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Augustine (Thought-World View) (01)
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Augustine (Thought-World View) (01).
IV. STUDY OF AUGUSTINE'S HISTORICAL
VIEW OF THE WORLD
(1) WORLD HISTORY
A. Augustine's schema and its consequences
(1) The history of mankind is the story of Creation and man's original estate, of Adam's fall and the original sin that came with it, of the incarnation of God and the redemption of man.
(2) Now we are living in a period of indeterminate duration, to be concluded by the end of the world, after which there will remain only hell and the kingdom of heaven.
(3) The intervening history is essentially of no importance.
(4) All that matters is the salvation of every soul.
(5) But the great realities of the Roman state and the Catholic Church are present.
(6) After the conquest of Rome by Alaric (410), the pagans blamed the Christians for the catastrophe.
1) Because they have forsaken the old gods, the gods have forsaken Rome.
2) Augustine undertook to vindicate them in his great work, The City of God, in which a view of history plays an important part.
3) From the beginning, since Cain and Abel, there have been two states, the worldly state (cwitas terrena), which goes back to Cain and sin, and the divine state (civitas Dei), which goes back to Abel and his life that was pleasing to God.
4) Since Christ these states have been manifest.
5) All human existence is twofold.
① The fall of Adam ushered in a society based on natural reproduction, in which men are dependent on one another and have combated one another since Cain. Men form communities that wage war. They organize the sinful life.
② Yet at the same time each individual exists as a creature of God, in an immediate relation to God.
These individuals gather together in the community of faith. They encourage one another to lead the true life according to the will of God; however, in so doing they depend not on each other but only on God, that is, on revelation and the Church.
6) For Augustine the concrete consequences of these two aspects of human existence were Church and state, the Catholic Church and the Roman Empire.
(7) All history was a struggle between the divine state and the worldly state.
B. Augustine's range of interest
(1) His method of proof and interpretation
a. Time (Biblical concept)
1) All historical questions with arguments drawn not from an empirical investigation, but from revelation.
2) Thus the duration of the world is 6,000 years since the creation of Adam. This we know from the Bible.
3) For even if many, many thousands of years had elapsed, over against infinity any enumerable period of time would be like a drop of water beside the ocean.
b. Historical Events
1) In seeking to explain why any particular historical event occurred, Augustine declares that human knowledge cannot fathom God's purposes:
① God confers the Empire on Augustus and Nero alike, on Constantine the Christian and Julian the Apostate.
② Or else he suggests possible interpretations:
(a) Constantine was granted great success as a Christian ruler as a demonstration to men that the worship of pagan gods was not necessary for a brilliant rule.
(b) Other Christian rulers were unsuccessful, lest Christianity be regarded as a safeguard against earthly failure. (they did not connect the policy with belief).
(c) Nevertheless, it is the greatest good fortune for mankind if a truly pious ruler also possesses the art of governing his nation.
③ Or another interpretation:
(a) The world dominion of the Romans was their deserved reward for their love of freedom and striving for glory.
(b) Furthermore, the Empire was an example by which Christians might learn how to love their heavenly fatherland and incur great sacrifices for its sake.
(c) The study of political history is held to be meaningless, since faith knows that God's will is responsible for everything we do not understand.
(d) Empires, when justice is absent, are nothing more than great robber bands, just as bands of robbers, when they grow strong, are empires.
2) As we see, Augustine accepts the Roman theory that the wars of Rome were just, that the injustice was with the others.
c. Creation and Historical Sequence
1) However, following the analogy of the six days of Creation, Augustine sees the structure of history in the sequence of epochs marking the progress of the kingdom of God in the world:
① from Adam to the Flood,
② from the Flood to Abraham,
③ from Abraham to David,
④ from David to the Babylonian captivity,
⑤ from the Babylonian captivity to Christ,
⑥ from Christ to the end of the world.
2) With his meager insight into political trends, he did not regard Alaric's conquest of Rome as final.
3) Rome had survived many catastrophes and would no doubt outlive this one. (lasting longer).
4) His general view of history is never based on investigation but solely and explicitly on Biblical revelation.
(2) A modern reader notes, however, that it also reflects Augustine's own experience:
1) his personal conversion and its consequences.
2) The events of the individual are those of the world, and conversely.
3) Events of long duration are at the same time immediately present.
4) The great Christian thinkers saw their own history as one with Christian history
C. Historicity
(1) The belief about historicity made possible for the first time an essentially historical view of human existence (in contrast to the purely cyclical existence of nature).
(2) The essence of the human past is sin, which makes political life necessary and valid. For now, it is the sinful past that must be wholly transcended and eradicated (rooted out) along with political life.
(3) Both states are historically grounded, one in the fall of man, the other in revelation.
(4) What was hidden from the beginning was made manifest with Christ.
D. Characterization of Augustine's philosophy of history
(1) Augustine has been regarded as the founder of the Western philosophy of history.
(2) And indeed it was he who first clearly formulated the question of the whence and whither of history.
(3) He expressed this insight in its specifically Christian form:
1) he saw the limited, temporal character of Church and state and formulated the struggle between them.
2) He interpreted the tension of all human existence between true faith and false unbelief on the basis of its historical manifestation.
(4) In respect to particular phenomena, linear uniqueness and cyclic recurrence are hypotheses to be examined and verified.
1) Linear uniqueness of history
2) Cyclic recurrence of history
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Introduction
Theology 