchliche Sündenvergebung nach d. hl. A., Paderborn 1917; P. Galtier, L'Eglise et la rémission des péchés, Paris 1932. Of the contrary opinion is B. Poschmann, cf. Textus selecti de paenitentia, Bonn 1934, p. 75, note 2, who however admits in A. a "semi-public" penance, ibid., p. 27). The sins remitted with "correptio" are secret sins or sins that have become too habitual for public penance to be easily accepted (Sermo 82, 8, n. 11; De div. quaest., LXXXIII, q. 26; In Ioan., tr. 3, 2, n. 9). There are then cases in which circumstances do not permit public penance (Epistola 228, 8; Epist. 151, 9). The concepts that direct the doctrine and practice of A. are: the power of the Church, the importance of the intensity rather than the duration of penance (Enchir., 65), the merciful purpose of the penitential institution in the mind of Christ and of the Church (De Fide et op., 3, n. 4); the pastoral concern not to ask of souls more than they can bear (Epist. 95, 3).

5. Extreme Unction

In the Speculum de Scriptura sacra, an anthology of passages from Sacred Scripture directing Christian action, the text of the Epistle of St. James is transcribed, in which this sacrament is proclaimed. No other trace of it exists in A.

6. Order

A., in the controversy with the Donatists, speaks of priestly ordination in the same way as of Baptism. It is valid even if conferred by a sinner or by a heretic (Contra epist. Parmen., 13, n. 28). When a Donatist cleric returned to the Catholic Church, he kept his own Order (Epistola 185, 11, n. 46). Like Baptism, Ordination too imprints a character, a "signaculum" (De bono coniugali, 18, n. 21).

7. Matrimony

St. A. clearly assigns as the primary end of Matrimony the procreation and education of children (De coniugis adulter., II, 12; Sermo 51, 13, n. 22). Three are the principal goods of marriage: proles, fides (conjugal fidelity), sacramentum (indissolubility). Secondary ends are the mutual love of the spouses (De bono coniug., 3, n. 3; Sermo 51, 13, n. 21) and the remedy against concupiscence.

There can be true marriage with perpetual continence. The Virgin Mary and St. Joseph were true spouses (De consensu evang., II, 1, nn. 2-3). The intention of the spouses in the act of generation must be the procreation of children; to the extent that one acts out of concupiscence, sin enters in, which however is venial because of the goods of marriage (Contra Iulian. op. imp., IV, 29).

Since the marital union is the symbol of the union of Christ with the Church, there follows from it indissolubility, which only the death of one of the spouses can break (De nupt. et conc., I, 10, n. 11), and there also follows from it the holiness of marriage (De bono coniug., 18, n. 21; 24, n. 30), which, if seen in the whole of A.'s doctrine on the virtue of the symbols of the New Testament (Contra Faustum, XIX, 13), includes sacramental grace.

BBL.: K. Adam, Die Eucharistielehre des hl. Aug., Habsburg 1908; id., Die kirchliche Sündenwergebung nach dem hl. Aug., Paderborn 1917; Ed. Hockes, La conception augustineenne du sacrement dans le Tr. 8e in Ioan., in Rech. de science relig., 9 (1919), pp. 1-29; P. Batifol, Études d'histoire et de théol. positive, II, Paris 1920, pp. 422-33; B. Poschmann, Kirchenbusse u. correptio secreta beim Aug., Braunsberg 1923; C. Spallanzani, La nozione di sacramento in s. A., in Scuola Catt., (1927, 1), pp. 175-88, 258-268; G. Lecordier, La doctrine de l'Eucharistie chez s. A., Paris 1930; A. Pereira, La doctrine du mariage selon s. A., Paris 1930; P. Galtier, L'Église et la rémission des péchés aux premiers siècles, Paris 1932; P. Bertocchi, Il simbolismo ecclesiologico dell'Eucaristia in s. A., Bergamo 1937; P. Galtier, Comment on écarte la pénitence privée, in Gregorianum, 21 (1940), pp. 183-202; A. Reuter, S. Augustini doctrina de bonis matrimonii, Rome 1942; N. Ladomersky, S. A. docteur du mariage chrétien, Rome 1942.

