A Book Review
By Darold H. Morgan
Saint Augustine
By Garry Wills
Penguin Group, New York, 1999
This is a brief, exceptionally well written, excellently researched volume by a Pulitzer Prize winning author in the well-known Penguin Lives series of biographies. The author`s purpose is realized as Augustine, one of history`s seminal thinkers, comes to life. As this happens through the skill of research and writing, one readily concludes that his life from the fourth and fifth centuries of the Christian era has much to say to today`s milieu.
Augustine`s life is set historically at a time when the fabled Roman Empire was crumbling and collapsing while a maturing Christianity was dramatically expanding. His lasting contributions through his writing and preaching took place in a provincial area of North Africa, while serving as a Catholic bishop in Hippo. His writings in particular extended his influence far beyond the scope of this ancient parish. His ministry coincided with the sack of Rome in 410 A. D. ,the rise and fall of whole host of heretical movements, and the remarkable expansion of a nascent Catholicism which turned out to be the only stable influence left as the Dark Ages began to settle in on those regions surrounding the Mediterranean Sea.
Wills` approach to the life of Augustine is basically one of chronology, beginning and ending in North Africa with specific attention given to the major spiritual developments which took place in Milan and Rome. His treatment of Augustine and his parents, his early sexual escapades, his dramatic and classic conversion to Christianity while in Italy, his wide-ranging personal friendships and enmities, his ordination to the priesthood and subsequent ministry as a bishop, and his major work as a voluminous author and correspondent constitutes the balance of the book. It is readable, quotable, practical, helpful as one realizes again that in Augustine one has one of the true geniuses of the Christian movement.
One does not get far into his life until the issue of sexual ethics not only comes to the foreground, but it stays there. One cannot help but wonder if the current and almost frenzied preoccupation with Freudianism has not spilled over in this attempt to understand the life of this early Christian leader. His lack of paternal influence, the dominance of his mother, Monnica, his potential (but never proved) homosexuality, his taking of a concubine (in an age
when this was not discouraged), his fathering of a child with her, his ending of this relationship when he was baptized-all of this is documented in this volume and presented in a way that encourages the reader to draw his own conclusions about these complex issues. It surely points to the fact that situational ethics is not just a twentieth century phenomenon.
Another ethical challenge comes from a problem that dogged Augustine at every turn of his long life … how to deal with doctrinal heresy which often was related to a long list of his close friends. These were competent and persuasive individuals who were aggressive in promoting these teachings. Manichaeism, the Donatists (in particular), Arianism, Pelagianism were streams of influence during Augustine`s long bishopric at Hippo in North Africa. He personally came out of the powerful Manichaeism movement to a firm Christian position. Anyone of these systems of theology, left unchecked and unchallenged, would have polluted Christianity fatally. Perhaps the single most important influence in checking these heresies (despite close personal friendships in these philosophies) was Augustine. Through brilliant powers of reasoning, his extended correspondence, his widely quoted sermons, and above all, his books, several of which have become classics, he confronted these half-truths, often projected by adherents of remarkable rhetorical skills, and ultimately won the battle.
Augustine`s role as one of Christianity`s earlier and most able apologist serves somewhat as a role model to succeeding generations. No age needs that more than these current times. Not only did he possess the insights of original theological skills, related to biblical truths, but he had a unique personal disposition and maturity which enabled him to triumph in these visceral debates which seemingly were interminable in his day. In our times with heresies almost beyond number and with a compliance mentality of accepting almost anything that smacks of a peculiar sincerity, the need for apologists of the Christian faith with an Augustinian mindset is beyond debate.
Another key ethical issue emerging from those distant times is found in the on-going struggle to define Christian citizenship. Augustine was Roman in culture and citizenship. But Rome was all but destroyed in his lifetime, and a few years after his death the barbarians completed their destructive work and the Roman Empire was no more. It shifted to Constantinople with enormous complications theologically between the East and West.
Augustine defended the emerging papal power in the Roman Church. The political vacuum in Rome somewhat naturally fed the political arm of Catholicism, and it moved gradually into ecclesiastical politics. Augustine was the formative theologian in this evolutionary transfer. His classic volume, `The City of God", written during these years of one of history`s greatest international disasters, proved ultimately to be the framework of this political extension of a Roman Catholicism. Seemingly the only stability in those increasingly unstable times was the church. With Augustine`s reasoning of the bishops constituting the church, it did not take too long a period of time until the unchanging core of Catholic authority became dominant. It may be that the times shaped this concept of citizenship, an approach that ultimately resulted in a thousand years of Catholic political authority, ending only when the Protestant Reformation began. In essence, however, the Roman Curia still holds this Augustinian theory until this very hour.
The ethical issues of church and state are still under attack in contemporary society with some of the same underlying factors which were apparent in Augustine`s time. The historic and respected American concept of the separation of church and state is being undermined by the arguments of radically changing culture which seemingly justify authoritarian areas-a movement which strangely resembles the expansion of religious powers into those peculiar vacuums of the fifth century. They knew nothing about "a free church in a free state , but the lessons of history should counter the siren song of Augustine`s theology which is amazingly alive and well today.
Wills` book is "a good read". Augustine is a force to be reckoned with, not only from a theological perspective, but from the purview of an extraordinarily interesting life at a major turning point in history..
