Augustine on Christianity and Philosophy in City of God

         I offer here a brief reflection on the view Augustine presents in City of God of the value of philosophy. 

In Book VIII, Augustine discusses his view of some philosophers. In VIII.1, he says that wisdom is identical with God, and that therefore the true philosopher is the lover of God. Yet, not all people who call themselves philosophers are such, for they are not necessarily lovers of wisdom. He admits that we will have to choose some with whom we may discuss “natural theology” on a reasonable level. He particularly thinks Platonists provide such reasonable discussion, for they acknowledge God as one who transcends any kind of soul, being the maker not only of this visible world, but also of every soul. Their God gives blessedness to the rational soul, by which he means humanity, allowing humanity a share in the divine “unchangeable and immaterial light.” 

In VIII.3, Augustine says that Socrates is the first to turn the whole of philosophy towards the improvement and regulation of morality. He thinks Socrates may have been motivated by the boredom of what philosophy was in his time, namely, an exploration of nature. However, he also admits that the motivation of Socrates may have been to help people face the pollution of their earthly passions in order to prepare them to face the divine sphere. One could cleanse one’s life by accepting a high moral standard. He refers to the remarkable charm and shrewd urbanity with which he examined and exposed “the ignorant stupidity of those who fancied they possessed some knowledge about ethical questions.” Of course, Socrates had applied his entire mental effort toward such questions, even while confessing his ignorance, or concealing his knowledge of the subject. The result was that he aroused enmity and was condemned to death on a trumped-up charge. Later, however, Athens honored him and turned against his two accusers. He left behind him a large body of followers of his philosophy, giving raise to the problem of the Highest Good, the necessary condition of human happiness. He admits that the followers of Socrates tended to take from Socrates whatever fancied them. 

In VIII.4, Augustine opined that Plato overshadowed all the rest. He outdistanced his fellow-students in his remarkable natural gifts. He was devoted to Socrates. He even put into his mouth in almost all his discourses the ideas he himself had learnt from others, or those that he owed to his own perception, tempering them with the charm and moral earnestness of Socrates. For Augustine, the study of philosophy is conducted along two lines. One has its concern with action, and is practical philosophy, dealing with the conduct of life and the establishment of moral standards. The other has its concern with pure thought, and is speculative philosophy, concerned with the theory of causation and the nature of absolute truth. Socrates would be an example of the practical, while Pythagoras of the speculative or contemplative. Plato joined the two together, which brings philosophy to its fullness. For Plato, philosophy had three parts, dealing with the moral, the natural, and the rational. For Aristotle thinks that this last is essential to the others and has a special claim to insight into the truth. Plato defined the end of all action by the process of knowledge and by the intuition of faith. Plato found the illumination of all reasoning processes. Some who follow Plato have a conception of God as to find in God the cause of existence, the principle of reason, and the rule of life, corresponding to the previously mentioned division of natural, rational, and moral philosophy. In VIII.5, he says that Plato, being the greatest of all philosophers, is the one whom theology must carry on a reasonable dialogue. He clearly held Plato in high regard. He has no need of dialoguing with other philosophers, since for Plato wise human beings imitate, know, and love God, teaching that participation in God brings human beings to happiness. In De Ver. Rel, 7, he says that if Platonists could have lived this life over again with Christians, they would have become Christians, with the change of a few words and statements. In this, he is consistent with the sentiments of Clement of Alexandria (Stromata, 1.21), who said that Plato is simply Moses in Attic Greek. He prefers Plato to any reflection the gods of the Greeks and Romans, to Varro, and to any of the cults. Platonists affirm that the true God is the author of the universe, the source of the light of truth, and the one who bestows happiness. Other schools of Greek philosophy could not conceive of anything beyond the fantasies suggested by imagination, circumscribed by the bodily senses. He then stresses that such philosophers had something within themselves that they did not see. They formed a mental picture of what they had seen outside themselves, even when they did not see it any longer, but merely thought of it. When a material thing is thus seen in the mind, it is no longer a material object, but the likeness of such an object. The faculty that perceives this likeness in the mind is neither a material body, nor the likeness of a physical object. The faculty that judges its beauty or ugliness is superior to the image on which it passes judgment. This faculty is the intellect, the rational constituent in the soul of humanity, and that, without any doubt, is not a material object. In VIII.6, he says Platonists recognize that no material object can be God, so they raise their eyes beyond material things and search for God. Nor can anything changeable be God, and therefore look for the immutable and simple. In VIII.7, he affirms that Platonists are superior in rational philosophy, which they call logic. In VIII.8, he discusses the superiority of the teaching of the Platonists regarding moral philosophy or ethics. This involves the question of the highest or greatest good, to which human beings refer all their actions, which they seek for its own sake. This good conveys blessedness. For him, Platonists direct human beings away from themselves as either mind or body, and toward finding their enjoyment in God. For Plato, the highest good is the life in accordance with virtue, as said in Gorgias, 470D; 508B. This was possible only for those who had knowledge of God. Thus, for Plato, to be a philosopher is to love God. The seeker after wisdom will only attain to happiness when he has begun to enjoy God. Of course, many people are miserable because they are in love with things that should not be loved. They become more miserable when they enjoy them. In VIII.11, he speculates that Plato got so close to Christian teaching because in his many journeys he went to Egypt and became acquainted with the books of Moses there. 