XI. THE CHRISTIAN LIFE

1. The principles of morality

St. Augustine's speculative doctrine is entirely ordered to practice. The most general principles of human action, like the other principles of reason, are given to us by nature, that is, by the spontaneous activity of the intellect under divine illumination. That there is good and evil, that evil is to be avoided, that higher things are to be preferred to lower things — these and similar axioms every man sees in the eternal reasons (De libero arb., II, 10). Together with this fundamental knowledge, a natural impulse drives all men toward the end of moral action, and that is the desire for happiness (Sermo 150, 3, n. 4; Confess., X, 21). In every act of our willing there is implicit the will to be blessed; that is, to attain our supreme good. Thus the notions of duty and obligation are in the human mind as a transcription of that eternal law which resides in the mind of God and which is "the divine disposition that commands respect for the natural order and forbids disturbing it" (Contra Faustum, XXII, 27).

What is the supreme good, the possession of which will be our happiness? Augustine excludes the 288 answers that Varro had said were possible to this question, because they stopped at an immanent end, whereas man is not sufficient unto himself, but must seek happiness in God, as he must receive the truth from Him. In this the Platonists were right, who "having known God, found where the cause that created the universe is, the light that makes truth perceived, and the source from which happiness is drunk" (De civit. Dei, VIII, 10, n. 2). In fact, nothing finite fully satisfies us (De beata vita, 2, n. 11); experience proves it: "Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you" (Confess., I, 1, n. 1). To know and love God — in this consists our moral perfection and our happiness. Reason can only approve these indications of experience: since finite goods are nothing but a reflection of the creative perfection, it is in the order of things that beyond and through imitations we tend toward the divine exemplar and the source of all reality (In evang. Ioan., tr. 26, n. 5; De Trin., VIII, 7). It should be noted that Augustine, when he speaks of the possession of God, understands it as it is promised to us by the Christian faith, that is, as the intuition of the divine essence itself; but he knows that such a perfection of happiness is a grace and consequently a supernatural end (De Gen. ad litt., XII, 26, n. 54). We ought to have praised the Creator even if He had been less generous toward us.

If the end of ethical intention is identified with happiness, it does not follow that morality is a superior egoism. It is precisely the disinterested love of God, by which one enjoys God without referring Him to oneself, that is our happiness (In Ioan. evang., tr. 123, n. 5). Love of self is referred to the love of God. Every other good, and our own good, must be loved insofar as it serves the love of the Supreme Good: this is the principle according to which the acts of the rational creature are judged. St. Augustine remains faithful to this principle, and this explains his way of considering the virtues of the pagans (v. above) or of speaking of the fear of punishments: this is useful insofar as it deters from doing evil, but to be moral (timor castus) it must include a beginning of love of the good (In epist. Ioan., tr. 9, nn. 2-8). Augustine made use of Neo-Platonic ideas on purification, that is, on detachment from sensible pleasures, to describe the stages of moral progress: the phantasms of earthly things blind the intellect and hinder the will (Confess., X, 30-43; De Trin., XII, 11, n. 16).

In Augustine's writings there is no study of the problems of the doubting conscience. Once, however, having raised the question whether the food presented had been offered to idols, he answers: in ignorance (which here is a doubt), one may eat this food without scruple (Epist. 47, n. 6).

2. Special precepts

a) Individual. - Augustine permits no lie whatsoever, that is, speaking against one's own mind with the intention of deceiving (Enchir., 22). Since evil must not be done to procure a good, a useful lie remains a sin, although less grave (De mendacio, 14, n. 25). The intrinsic malice of lying consists in the abuse one makes of another's trust (cf. M. Ledrus, De mendacio, in Periodica, 32 [1943], pp. 5-58, 123-71; 33 [1944], pp. 5-60; 34 [1945] pp. 157-209).

