Church History, Part 1: St. Augustine (2/9/03)
Rev. Gary Cox
-- Wichita, Kansas
University Congregational Church
This morning we begin
a four-week series on some of the church’s great theologians. Now, before you go running for the door, let
me promise you that this is not a four-week lecture series on theology. These sermons are at least as much about the
people themselves, and the history surrounding them, as they are about the
lasting legacy of their theologies.
When I started seminary I was intimidated by the
various required disciplines. There
were five: Old Testament, New Testament, Theology, Practical Theology, and
Church History. I immediately
identified Church History as the area in which I would spend as little time as
possible—five required classes. But as
I proceeded through seminary I discovered that it became my favorite area of
study. It is in this area—church
history—that theology comes alive. It
isn’t simply a matter of theoretical ideas splashed in ink across ancient
parchments. Church history is the story
of real-life flesh-and-blood human beings struggling with the most important
questions we face: Why are we here?
Is there a God? Who was Jesus
and what did he do?
In this series I will look at four theologians who
changed the course of church history.
Each of these four people caused a worldwide shift in the way
people approached the Christian faith.
The four are St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, and
Frederick Schleiermacher. Today we will
take a look at St. Augustine.
We examined Augustine briefly several weeks ago when
we compared some parts of his theology to the current thinking of theologian
Matthew Fox. Today we will go into some
depth regarding this remarkable man.
In each of these four sermons I will spend a fair bit
of time putting things in historic perspective. History does not happen in a vacuum. Religious and political leaders do not arise out of nowhere. The moment a great person arrives in
history—the reality of the world at that particular time—is what makes their
thinking important and memorable.
To understand Augustine, we must go through the
highlights of the first four or five centuries of the church. I know the dates will come fast and furious,
but don’t worry about that. What matters
is the order in which things happen—not the specific dates on which they
occurred.
Jesus taught in
Galilee sometime around the year 30 A.D., and was crucified in Jerusalem
sometime between 30 and 33. Paul went
around the Roman world establishing churches between 35 and 60 A.D., and it is
Paul’s letters to those churches he had started that comprise a large part of
the New Testament.
The first gospel, Mark, was written sometime around
70, and the last gospel, John, was written sometime around 90. At least, that is the best guess of most
scholars. So that rounds out the first
century, and our information about that time comes directly from letters
and writings that were later compiled as the Bible.
In the second century—from the year 100 to the year
200—the church started getting more organized.
Now a hierarchy had developed, with various bishops trying to organize
the faith around common ideas. Ignatius
of Antioch wrote seven historically important letters around the year 107,
which provide our first glimpse of this early church. He wrote those letters, by the way, as he was being transported
to Rome, where he was killed for being a Christian leader.
It is clear
from the letters of Ignatius that Christians were not actively sought out for
persecution, but if they were discovered and refused to worship the Roman gods,
they were punished. Over the first
centuries of the church, many Christians, when put to the ultimate test, quite
willingly renounced their faith and worshipped whatever gods the authorities
required. Others, such as Polycarp
(poh-LEE-krp), the Bishop of Smyrna, refused to deny Christ, even as they were
slowly tortured to death. Polycarp was
martyred in the middle of the second century.
Through the second and third centuries it remained
illegal to be a Christian, but they were not usually sought out for punishment
as long as they kept a low profile.
During that period the first great thinkers of the church arose—those
who attempted to make the Christian faith acceptable to people steeped in Greek
philosophy. Justyn Martyr and Origen
are the most famous of the first church philosophers.
Everything changed for Christians, and for the church,
in the year 313. Constantine, the Roman
Emperor, issued the Edict of Milan, which officially ended the persecution of
Christians. Soon, Christianity became
the official religion of the Roman Empire.
The secret cult, with its mysterious rituals and forbidden methods of
worship, was now the state religion of the most powerful nation the world had
ever known.
It was Constantine’s hope that this religion would
unify the empire under a common faith.
He soon discovered that there was very little agreement within the
church about what Christians actually believed. Some said Jesus was a great man—the greatest teacher of all
time. Others said he was God
himself. Some said that he did not even
leave footsteps where he walked, that he was pure spirit, seen differently by
everybody who looked upon him. Some
said he was half God and half man; others that he was sometimes God and
sometimes man depending on the situation.
To make matters worse, these Christians didn’t even
have an official collection of Holy Scripture.
There were hundreds of books floating around that told about Jesus and
the Apostles and Paul, but there was no cohesive message that ran throughout
those books.
Constantine ordered the first great Council—The
Council of Nicea—in the year 325, to settle these issues once and for all. Who was Jesus? What was his relationship to God? What is the Holy Spirit?