In his opening comments in volume 3 of Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hegel notes that philosophy, which began with a heathen home, now finds it home in Christianity. By way of contrast, Jewish and Arabian thinkers are part of philosophy in only an external way, at least from the 500’s to the 1600’s. He credits Neo-platonists with discovering the God is not a mere conception, but is rather “Absolute Spirit,” or Thought that has become active and affecting life in this world. Within Christianity, the basis of philosophy is that in humanity has sprung up the consciousness of the truth, or of spirit in and for itself, and then that humanity requires to participate in this truth. Humanity must “qualify” to have this truth, and be convinced of its possibility. For Hegel, the first point of interest in the Christian religion is that the content of the Idea should be revealed to humanity. In particular, the unity of the divine and human nature should come to consciousness. The Christian life signifies that the culminating point of subjectivity is   that a claim comes to the individual, and the individual becomes worthy of attaining to this unity, through the Spirit of God, that is, through grace, dwelling within. From this notion, Christianity develops the doctrine of reconciliation, that God becomes known as reconciling the divine with the human, that God “particularizes Himself,” and does not remain abstract. The entire world pertains to the particular, but human individuality must know itself in God. Individuals can experience this reconciliation within, thereby actualizing their freedom. They attain to the consciousness of heaven upon eath, the elevation of humanity to God. I think quite significantly, he says that the truth intellectual world lis not a beyond, but the finite is an element in it. Therefore, no division exists between “this side and that.” He distinguishes his teaching from pantheism, for in God humanity is accepted only in its truth, and not in its immediacy, while pantheism leaves the immediate just as it is. Humanity, then, must accomplish this reconciliation within itself in order to attain to the truth of humanity. Of course, in Christianity, that of which humanity is capable is reality in Christ, in whom the divine and human nature are one. For Hegel, then, the fact that the concrete is known to humanity in this perfection as God brings about the entire revolution that has taken place in the history of the world. It becomes a “sure intuition” that in Christ the logoV has become flesh. Humanity is a process of negation of the immediate in order to come to unity with God, thereby renouncing natural will, knowledge, and existence. The Gospel gives its witness to this truth in the sufferings and death of Christ, and then in his resurrection and elevation to the right of the Father. Christ became a perfect human being, endured the lot of all humanity in his death, suffered, sacrificed, gave up his natural existence, and thereby elevated himself. In Christ, this process, this experience of the pain of feeling that God is dead, is the starting point of holiness and of elevation to God. This conversion of the finite as accomplished in Christ is the great leading idea of Christianity.

Yet, if what Christianity says about Christ is truth, the world cannot be left in its immediate naturalness. Obviously, humanity is not by nature what it ought to be, while, in contrast, the animal is by nature what it ought to be. The misfortune in “natural things” is that they get no further than the fleeting sensuous life. Humanity, because of consciousness, is capable of perceiving the Absolute, of placing itself in a relation to it, and having knowledge as an end. The liberation of mind depends on the fact that consciousness does not remain in its natural condition, but becomes spiritual, eternal, and thus that the reconciliation of the finite as this subject with the infinite exists. The universal becomes an end for humanity. Thus, for him, consciousness does not signify remaining in nature. In fact, mind is not natural, “but only that into which it makes itself.” Mind must negate nature, which is evil from the beginning, and humanity must negate this evil nature within itself, in order to attain the implicit “image of God.” 

For Hegel, this idea of Christianity has now become the universal consciousness of the nations. Christianity is the world-religion. History is the process of mind, the revelation of itself from its first superficial, enshrouded consciousness, and the attainment of this standpoint of its free self-consciousness, in order that the absolute command of mind, “Know thyself,” may be fulfilled. For him, the growth of Christianity as he knew it, if we accept the providence and government of God seriously, this fact suggests that Christianity is “so to speak ready made in the mind of God.” For him, this leads to theodicy, a justification of the ways of God in the world. 

Another important aspect of the idea of Christianity is that it has been the intelligible world of philosophy the world of consciousness. He quotes favorably Tertullian that “Even children in our day have a knowledge of God, which the wisest people of antiquity alone attained.” However, this idea comes as an object that adopts an historical form, which one must not make absolute, thereby become “an orthodoxy of straw.”  As an example, he refers to the doctrine of original sin. It assumes that Adam and Eve are the ancestors of humanity, bringing an hereditary disorder in an external way. We then think of these first parents as present in time, and not in thought. What this orthodoxy of straw suggests the importance historically of the first man enticed into eating an apply. Yet, he also partook of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The fundamental element here is that he now knows the distinction between good and evil. Thought is the source of good and evil. However, the healing of the evil is also there. Humanity is evil and transmits evil. The point of the story is that humanity is not by nature what it ought to be before God. Yet, it has the power of becoming explicitly what it is implicitly. The abrogation of this natural aspect of humanity occurs through education. 