Augustine, like some other Fathers, does not approve of killing solely to defend one's own life (Epist. 47, n. 5): but it seems that this is a matter of simple counsel. Respect for the right of property is inculcated by nature itself (Confess., II, 4, 6); however, society has the faculty to moderate it according to the requirements of the common good (In Ioan. evang., tr. 6, n. 25). Slavery is an evil, originating from sin and a consequence of wars. The slave, if he cannot obtain his freedom, should be faithful, and the master should be full of charity toward the slave, his brother (De civit. Dei, XIX, 15-16; Sermo 58, 2, n. 2).

b) Social. — Civil society is an institution founded on the rational nature of man and strengthened by community of blood (De civit. Dei, XIX, 12, n. 2; XIX, 21). The bond of human societies is love; their end is peace (ibid., 13, n. 1). Order results from the observance of laws, which must always be inspired by the eternal Law, but can and must vary according to the differences of times (De lib. arb., I, 6, n. 15; Confess., III, 7, n. 13). One must obey the civil powers, since power comes from God (Expositio epist. ad Rom., 72). Love of country is a duty; if your parents commanded you something against your country, do not listen to them; and do not listen to your country if it commanded you against God (Sermo 62, 5, n. 8).

The best service to one's country is to lead it to the true worship of God and to make it a part of the City of God. The best regime is the one that best suits the concrete needs of the people, but the more reasonable the people, the greater the part that must be given to them in the government of the City (De lib. arb., I, 6, n. 14). Augustine paints a fine portrait of the good prince (De civit. Dei, V, 24), but warns that both the succession of empires and the internal order of states are directed by Providence, according to its mysterious decrees (De civit. Dei, V, 19).

If there were no injustice, there would be no war, there would be no need for great empires, but humanity would be composed of many small states, happy in their peaceful neighborhood. Remove justice and states are nothing more than a band of brigands (ibid., IV, 15). War can therefore be necessary. It is an evil that must be mitigated by the observance of justice toward the enemy and by the aim of securing peace (Epist. 189, n. 6). Blessed are the peacemakers who by their word kill war (Epist. 229, n. 2).

c) The two cities. — Beneath the visible divisions, there exists another invisible and deeper one among men: that of the two cities. The city of God unites all those who love God to the point of despising themselves, and the earthly city is composed of those who love themselves to the point of despising God (De civit. Dei, XIV, 28). The birth and progress of the city of God constitute the design of Providence through the centuries, while its end in the harmony of paradise will be without end. Here below the two cities are mingled and certain goods are common to both. The Church has the task of promoting the city of God. The State must do nothing that hinders it; indeed, in the interest of the temporal common good, it must favor the virtues that belong to the city of God, and in the interest of the eternal good of its subjects it must help them to be part of that same city (Epist. 155, 3).

3. The spiritual life

A. resolved upon the perfect Christian life through the spiritual crisis that culminated in his garden in Milan (Confess., VIII, 12). In his works he describes the nature and the stages of that life.

a) Nature. — Perfection consists in the love of God; its degrees are those of charity (De natura et gratia, 70, n. 84). Charity comprises the love of God and the love of neighbor; the latter tends to procure for others the love of God (In Ioan., tr. 64, n. 2); it is founded on the doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ and is a source of joy (In epist. Ioan., tr. 10, n. 7). "Dilige, et quod vis fac" (ibid., tr. 7, n. 8): all the virtues are commanded by charity (G. Morin, op. cit.; M. Denis, Serm. XIX, n. 3, in Miscell. Agostin., I, Rome 1930, p. 100 ff.).

