ORIGIN St Augustine of Hippo Biography 354-430

St Augustine was an influential Christian theologian from Numidia (modern-day Algeria). Augustine
converted to Christianity in 386 and wrote extensively on Christianity. In particular, he emphasises the
doctrine of original sin, the importance of grace and the Holy Trinity.

Augustine was born in Souk Ahras in the Roman province of Numidia. His family were ethnic north
Africans (the Berbers), but the area was heavily Romanized, and they spoke Latin at home. His father
was a pagan, but his mother was a devout Christian.

His mother had a strong influence on the young Augustine, but to her disappointment, Augustine left his
Christian background and joined the Manichean sect, founded by the prophet Mani in 240. He also fell in
with friends who followed a hedonist approach to life. He also remembers an incident when a youth –
stealing fruit from an orchard because he liked the idea of rebelling. This period stuck in his mind and
helped formulate his idea of the inherently sinful nature of man. Despite his wayward lifestyle, he
developed an interest in philosophy and was impressed by the writings of Cicero. Augustine became an
expert in Latin and rhetoric.

In his late teens, he developed an affair with a young woman from Carthage. She gave birth to his
illegitimate son Adeodatus in 372.

Augustine taught grammar and rhetoric at Thagaste, Carthage and later Rome.

In 384, he was given a more prestigious position as a rhetoric professor at the Imperial Court of Milan. In
Milan, he began to become more sceptical of his Manichean faith. He also became friendly with
Ambrose the bishop of Milan. Augustine listened to the more sophisticated lectures of Bishop Ambrose,
and he gained a new insight into Christianity. This friendship and the genuine spirituality of Ambrose
was influential in re-awakening Augustine’s interest in Christianity – the religion of his childhood. His
mother had also followed Augustine to Milan and persuaded him to give up his lover and marry a young
11-year old girl who was in the same social class as Augustine. Although Augustine agreed, he felt a
great emotional torment in cutting off ties with his former lover. Eventually, he annulled his marriage as
he made plans to become a celibate priest.

In 386, at the age of 31, he made a formal conversion to Christianity. Augustine was inspired by reading
about the life of Saint Anthony of the Desert. He also reported hearing an inner voice which told him to
take up the Bible and read. He was drawn to a passage by St Paul which was aimed at non-believers
becoming transformed. The passage Augustine refers to was Romans chapter 13, verses 13 and 14,

“Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put
on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof.”

He wrote an account of his conversion in his text Confessions – this is an influential Christian apologist
and important example of biographical text.
Augustine was baptized with his son by Bishop Ambrose in April 388. His mother died shortly after his
event. Afterwards, they returned home to Africa, where his son Adeodatus died shortly after. Augustine
gave away his wealth to the poor and converted his house into a monastic foundation for himself and a
group of like-minded Christians.

In 391, he became the Bishop of Hippo and for the next 39 years became an influential preacher, often
speaking against his former religion of Manichaeism.

In the last half of his life, Augustine was noted for his piety – shunning his former hedonistic lifestyle and
living a life of simplicity and devotion. He also continued to write. Important works included ‘City of God’
which was written in response to the sack of Rome and argued the real religion was in spirit and not in
temporal cities and the religion of the world. To Augustine, the fall of Rome was of little consequence.
Augustine was an apologist for the Catholic Church but argued that the Church was not always in a state
of grace, but could attract bad and wicked people. The other reality is the invisible Church of spirit which
is ruled by love, grace and goodness. Ultimately, this religion of spirit would triumph over worldly
empires which were influenced by human pride. However, his writings on the limitations of earthly
power were used by future popes to imply that the Pope was pre-eminent other kings and other
countries. This proved an influential philosophy for the next centuries conflict between the Catholic
Church and State.