What is the proper role of the church?
It was during this series of meetings that the Nicene Creed was
formulated. Several other councils
would meet over the following years in an attempt to precisely define the
nature of the Christian faith. (As a
side note, I should mention that as Congregationalists, we are a covenantal
church, and not a creedal church. We
study all the creeds, but unlike other denominations, we do not specify which
ones a person must accept or reject in order to be a part of our congregation.)
It was in the fourth century that many of these
matters were settled, both at the Council of Nicea and at other church councils
that followed. The theology of a bishop
named Athanasius won the day at the early church councils, and it was his view
of Jesus and the church that was adopted as truth. There was only one way to think about Jesus that was not
heretical: Jesus was not created by God, but was begotten of God; Jesus is of
the same substance as God; Jesus is not half human and half divine, but
paradoxically, fully human and fully divine.
The church has been arguing about what all that means
for 1600 years, but it remains “orthodox,” or correct thinking. Athanasius was also the first person to name
the 27 books which now make up the New Testament as the official canon of the
church. That was well over three
hundred years after the death of Jesus.
Okay, we have some historical perspective. In the year 354, as all these theological
issues were being settled at the church councils, Augustine was born in North
Africa, in what is present day Algeria.
He was a brilliant student from his earliest years, and his parents
provided for him to receive a great education.
At the age of 17 he studied in Carthage, which was the
cultural center of Latin-Speaking Africa.
Augustine became obsessed with the search for truth. He poured through the most difficult
writings on politics, economics, philosophy, and religion. All the while, he enjoyed the more earthly
pleasures such a cultural center affords, and while still a teen he fathered a
son by a woman he never married. As I
told you when we took a brief look at Augustine last month, there was no
indication from his younger years that he would one day be sainted by the
church. Among his favorite prayers
from that time, he later confessed, was one that went something like this: Oh
Lord, save me from my fallen life of pleasure and debauchery—starting tomorrow.
In spite of his…zest for life, he was serious about
his search for ultimate truth. For a
time he was a Manichean, a dualistic idea in which two forces do battle with
one another in this world. One force is
spiritual, and is called light; the other force is material, and is called
darkness. Manicheism made of point of
mocking Christianity, because of its primitive language and its apparently
irrational approach to salvation. All
things material, according to Manicheism, were to be rejected. For obvious reasons, they claimed, there is
no way a Creator of this universe could look at creation and say, “It is good.”
Augustine became disenchanted with Manicheism. When he was about 30 he went to Rome, and
then to Milan, where he was a professor of rhetoric. Three things happened that changed Augustine, and in doing so
changed the course of the church.
Augustine had the experience we heard about from the lectern this
morning, where he was moved by the passage from Romans saying to make no
provisions for the flesh, but to put on the armor of light; he came under the
influence of Neoplatonism; and he met St. Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan.
For the Manicheans, there were two great principles or
powers: good and evil. Neoplatonism,
based on the writings of Plato, said there is only one principle, and that all
of reality emanates out from that one principle. Envision it this way: Compare all of the universe to a pebble
dropped into a pond. Concentric circles
appear, moving out from where the pebble is dropped. Those realities that are
closer to the center—closer to the source of being—are superior. Those realities that are farther away from
the center, are inferior. So evil is
not in itself a power separate from God.
Moral evil is simply turning away, or moving away, from God.
This answered the problem of evil for Augustine. But he still had a problem with the
Bible. It was said by Christians that
the Bible was true. But how
could that be? Augustine had read the
Bible, and he was too honest with himself to pretend all those stories were
historically accurate. And then he
started going to hear the sermons of Ambrose—the brilliant Bishop of
Milan. Ambrose interpreted the Bible
allegorically. Of course God did
not create the heavens and earth in six days and rest on the seventh! Both Ambrose and Augustine believed that a
person would have to check their brain at the door of the church to believe
such a thing. But, the story shows,
allegorically, that there is a plan behind creation. Creation didn’t suddenly appear in its
present form, and it didn’t get the way it is through a series of
accidents. God slowly and meticulously
created it over time, and the Genesis story of creation allegorically reveals
that truth through metaphor and poetry.
Augustine converted to Christianity. He resigned his teaching post, and returned
to North Africa where he planned to spend the rest of his life in a monastic
retreat, and eventually settled with a few friends who shared a common goal: a
quiet life of study, devotion and meditation.