The Doctor of grace insists that, for the acquisition of charity, prayer is necessary (Sermo 61, 4, n. 4). The desire for God is prayer; whoever has it habitually prays always (In ps. 146, n. 2). The path that leads to charity is humility, in which A. sees the principal lesson of the incarnate Word and the measure of spiritual progress (In ps. 31, n. 18; Epist. 118, n. 22). These virtues require the struggle against lower inclinations (De agone christiano, II, n. 12). To this end it greatly helps to follow the evangelical counsels of voluntary poverty, obedience, virginity or continence (De sancta virginitate, 6-8; Confess., XIII, n. 24; Sermones 355, 356).

Jesus Christ gives both the example of the virtues and the strength to practice them. As God, he is the end; as man, he is the way (Sermo 123, n. 3).

b) The stages of the spiritual life are seven and, if we leave aside the youthful book De quantitate animae (nn. 73-76), they are marked by the gifts of the Holy Spirit or by the beatitudes (Sermo 347; De sermone Domini, I, n. 10). The first three are a remote preparation for contemplation, the fourth and fifth are a proximate preparation for it; the sixth and seventh are contemplative stages.

c) Nature of contemplation. — In St. A. the intellectual aspect of contemplation is emphasized, and this is why in some texts it is not easy to distinguish whether what is involved is a philosophical argument or the exercise of contemplation. The latter is a certain vision of divine things. In its highest degree, that is, at its term, it is the immediate vision of the divine essence: this degree, however, is not granted in this life, except by exceptional privilege, as to Moses and to St. Paul (De Gen. ad litt., XII, nn. 55-56; Epist. 147, 13, nn. 31-32). Here below even the mystic sees God only in an image (De Trin., XV, 8, n. 14; De consensu evang., I, 5, n. 8).

The immediate preparation for contemplation is an ascent that can be made in various ways; as at Ostia, when with his mother Monica A. rose from the lower creatures to the higher ones and surpassed them all in order to reach the perfect Wisdom participated from them (cf. P. Henry, La vision d'Ostie, Paris 1928; C. Boyer, Essais sur la doctrine de s. A., Paris 1932, ch. 10); or again, by traversing the five senses and passing from their object to the analogous sweetness of the Supreme Good (Confess., X, 6, n. 8; 27, n. 38; 40, n. 65); or yet by considering the human soul in the act of loving God, which is the most similar image of the Most Holy Trinity that we can know (De Trin., XIV, 12, n. 15; Sermo 52, nn. 16-21; In ps. 41, n. 9).

The summit or term of contemplation is described as very brief; it is a flash, a contact, an impulse of the heart (Confess., IX, 10, n. 25; X, 9, n. 16; XI, 9, n. 11; De Trin., XII, 14, n. 23). It is a simple act of affective knowledge that delights
the soul more than any pleasure (Sermo 179, 6, n. 6);
it has, however, very varying intensities. There is no doubt that
A. experienced it quite often and sometimes in a
very high degree: "And sometimes you make me enter into a feeling as unusual as can be, into I know not what
sweetness which, if it becomes perfect in me, I do not know
what it will be, that it will certainly not be this life"
(Confess., X, 40, n. 65, trans. O. Tescari, 4th ed., Turin 1946, pp. 416-17).

To describe contemplation, A. often employs expressions that are found in Plotinus. The reason
for this is that the philosophical elevation toward God is analogous
to the mystical elevation. The light, however, is different, and it would
be a grave error to reduce the doctrine and the experiences of
A. to the Neoplatonic ones, or even to think that A.
expressed his thoughts in a form that did not suit
them.