St Augustine was aware of the challenges of sexual desire. As a youth, he uttered the prayer ‘make me
chaste and continent, but not just yet.’ He later taught that the original sin of man could only be
redeemed by faith in Christ. On becoming a Christian, he wrote: “Nothing is so much to be shunned as
sex relations”. His attitudes toward sex and its inherent sinfulness were influential in shaping Medieval
attitudes to sex relation

Augustine taught a modified form of predestination. He argued man had the freedom to choose, but
ultimately all things are ordered by God. To Augustine some of us are predestined to be saved; this was
influential to later theologians such as St Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin.

Augustine developed the concept of a ‘just war’. He emphasises that the pursuit of peace might include
the option of fighting – if it is the only alternative to protect a just peace.

Augustine was also influential in the development of educational practices. He advocated a more liberal
approach to education. Combining discipline with teachers who can share an interest in the subject and
encourage students to develop a critical awareness and think for themselves.

In the spring of 430, the Vandals – who had previously sacked Rome, invaded Roman Africa. Augustine
fell ill and died on 28 August 430. The Vandals returned to Hippo and burnt much of the city – though
Augustine’s library survived.

As one of the last great Christian theologians before the dark ages of the Medieval Period, Augustine
was very influential on the development of Christianity.

He was canonized in 1298 by Pope Boniface VIII.

Augustine on Human Nature

Augustine took from Plato the view that the human self is an immaterial soul that can think. Plato held
that after death the souls of those who most love the forms would rise to contemplate the eternal
truths, a sort of heaven beyond space and time. Augustine said that these forms were ideas in the mind
of the perfect eternal God. He said that what was required was that we love the perfect eternal God.

While Plato emphasized the importance of perfecting reason and following it, Augustine emphasized the
importance of the will, the ability to choose between good and evil. The fundamental religious duty is to
love and serve God; if we can succeed in this, we will also choose the good and avoid the evil.

Human nature, as created by God, is good, and the free will that He originally gave us places us higher in
the metaphysical ladder of beings than nonhuman animals or plants. (The angels and, of course, God
Himself are above us.)

Originally, according to Augustine, we were equally free to choose good or evil. But humans are now
constantly attracted towards evil, that is, toward excessive satisfaction of our lower desires for material
things and pleasures. (As he explains it, this derives from our having inherited original sin from our first
parents. Adam and Eve disobeyed God when they ate the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden.) We can
only escape from inherited sinfulness if we receive grace from God, and there is no way we can earn
such grace, or force God to give it to us by being good.

This is a view that combines a rather low opinion of human nature with a belief in the immortality of the
soul. Therefore, materialists like Thomas Hobbes or Sigmund Freud are not the only thinkers who have a
low opinion of humanity in general.

It's true that Augustine believes that there are saintly humans. Such humans love the things that they
ought to love. They use reason properly. But without the grace they get from God, and which they
cannot earn, they would neither be good nor able to reason correctly.

Augustine's view was that God selects only a few people to receive grace and be saved. The rest of
humanity will just continue to sin and not repent, and then they will be punished for it after death in
hellfire.

Augustine was deeply schooled in the literature of pagan Rome and pre-Christian philosophy. In his later
years he came to think that most of this literature was worth very little, and preferred to discuss and cite
Scripture rather than pagan authors. He did think that Neo-Platonist philosophy -- a pre-Christian
philosophical school based on the works of Plotinus (3rd century A. D.) and indirectly on Plato (5th and
4th centuries B.C.) -- sometimes anticipated Christian insights and so he did not reject them totally. But
studying pagan authors was no guarantee of a person's goodness. It might even contribute to a person's
vanity. Augustine may have thought that God's grace could work on us through our encounter with Holy
Scripture, but even here salvation was not automatic: no amount of recitating or even studying Holy
Scripture could guarantee that a person would receive or had received grace.

For more on Augustine's view of original sin in the context of a discussion of philosophical views on the
nature of God, see Philosophical Views of God.