The story would end there, and we would never have
heard of Augustine, were it not for the fact some of his private
writing—personal philosophical tracts—were copied and circulated. Soon, his fame spread across the world. Within a few years he was made a priest, and
then the Bishop of Hippo. He accepted
this post reluctantly, preferring the quiet life of a secluded scholar, but
believing it was God’s will for him to serve the wider church. Augustine served as the Bishop of Hippo for
over thirty years, until his death in the year 430.
It would be pretty boring to attempt an in-depth
review of the theology of Augustine.
His two most important books—Confessions and The City of God—remain
important classics to this day. What
actually secured Augustine’s place in history was the fall of the Roman
Empire. The Fall of Rome is
traditionally dated to the year 476, but the city of Rome—the center of
Christendom and the source of the church’s power—was sacked in the year 410 by
Alaric and the Visigoths. Augustine was
considered the most important religious voice at this moment when world history
changed dramatically.
Many believed Rome fell because it had adopted the
Christian faith, and turned away from its original pagan gods. Augustine wrote the book The City of God
in response to Rome’s fall. The City
of God is a vast history that holds there are two metaphorical cities in
creation, each built on a foundation of love.
One is built on love of self, and the other is built on love of
God. All kingdoms and nations are built
on love of self, and will wither away.
Only the City of God is eternal.
Along with the fall of Rome, there were two
theological controversies within the church that secured Augustine’s
legacy. First, the Donatist
controversy. Remember those times in
the first several centuries of the church when Christianity was illegal? People were dragged before the courts,
perhaps tied to a stake about to be set on fire, and asked, “Do you renounce
Jesus Christ as your savior and accept the Roman gods?”
Now, put yourself in their shoes. As you can imagine, a fair number of those
folks ended up saying something like, “Jesus Who? Never heard of the guy!”
Included among those who denied Christ were priests. And over the years that ensued there were
still many priests who just didn’t quite live up to the expectations of the
church. (Of course, nothing like could
happen today, right?)
The Donatists said that if a person had been baptized
by a bad priest—by an unworthy priest—it didn’t count in the eyes of God. Likewise with marriage. Likewise with Communion. None of the sacraments of the church counted
unless they were performed by a “proper” priest.
This caused no small amount of concern. How could you be sure your priest was
on God’s good side? It may sound odd to
a 21st Century Protestant, but there were a lot of people who
envisioned themselves burning in hell because the guy who baptized them had not
been holy enough. Augustine solved the
problem. He said, basically, that no
priest was truly worthy of administering the sacraments. But it doesn’t matter, because God does not
act through the priest, but rather within the sacrament. This is really important. When we take communion together, God does
not act through me—the preacher. God
acts—God is present—in the ceremony itself.
Those who preside at religious ceremonies are simply playing a
role. My worthiness does not affect the
power and truth of the sacrament itself.
(Hey, you don’t have to look so relieved!)
The second controversy that Augustine solved for the
church was called the Pelagian controversy.
The Pelagians were a group of Christians who thought people could
overcome their sins through their own efforts.
If a person tried hard enough, he could perfect himself. Augustine wrote that sin had a hold on each
and every one of us, and that no matter how hard we tried, we could never
perfect ourselves. This led to the term
“original sin.” Augustine held that the
original sin of Adam and Eve had been passed through the generations to all
humanity.
Remember, Augustine did not read the Bible
literally. Because of his own lustful
past, he associated sin with sex. The
biblical story of Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit had something to do with
lust—but it went much deeper than that.
The bottom line is simple: we just can’t be perfect. Frankly, over the centuries the church
probably placed far too much emphasis on Augustine’s concept of original sin,
and missed his most important point.
The Christian faith, he claimed, is all about grace. Grace is God’s favorable attitude toward us in
spite of our sin.
This is the way Augustine shaped the church for all
future generations. For Augustine, and
for the church ever since Augustine, if a person says, “I’m not a sinner—I
always do the right thing,” he or she is living a lie. On the other hand, if a person says, “I’m a
sinner, but it’s not my fault! God made
me this way,” that person too is living outside the truth. The truth comes in saying, “I am created in
such a way that I fall short of perfection.
But I accept responsibility for my life, and my actions, and I have
faith that God loves me. And with God’s
help I can live a good life.”
That’s really Augustine in a nutshell. And it remains the core of Christian
theology today.
That is as in depth as we need to go with
Augustine. Next week we will look at
St. Thomas Aquinas, who lived more than 800 years after Augustine. We will also talk about what happened over
those 800 years. It was a time when the
church was at its most powerful. It was
a time when even the greatest kings were crowned by the church. For some it may sound like the good old
days. For others, it has another name:
the Dark Ages.
Between now and then, may we all live in the light of
Christ, whose spirit has overcome the darkness of the human heart time and
again over the ages.