The habit of contemplation does not hinder
action useful to one's neighbors. On the contrary, it is necessary to the apostle both for himself
and for the fruitfulness of
his word (De civit. Dei, XIX, 19; Contra Faustum,
XXII, 58).

d) The rule of St. A. - The holy Doctor recommended
to others the form of spiritual life that he had chosen. The Regula ad servos Dei is an adaptation
of the prescriptions given by the Saint to the nuns of Hippo
(this at least is the opinion that today seems to prevail), and is contained in Epist. 211. (Cf. dom
C. Lambot, La Règle de s. A. et de s. Césaire, in Rev.
bénéd., 41 [1929], p. 333; on the contrary, C. Vega, La
regla de s. A., El Escorial 1933). Father P. Mandonnet
(Saint Dominique. L'Idée, l'Homme et l'Oeuvre, augmented with notes and critical studies by M. H. Vicaire
and R. Ladner, II: Perspectives, Paris 1937, pp. 104-
162) maintains instead that the rule of St. A. was
constituted by the disciplina monasterii (388) and by a commentary (391), later annexed
to ep. 211 (423). These prescriptions reveal the same spirit of moderation
that would be that of St. Benedict and insist on mutual
charity, poverty, humanity, chastity.

XII. ESCHATOLOGY

A. repudiated millenarianism, which he had once admitted (De civit. Dei, XX, 7, n. 1), and explained the reign of Christ on earth by the forty days that passed between the resurrection and the ascension.

A. does not dare to decide whether the men living on earth at the moment of the universal judgment will have to die, but he inclines to the affirmative because of original sin (De octo Dulc. quaest., q. 3, nn. 3-6).

Immediately after death, the souls of the just enter into a happy rest, while the souls of the damned suffer in hell (In Ioan., tr. 49, n. 10; De Gen. ad litt., XII, 32, n. 60). In what, then, does the happiness of the just souls consist? On the one hand, they are admitted to the intuitive vision of the divine essence — in a special way the souls of the martyrs, but also all just souls (In ps. 119, n. 6; De civit. Dei, XX, 9, n. 2); on the other hand, their happiness after the resurrection of the bodies will be much greater, because they will no longer be held back, as they are in the meantime, in their impulse toward contemplation by their natural tendency toward the body. Then their vision will be like that of the angels, but now their happiness, however great it may be, is only a small part of what it will be at the end of time. Similarly, the punishment of the damned will be greater when they receive their body (Sermo 280, 5; In Ioan. tr. 49, 10; De Gen. ad litt., XII, 35). In the Retractationes, however (I, 14, n. 2), A. speaks with greater reserve about the difference of happiness before and after the last judgment; in any case, this lessening on his part of the glory before the resurrection probably explains why he attributed the vision of God to the just of the Old Testament before the death of Christ and interpreted the descent of Jesus' soul into the underworld as a descent into hell (Epistola 164, n. 1), without however excluding another opinion (De civit. Dei, XX, 15).

A. clearly teaches the existence of purgatory (De civit. Dei, XXI, 13, 16; In ps. 37, n. 35) and the usefulness of prayers for the dead (Confess., IX, 13, n. 35): these, however, help only those who have deserved it. The purifying punishments are most severe (In ps. 37, n. 3), but the holy Doctor remains uncertain whether there is the punishment of fire (Enchir., 69). Purgatory will not exist after the universal judgment, during which some purifying punishment may still take place (De civit. Dei, XXI, 16). A. confesses his ignorance of the time of the final judgment (Epist. 197, nn. 1-2). In the resurrection, the bodies will be formed from their former elements, but perhaps arranged otherwise (Enchir., 89). The beauty of the bodies of the just will be marvelous. Those bodies will have the gifts of agility and incorruptibility (Sermo 244, 6-8).

The existence of hell is affirmed by Jesus Christ (De civit. Dei, XXI, 17-27) and it is eternal (Enchir., 67-69; De civit. Dei, XXI). The error of the "merciful" is contrary to the most manifest texts (De octo Dulc. quaest., q. 1, n. 14). The Church does not pray for the damned; if someone, while maintaining the eternity of the punishment, asserts nevertheless that at certain times it is mitigated, A., without adhering to this opinion, does not condemn it (De civit. Dei, XXI, 24, n. 3). In hell there is a real fire, but its punitive intensity is not the same for all (ibid., 16).

