Augustine philosopher theologian and church father Questions to be addressed in this chapter Why did Augustine become a Manichee and a Skeptic In what ways did Greek thinkers inspire Augustines thought about the Christian faith ID: 421783
Download Presentation The PPT/PDF document "Chapter 11" is the property of its rightful owner. Permission is granted to download and print the materials on this web site for personal, non-commercial use only, and to display it on your personal computer provided you do not modify the materials and that you retain all copyright notices contained in the materials. By downloading content from our website, you accept the terms of this agreement.
Slide1
Chapter 11
Augustine: philosopher, theologian, and church fatherSlide2
Questions to be addressed in this chapter
Why did Augustine become a
Manichee
and a Skeptic?
In what ways did Greek thinkers inspire Augustine’s thought about the Christian faith?
How did Augustine’s reaction to the
Donatist
controversy affect the way Christians thought about the nature of the Church and the sacraments?
What was
Pelagianism
, and how did Augustine’s response to it influence Christian understandings of sin, grace, and predestination?Slide3
The Early Augustine:
philosopher
and
skeptic
Augustine was born in 354 CE and reared in
Tagaste
, a town in North Africa (now Souk
Ahras
in Algeria
).
At the age of nineteen, Augustine
joined the religious sect of Manichaeism.
The Manichaean sect emphasized reason, rational explanation, and a life focused on ascetic practices
.
This solution satisfied Augustine for a time, but ultimately the Manichaean system began unraveling in his mind.
Augustine gave
up his faith in Manichaeism, moved to Rome, and became a philosophical Skeptic. Slide4
The Later Augustine: Christian
theologian
and Church
father
Through reading the works of the
Neoplatonists
, Augustine eventually abandoned Skepticism when he came to believe that human reason can attain knowledge—even certain knowledge—about some fundamental truths
.
In working through the
Neoplatonic
writings, Augustine also found solutions to some of the intellectual challenges that bedeviled him as a Manichean
.
In 384, Augustine was appointed
Professor
of
Rhetoric
in Milan. While there, he encountered the city’s bishop, Ambrose, an eloquent orator and brilliant theologian
.
In
386, at age 32, Augustine became a convert to Christianity.
In 396 Augustine
was
made
Bishop of
Hippo (
a post he held
until
his death in 430
).Slide5
The Church and the Sacraments
Beginning in 303 CE, the Roman emperor, Diocletian (284-313), began a series of persecutions against the Christians, perhaps as one way of unifying the Empire
.
These persecutions were most emphatic from 303-305, but they continued on to a lesser degree until the Edict of Milan in 313
.
After these persecutions ended, concerns arose about what to do with those bishops—referred to as
traditores
—who
had turned over the sacred Scriptures to the authorities
.
Donatus
and his followers (referred to as the
Donatists
) disagreed with broad catholic teaching about the
Church
and the
Sacraments
. They maintained that a bishop who had lapsed (had turned over the Scriptures to the magistrates, for example, or who had committed some other significant malfeasance) committed apostasy and was no longer capable of administering the sacraments.
The
catholics
, on the other hand (and this would include the leaders in Rome), maintained that if a lapsed bishop repented, he would be able to continue administering the sacraments.Slide6
Human
nature
,
sin
, grace,
and predestination
A second controversy which erupted during Augustine’s tenure as
bishop, also
significant in the history of Western Christian
thought, was
Pelagianism
.
As Pelagius (c.354-c.420
) understood Augustine, he
afforded no place in his theology for human will, or effort, or participation in the acts of God.
Pelagius and Augustine were agreed on the importance of human free will, but while Augustine also strongly affirmed the necessity of God’s sovereignty, Pelagius believed this doctrine undermined both human will and moral responsibility
.
For Augustine,
sin
had
so corrupted human nature and will that our disposition, even at birth, is toward evil, and we are in need of God’s grace both to understand sin’s effects and to overcome them and turn to God. Slide7
Manichaeanism
Pelagianism
Augustinianism
Absolute sovereignty of God
Denied absolute sovereignty of God
Absolute sovereignty of God
Denied human free will
Total freedom of human will
Freedom of human willSlide8
Summary of main points
1. Augustine sought sophisticated, philosophical answers to fundamental questions about God and human nature, and this led him first to
Manicheanism
and then to academic Skepticism.
By incorporating ideas of Greek thinkers, primarily the
Neoplatonists
, Augustine overcame his skepticism and acquired philosophical tools which he used to understand and defend orthodox Christian faith.
3. In responding to the
Donatists
, Augustine developed a distinction between the visible and invisible Church and a view of the sacraments in which they are causally efficacious because of the moral purity of Christ rather than the one administering them.
Through his responses to
Pelagianism
—the view that the sin of Adam and Eve did not corrupt human nature and that the human will is capable of following God—Augustine developed the ideas of original sin, the unification of divine sovereignty and human free will, and the predestination of the elect.