Not all Christians follow Augustine in accepting the idea of inherited original sin. Those who, like
nineteenth-century Unitarian minister and writer William Ellery Channing, reject the notion of original
sin often say it is contrary to the goodness of God. Universalists like Channing's contemporary Hosea
Ballou, moreover, claim that no one is destined to eternal damnation and that everyone will sooner or
later be reconciled with God.

Augustine's View (Very Briefly Summarized)

Nature (behind which, of course, stands God) gives us a general sense of our duties. Social institutions
shape these to promote "socially useful" habits such as justice. But these efforts do not truly suffice to
make us good.

The most important part of a person is the inner person, i.e., the mind.

Ethically, the most important part of the mind is not the intellect (or reason) but the will.

The orientation of the will determines whether we love lower goods (such as bodily goods, wealth, and
reputation) or higher goods (virtue and, above all, God).

Although originally neither good nor bad, the human will became corrupted so that it is in most cases
inclined to love lower rather than higher goods.

Good persons are those whose will and reason are subordinated to faith in God and devotion to God's
will (i.e., that we should live righteously).

Faith is a gift of grace that we cannot command but only receive when it comes.

Yet the wicked actions of persons lacking faith who violate basic principles of justice come from within
them and so they merit proportionate punishment by human authorities.

God's grace may work on us when we are studying Scripture, but much study of Scripture is no
guarantee of receiving it.

AUGUSTINE ON THE ‘LAST THINGS’ AND HUMAN DESTINY: IS ESCHATOLOGICAL UNIVERSALISM

POSSIBLE?

In this essay, I am going to outline some basic aspects of Augustinian eschatology and identify its
problems. What is the ultimate destiny of the human race according to St. Augustine? Was Augustine
right in rejecting all forms of eschatological universalism? What are the alternatives? My main thesis is
that Augustine’s approach does not consider God’s universal saving will and that his view of original sin
with its consequential theory of retributive punishment is problematic. In my view, a particular version
of eschatological universalism could be an acceptable position for Catholic theology.

Firstly, I shall outline the main lines of Augustine’s view on the ‘last things’ and human destiny, that is to
say, Augustine’s eschatology (1.). Secondly, I shall critically discuss it and propose an alternative
eschatological model (2.). Thirdly, I shall end by giving a brief conclusion (3.).

1. St. Augustine on the ‘Last Things’ and Human Destiny

St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430) is one of the most influential theologians in the history of the Latin
Church. His eschatology is intertwined with his theology of history, his theology of grace including the
doctrine of original sin, and is, of course, dependent on his philosophical-theological presuppositions in
general. In the following lines, I am going to outline some basic aspects of Augustine’s eschatology as we
can find it in his late major work De Civitate Dei (= DCD), written between 413 and 427.

Despite his Neoplatonism and due to his increasing familiarity with Holy Scripture, Augustine discovers
the importance of a historic understanding of the world and favours a linear model of history. His view is
dramatic in the sense that he conceives human history as integrated in the wider context of an
eschatological drama, in which history is the temporal playing out of God’s justice and in which both
beginning and (eternal) end are fixed. Due to original sin, in which all human beings have sinned in
Adam (cf. Rom 5:12) and participate in his fall, the whole of humanity has turned away from God and
has become a massa damnata, a ‘lump’ that justly deserves the punishment of eternal damnation (see
DCD XIII, 14; XIV, 3 and 13; XXI, 12).

Nevertheless, God has chosen or predestined by means of a free and utterly unmerited grace a small
minority of this ‘lump’, in order to grant them salvation and participation in His own eternal life. For
Augustine, the number of the elected is very small so that God can show what in fact all deserve and
enforce His Divine justice (see DCD XXI, 12). God’s elected belong to the ‘city of God’ (the visible Church
has a special relation to it) and are able to lead a life of faith, charity and worship. But the vast majority
belongs to the ‘city of Man’ and is trapped in an unfree, self-centered and sinful existence, however, in
this life, no one can be sure whether he or she is in fact chosen by God (see, for instance, DCD XIV, 28;
XX, 9 and 27). Human history is ambiguous and one cannot foresee its ending, however, there will be an