Heaven is the homeland of the just, angels and men. All form the one heavenly City, in the same and most happy vision of God. In this vision the perfection of the virtues is accomplished together with the perfection of the image of God in the human soul. The mind sees the divine essence, the Truth in itself. To some A. has seemed to confuse the intelligible with the sensible, when he grants that the blessed see God also with the eyes of the body: but the meaning of this assertion is that the intellect, in the object apprehended by the senses, knows how to see, beyond the sensible, God revealed by the sensible, just as here below we know how to grasp life by looking with our eyes at a living body (De civit. Dei, XXII, 29, n. 6). The endless action of the blessed will be the vision, the love, the praise of God: "Videbimus, amabimus, laudabimus" (Sermo 254, 6, n. 8).

IV. PEDAGOGY

The pedagogy of St. A. follows and derives as a corollary from his doctrine on the ultimate end and on illumination. Since man's supreme interest and his duty consist in attaining the possession of God, everything in education must tend to order man toward the love of God and the use of the means provided by Providence for that purpose; and since the knowledge of truth is accomplished within the soul by virtue of the illumination that God, the principal and in some sense sole Teacher, diffuses there, the educator must ensure that the disciple finds within himself, by docilely consulting the truth, what is taught to him.

When A. directs all education toward the salvation of the soul and the conquest of the Supreme Good, he does nothing other than order into a systematic theory what Christianity taught in a more popular way and succeeded in translating into practice. It is true that some pagan philosopher, from Plato to Marcus Aurelius, had said noble words about the end of man, but in a manner too vague and esoteric to exert an influence on the course of culture, which had remained at a superficiality that the decadence toward the end of the 4th century had greatly worsened. Rhetoric appeared as the supreme art (cf. H.-I. Marrou, S. A. et la fin de la culture antique, Paris 1938, pp. 166-75). In the letter of the bishop of Hippo to the young student Dioscorus, who had questioned him on various literary subjects, there appears the contrast between the culture of the time and that which A. promotes (Epist. 118). The true knowledge to be acquired is that of the Supreme Good; the means are those that the Christian faith teaches. Consequently, the Christian eager for culture must first of all deepen his faith in order to have understanding of it to the extent granted here below and in order to defend it. For this, the study of Sacred Scripture is indispensable. It is not, however, the only one to be pursued: it itself requires knowledge of philosophy, theology, history. Philosophy in turn requires knowledge of the liberal disciplines (De Ordine, II, 5, n. 17). Moreover, the Christian must instruct himself in the sciences that serve the common good of society (De doctrina christiana, II, 42, n. 63; II, 59). Rhetoric too, kept in its place, is to be cultivated; but lessons of eloquence can be found in the Christian writings of St. Paul, of Cyprian, of Ambrose (ibid., IV, 21, n. 50). A. takes care to observe the cadence of the clauses. Nothing is more legitimate than to give to the word all the force and all the clarity that it can have. But one can never sufficiently reproach that teaching which A. had received at Madaura, in which the imagination of the boys was filled with the obscenities of mythology, as if one wished to ennoble bad morals by placing them among the divinities.

The other fine arts can be part of Christian culture and therefore enter into the education of the young, but they must submit to the same rule: for example, the pleasure taken in the singing of psalms must not prevent attention to the words (Confess., X, 3, n. 50). In this way a rational, elevated, solid direction was given to culture, and to the education that makes it acquired.

At the same time, the pupil was admonished to contribute to his own formation through a bold activity. Truth does not come to us from outside, but we must find it ourselves within ourselves, under the light of subsistent Truth. For the perception of the highest truths it is necessary that the soul be well disposed, that it seek the true purely, without concern for vanity and worldly interest, but with perfect and genuine sincerity (Contra Academicos, I, 3; De moribus Ecclesiae, 17). It is natural, indeed, that the effort to learn be accompanied by prayer, that is, by invocation of the interior Master, as we find it in the Confessions.

A. stands at the opposite pole from Rousseau in his appraisal of our natural tendencies; he knows that they are not all good and that original sin has inclined us to evil from infancy. He therefore sees no salvation for man except in an education enlightened by the Catholic faith and sustained by the grace of Christ (cf. Epp. 26. 101. 118).