What Hegel next wants to propose is to make the principle of Christianity into the principle of the world. The world has now has the task of bringing this absolute Idea into itself, to actualize the Idea in the world, and thereby to reconcile itself to God. This can occur through the dissemination of Christianity throughout the world, so that it resides in the hearts of individual human beings. Next, this can occur as the Christian religion needs to be worked out for thought, that is, philosophy. The Idea in philosophy is God for religion. The Christian principle should correspond with thought. He thinks of himself as in line with the early church thinkers in this regard. He notes that in his time, the system of early Christianity has been pulled to pieces, because people have wished to bring Christianity back to the simple lines of the Word of God as found in the writings of the New Testament. They want to return to the manner of its first appearance. They do so in “eclectic fashion,” having regard to what will fit in with their own notions, so that now only the original Gospel narrative is regarded as forming the basis of Christianity. He notes that modern theology derives its formulas from the words of the Bible, forming the basis of their thinking, so that theology is merely exegetical. From this positive, external, and received positing, modern theology makes it beginning. Yet, the biblical text is of such a nature that it allows full latitude to the will of the interpreter. Therefore, the “other side” is also present, as the Bible itself says, “The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” “Spirit” here means nothing less than the power that dwells within those who apply themselves to the letter in order that they may animate it and apprehend it spiritually. This thought signifies that it is the conceptions that we bring along with us that have in the letter to give efficacy to themselves. He thinks that to expound without the individual spirit, as though the sense were one entirely given, is impossible. If we elucidate we are making clear. It must be clear to me before I can make it clear to you. “We find what we look for, and just because I make it clear to myself, I make my conception, my thought, a factor in it.” If not, it becomes a dead and external thing, not present for me at all. Hegel continues to press his point, suggesting that the text of the Bible cannot contain the principle of Christianity, but only somewhat anticipate it. When we read in John that Jesus will send the Holy Spirit to guide them into all truth, we can see that Christ, and not earthly presence of Jesus of Nazareth, is the goal of the Spirit. When we return to Jesus of Nazareth, we are returning the time before the giving of the Spirit. In that sense, such a return is “unspiritual.” In that unspiritual time, people perceived him as Messiah, teacher, and worker of miracles. Another way of wording this is that the sensuous form must disappear so that the spiritual may come. The fathers of the church were able to grasp this spiritual presence. This does not negate the immense importance of Christ present in Jesus of Nazareth, because it is the union of the most tremendous opposites. Before Pentecost, then, the apostles did not perceive the infinite significance of Christ. They did not yet know that this is the infinite history of God. It was the early fathers of the church who developed this notion. 

Hegel will go on to discuss some of the heresies, such as Gnostic thought and Manichaeism. The fathers of the church also rightly rejected Arians, as they sought to break up the divine idea. 

However, the next stage in developing the idea of Christianity in the world is that the Idea permeates reality, is immanent within reality, not only in believing hearts, but that from the heart a higher life of the world is constituted. In essence, the reconciliation of the God with God is accomplished in the world, and not as a heavenly kingdom that is beyond. This community is the kingdom of God upon earth in the church. The Idea realizes itself in the perfection in the heart, but also into a kingdom of actual consciousness. The Idea present to individual human beings will need to become objective to the individual. The first objectification occurs in the individual and the second is in worship and communion of the church. He says we might imagine a universal community of love, a world of piety and holiness, a world of brotherly kindness, of innocent little lambs and pretty triflings with things spiritual, a divine a republic, a heaven upon earth. However, this type of community will not be on earth. Such an imagination is for heaven. For Hegel, what is fit for this world, another form of objectification, is that in the laws, customs, and constitutions and all that belongs to the actuality of spiritual consciousness should be rational. 

The next phase was the coming of the world-spirit to barbarians, to the Germanic people, overcoming their sensuousness and bringing them to the Idea that Neoplatonists had already perceived. 

What Hegel sees in the history of Christianity is a dim groping that is carried on within the depths of the Idea. Reason makes a hard struggle to force its way out of the imagination and popular conception to the philosophical grasp of the Notion. Reason will not be satisfied with beautiful images. Reason is extravagant because it cannot obtain the mastery of the image, but within this element is merely in the act of warfare with it. 

Hegel will go on to discuss Jewish and Islamic connections to philosophy, but considers their contribution primarily in an external way. He does not have a much higher view of scholastic philosophy, considering it rather monotonous. I do not need to consider such matters here.