eschatological separation of the two cities, namely a collective judgement and transformation of the
world at the end of time (see DCD XX, 21 and 28). The souls of the dead await the resurrection of their
bodies as the dividing line between time and eternity. God’s elected may have a share in the
resurrection of Jesus Christ and will be fully ‘conformed to the image of the Son’ (Rom 8:29), which
exceeds all our greatest imaginations, consists in praising God and their beatific vision of God: God will
be so known by us, and shall be so much before us, that we shall see Him by the spirit in ourselves, in
one another, in Himself, in the new heavens and the new earth, in every created thing which shall then
exist; and also by the body we shall see Him in every body which the keen vision of the eye of the
spiritual body shall reach (DCD XXII, 29). Hence, the ultimate goal of the city of God with its
comparatively few inhabitants and the transformed world is the ‘perpetual Sabbath’, an eternal state
beyond temporal succession in perfect communion with God: ‘There we shall rest and see, see and love,
love and praise. This is what shall be in the end without end’ (DCDXXII, 30). The overwhelming majority
of the human race is not so lucky. There will also be a resurrection of their bodies, however, a
resurrection in order to judge–Jesus Christ is the judge–and punish them (including those who die in
infancy) with everlasting damnation, a resurrection to the second death. Augustine conceives hell as a
retributive punishment by God, and for him, hell is eternal because original sin is such a horrendous
offence against God. Eternal punishment in hell is an expression of God’s justice (see DCD XXI, 12). The
bodies of the damned will be endlessly tortured by burning in hellfire but, by a miracle of their Creator,
without being consumed by its flames (see DCD XXI, 2; 3; 4; 9), although the degree of torment is
proportionate to the extent of personal sin, ‘…whether this result be accomplished by a variation in the
temperature of the fire itself, graduated according to every one’s merit, or whether it be that the heat
remains the same, but that all do not feel it with equal intensity of torment’ (DCD XXI, 16). Augustine
addresses objections against his view of hell as an eternal punishment and defends his downright anti-
universalist eschatology, for instance, in DCD XXI, 17 to 27. His arguments are very much based on a
certain interpretation of the relevant bible passages: Time-limited and purifying suffering in hell would
contradict Holy Scripture (e.g. Mt 25:41-46; Rev 20:10; 2 Pet 2:4) and also undermine the eternal
blessedness of the saints in heaven: ‘Wherefore, as the eternal life of the saints shall be endless, so too
the eternal punishment of those who are doomed to it shall have no end’ (DCDXXI, 23).

2. Critical Discussion and a Possible Alternative

Augustine’s eschatology with its implicit theory of double predestination was never fully accepted by
the Catholic Church who emphasized and emphasizes the role of free will and the idea of a co-operation
with grace in the process of salvation. Where could one identify problems in Augustine’s approach?

In the given context, I would like to focus on to aspects.

Firstly, Augustine denies the universality of God’s saving will. From a Catholic point of view, however,
God does not want the salvation of a small minority but intends the salvation of all human beings. To be
sure, the (Catholic) Church is God’s instrument of salvation in communicating His uncreated grace, i.e.
the Holy Spirit, to the world, however, the Church teaches that all people can be saved, no matter
whether they are Christians or not. Augustine’s exegesis of the relevant bible passages seems to be
debatable, especially if one asks the important but rarely posed question:

What is the possible content of Divine revelation?

God does not reveal information about created states of affairs or future events but reveals His
presence in the sense that he gives a share in His own Trinitarian life. Whether many or some people will
end up in hell is no possible content of revelation, hence, no object of faith, if one conceives revelation
strictly as

God’s self -communication in Jesus Christ. All articles of faith explain but this basic mystery and can be
reduced to it.