V. CONCLUSION.

In conclusion, one may say of St. A. what he himself says of the Platonists, namely that he found God and, having found Him, was able to explain the being of things, the certainty of truth, and the end of human life. He was, however, happier than the Platonists, in that he knew Christ, the Incarnate Word, who showed men the humble path to follow in order to possess God, and merited for them the grace to be able to walk in it. Wholly seized by so great a light, he employed every power of his soul to spread it by word and by pen. He did not compose a systematically ordered Summa, but, writing as occasions arose—treatises and sermons for the faithful, replies to heretics, letters to those who consulted him—he built up a body of Christian doctrine, philosophical and theological, to which for many centuries little was added and which in large part inspired the developments that came afterward.

The Augustinian writings thus had an extraordinary influence. The popes St. Leo the Great, St. Gelasius, and St. Gregory were nourished on them. The Middle Ages, until the introduction of Aristotelianism, is wholly Augustinian. Even the most independent and innovative current of St. Albert the Great and St. Thomas ordinarily seeks agreement with St. A., and it may be said that Thomism, when on points of great importance it corrects Aristotle, relies on Augustinianism. We have seen how A.'s doctrine differs from that of the Protestants, who often appealed to him, yet abandoned him when he too manifestly contradicted them. The Jansenists took him as their sole master, but read him with the mentality of Protestants. On modern thought the action of Augustinian doctrine remains profound. Descartes follows its inspiration on several points. The spiritualist current that recognizes itself in Pascal, Malebranche, Gerdil, Gratry, and Blondel appeals to A. Several themes favored by modern philosophers are Augustinian: self-consciousness, the dynamism of the will, the insufficiency of the finite, and others. Theologians continually have in hand the volumes of the great Doctor. Christian piety is permeated with his ideas and often with his expressions. He remains one of the greatest lights by which Providence illumines the path of the City of God, in the time of its earthly pilgrimage.

Carlo Boyer

ICONOGRAPHY

A. is depicted in the habit and insignia of a bishop and often at his writing desk or with a book in his hand. In the course of the 15th century his individual attributes appear; a child trying to gather the sea into a little pit alludes to the most famous episode of the legend; a wounded heart, pierced by two arrows or flaming, which, from the Baroque era onward, was the Saint's preferred emblem, symbolizes his love of God and neighbor, recalling a passage from the Confessions. The oldest effigy of St. A. is the fresco in the ancient Lateran library (late 6th century); beyond the Alps his images begin in the 12th century with the fresco of Nonnberg (Salzburg) and with miniatures such as those of the Stuttgart Passional. While in German art, which offers two magnificent examples in the late Gothic period with the altar wing by Michael Pacher in Munich and with the statue by Nikolaus von Hagenau in the Isenheim altar, depictions of the saint remain relatively scarce, Italian art abounds in them instead: Botticelli (Florence, Ognissanti), Justus of Ghent (Paris, Louvre), Niccolò Pizzolo (Padua, Eremitani) painted him alone; gathered with other saints in devotion, Fra Angelico, Cariani, Cima da Conegliano, Perugino, Pinturicchio; as founder of his order, Bartolomeo Vivarini (Venice, SS. Giovanni e Paolo), Andrea del Sarto (Florence, Pitti) and Carletto Caliari (Vienna, Museum; Venice, Accad.). The most extensive cyclic representations of the legend are found in the reliefs of the area of St. A. in S. Pietro in Ciel d'oro in Pavia (1361) and in the frescoes of Benozzo Gozzoli at S. Gimignano (1363-65, church of the Augustinians); among the individual scenes there is particularly the vision of the mysterious child which, from the flying sheets of the 15th century up to the paintings of Rubens, Guercino and Murillo, attracts the artistic imagination. - See Plates XXXIX-XLI.

Kurt Rathe