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Augustine (Thought-Ideas and Faith) (01)
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Augustine (Thought-Ideas and Faith) (01).
4. Philosophical Ideas in the Clarification
of Revealed Faith
(1) The attempt to clarify revealed faith gives rise to philosophical thoughts.
(2) If Augustine draws no distinction between philosophizing and the thinking of revealed faith, the question arises:
Is a separation possible; that is, can thought retain any truth if the faith in Christ is spent?
(1) FREEDOM
A. Self-reflection:
(1) Augustine discerns impulses, feelings, tendencies that are in conflict with his conscious will.
1) self-deceptions (praying for sign to justify, curiosity as thirst for knowledge))
2) carnal pleasure (singing of Psalter: sound & content)
3) necessary to combat the desire (while eating).
4) what is right, but always the hidden motive.
5) perpetual temptation of all human life
(2) Augustine inaugurated the psychology that unmasks the soul of man. He observed that there was no end of it and cried out to God: "Greatly I fear my hidden faults that Thine eyes know, but not mine."
B. The cleavage between will and decision:
(1) the will does not will unequivocally. For him the will was the center of existence, life itself.
(2) at the center of his being, he experienced a frightening thing (the situation as the state preceding his conversion).
(3) The mind is not drawn upward by the truth but downward by habit. "There are two wills." (as Paul)
1) Not two forces, the one good, the other bad, governed him, but rather:
"I it was who willed, I it was who was unwilling.... I neither willed entirely, nor was I entirely unwilling. Therefore I was at war with myself." (Romans chapter 7)
2) Will becomes necessity. The fact of willing implies the end of all hesitation, of all uncertainty, of all doubt, but also of all self-constraint.
3) What is the freedom of the will that must? Whence does it come? What happens in the decision that brings full and irrevocable (decisive) certainty of the will?
C. Dependence and the necessity of a decision
(1) Everywhere, we are dependent on something else. We are in the situation of having to decide. (necessity)
(2) Augustine explains the certainty of conversion on the basis of two modes of decision.
① In a number of possibilities to test and choose, will and ability are not the same thing.
② I decide and act to the best of my ability, but always in respect to particulars.
③ While deciding, I am already decided. In this decision I do not have myself in hand; I am dependent on God, who gives me to myself.
(3) Corruption by original sin is dependent on the grace of redemption and gains hope through faith.
D. Origin of freedom
(1) In the freedom of our action, this is the fundamental experience: not myself but
(2) A good temperament, an amiable disposition, and other natural traits are not a solid ground.
(3) Therefore I am not absolutely free in my will, my freedom, my love. I am given to myself, and thus given to myself I can be free and become myself. (free I to me)
1) In producing myself, I have not produced myself.
2) Hence Augustine says with St. Paul:
"What hast thou that thou didst not receive (quid habes, quid non accepist)?" (You have what to receive)
The paradox remains:
① It is God who brings forth freedom in man and does not leave him at the mercy of nature.
② But in so doing God admits the possibility of a human activity against Himself, against God.
③ God leaves man free; but if man turns against God, only God's help and grace can enable him, through his own acts, to turn to the good.
(4) In my freedom for the good I am the work of God. My freedom is freedom that has been given me, not my own.
(5) The appropriate attitude is humility in freedom.
(6) It is pride to take pleasure in myself as my own work. Humility is the attitude underlying the truth of all good actions.
E. The impossibility of being conscious of a good deed
(1) Augustine knows the perversion of complacency. (pride)
(2) The reason for this is man's self-love.
(3) God's help gives him the full freedom with which to attain to God. (man can attain to God by His help)
F. Against the Stoics
(1) Augustine knows their doctrine. Man is free and independent as long as he contents himself with what he can master.
(2) Man can master only himself, his thoughts and decisions. He lives exclusively for himself;
1) Man is self-sufficient (autarky). And the Stoic does not doubt that we are indeed master of our own thoughts.
2) Man believes we can demonstrate such mastery by guiding our attention and carrying out our resolutions.
(3) Our freedom has no ground, but is itself a ground. It is identical with reason.
(4) The opposite of freedom is outward constraint.
(5) I become unfree only if I allow my composure to be disturbed.
(6) freedom is imperturbable peace of mind (apatheia).
(7) In this Stoic attitude Augustine sees nothing but self-deception. Such absence of emotion, such perpetual unconcern would be the death of the soul.
(8) But above all, in the freedom of my decision, it is not through myself that I am free.
G. Against the Pelagians
(1) Augustine opposed Pelagius.
(2) For Pelagius
1) man, because created free, is independent of God.
2) Man has freedom of decision (libertas arbltrii). He has the possibility of sinning and of not sinning.
3) Even if he has already decided to sin, there remains a possibility of conversion and hence of freedom.
4) If he wants to, he can always follow the commandments of God; even after the wickedest life he can always make a new start.
(3) Augustine takes a different view.
1) To his mind, man can do evil by himself, but not good.
"The good in me is Thy work and Thy gift; the evil in me is my guilt and Thy judgment."
2) In doing evil the will is free (though not truly free, but free to be unfree); in doing good it needs God.
3) This is Augustine's fundamental experience of the essential transformation effected by his conversion.
H. Dogmatic Formulations
(1) The conception of God's unfathomable will leads inevitably to the dogma of predestination.
(2) Each man is predestined to freedom in grace or unfreedom in evil.
1) Man himself cannot change his predestination.
2) In freedom, he is utterly dependent on God's will, by which his essence is predetermined.
(3) The dogmatically elaborated myth is as follows:
1) Original sin - the corrupt state of man and his mortality - is the consequence of the fall of Adam.
2) What was corrupted by Adam is made whole again by Christ. Through him man is reborn.
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Introduction
Theology 