On this view, Holy Scripture is not the word of God in an arbitrary or biblicistic sense but only insofar as
it can be consistently understood as God’s word when faced with God’s utter transcendence and
absoluteness (see below). Secondly, Augustine’s view of original sin and its consequential theory of hell

as a retributive punishment seems to be problematic. Is the traditional historic understanding of Adams

fall and the Augustinian view of original sin convincing? Be that as it may, most people are, according to
Augustine, not in the state of grace, hence, they are not really free to perform good works: Sin is not an
expression of true freedom, it is rather slavery and paralysis. But then the notion of hell as retributive
punishment becomes problematic, for retributive punishment presuppose freedom and responsibility.
Furthermore, the idea of inherited personal guilt seems to be contradictory. Additionally, one could ask
whether any sin that a finite being commits in a situation of ambiguity and (relative) ignorance deserves
an infinite punishment as a just retribution.

And wouldn’t it be possible to say that real justice requires not so much punishment but rather
reconciliation and restoration? At any rate, human beings have a strong tendency towards revenge, and
sometimes they project this tendency on God. St. Augustine was not free from human flaws. But is
eschatological universalism an acceptable option for Catholic theology? A non-universalist eschatology
was, more or less, taken for granted up to the paradigm shift from eschatological pessimism to optimism
in the 20th Century.

Nowadays, the main argument in favour of the possibility of eternal hell goes like this: God respects our
free will and does not force us into heaven, hence, the possibility of hell is an implication of human
freedom. This view does not imply that one has to believe that many or some human beings will, in fact,
end up in hell. Thus, universalism – with regard to human beings– is at least possible. Is this view
convincing? God’s grace and love has to be revealed to us by the word, coming from Jesus, the incarnate
Son, since it cannot be identified by natural reason. Without Jesus Christ and his message we would not
know that we are from the outset created into the Triune Life, i.e. into the eternal love between the
Father and the Son, which is the Holy Spirit.

However, there is no ‘neutral freedom’ vis-á-vis God’s grace, which is offered and communicated in His
word, i.e. the Christian message. One can only recognize God’s grace by embracing the Christian
message in an act of faith. Outside of faith, one cannot recognize the truth of the Christian message,
that is to say, one is able to reject the Christian message by becoming arbitrary but it is not possible to
reject it in fully knowing that it is in fact God’s word, i.e. God’s self -communication in a human word.

Original sin is primarily an ontological reality (although it unfolds massive moral consequences): Due to
the fact that the relation between the created world and God is completely unilateral, no created
quality, and no human act, since even our freest acts are created, can grant communion with God who‘
dwells in unapproachable light’ (cf. 1 Tim 6:16). Communion with God and participating in His eternal
life is but possible in this way: God relates to the world with the same love in which He relates to His Son
from all eternity, that is to say, that God does not become dependent on the world by His love for it and
that His love for the world is of divine nature, unchanging, unconditional and eternal. Being loved by
God in this way is the deepest reality of the whole world and of every single human being, however, this
deepest reality is supernatural and accessible only by faith in the word of God. Seen from this
perspective, the threats of hell in the New Testament, which cannot be denied, mean that, outside of
the Holy Spirit, God is absent for all eternity and that every attempt to reach salvation by idolising
created realities, i.e. by sinning, is ultimately hopeless. Seen from outside of faith, there are no grounds
for any hope.

But God’s absence is overcome by Jesus Christ in the sense that He reveals God’s presence and love for
faith. By faith, man is liberated from the power of fear for oneself and empowered to cooperate with
God’s grace in performing truly good works. The Christian faith is the beginning of our eternal life
already here and now. And only within this faith, we can have hope that God’s mercy will be the final
word for all human beings: God will separate the sinner from his or her sin, although we cannot know
the mechanism: ‘

For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all ’(Rom 11: 32).

3. Conclusion

In this essay, I have outlined some basic aspects of Augustinian eschatology. My main thesis has been
that Augustine’s approach does not consider God’s universal saving will and that his view of original sin
with its consequential theory of retributive punishment is problematic. In my view, a particular version
of eschatological universalism could be an acceptable position for Catholic theology.