Transcript

The following is a legacy recording from the archives of the C.S. Lewis Institute. While the audio quality of these recordings may vary, the content remains vital to the mission of the Institute to develop disciples who can articulate, defend, and live faith in Christ through personal and public life.

If you want to know, ladies and gentlemen, if you want to know about Augustine's life, read his Confessions. In this book he tells you all about himself. Professor McCracken of Drake University, who wrote the introduction to the lower classical library edition for the City of God, which I have before me here in 7 volumes, and who himself translated the first three books of this work, says in the beginning of his introduction, here I quote from him, "No other writer of any period is so completely autobiographical, so frankly personal, permits the reader to enter so deeply into the innermost recesses of his mind." That's the end of the quotation.

McCracken is certainly right in this statement. If you read the Confessions, you will not only learn all about Augustine's life up to the time he wrote that book, but you are likely to undergo one of the most moving and perhaps determinant experiences of your life. If you are a Christian, it will confirm you and your faith. If you are not a Christian but are afraid to convert, the reading of the book could cause you to overcome your fear. If you are not a Christian, but something in you makes you pant, pant and long to know and love and trust and submit to God, then this is exactly the book you should read. And don't read other books published in this century. Don't read them. This is the book you should read if you are, if you belong to that third category, because everything is trash compared to this book.

His mother, Saint Monica, was a devout Christian all her life. Her father became Christian at the end of his life. She was reared in a strict Christian home. She was the most single, decisive Christian influence upon his life. How he remembered her in his confessions, with the deepest affection and gratitude. If you learn about Saint Monica, those of you who are mothers or would be mothers, it would be a tremendous experience if you keep her in mind for the rest of your life, so far as your children are concerned. She was recognized the same, recognized the same, because saints are recognized. They are not invented. She was recognized the same through the way her saint's son immortalized in his writings her saintliness. A mother helped produce a saint who in turn caused his mother to be recognized the same, which is greater. The mother who helped produce a saint for the son who caused the mother to be recognized the same.

Augustine speaks of himself as having led a sinful life before he was converted. But any fair reader of his absolutely frank confessions will not conclude that prior to his conversion he was a dissolute youth, pure and simple. Side by side with the pleasures of the flesh, he passionately delighted in those of the mind and spirit. In many instances of history, these two went together. This side-by-side mode of existence was transmuted later by him into the doctrine of the two cities, which is the basic doctrine of the work we are considering: the city of Satan, living side by side with and commingling with and interpenetrating the city of God. Both cities engaged in the perpetual race of snatching each of the citizens of the other unto itself.

Until he finally discovered in his own life how Jesus Christ dealt the death blow to Satan once and for all. The story of the remaining 43 years of Augustine's life, the institutions he founded in North Africa, the communities he established, the great opportunities and vicissitudes of his life, his voluminous writings, 232 books, if you please, perhaps unequaled by any one man in all history. The exception of Pelagianism, which is very living still, his daily, never-relenting episcopal duties, his wonderful congeniality, I beg you to read them, his commentaries on the Psalms and on Genesis. His important quarrel and correspondence with Saint-Germain, Saint's quarrel, you know, and a French Dominican told me once, he said, "There are no two human beings who get on each other's nerves more than two saints." His numerous other activities, conferences, committees, mediations, all this can be gathered at length from the distributed bibliography.

He was called to combat every heresy that arose in his time. How different these days theologians and writers who wouldn't dare combat parodies, they just present their case and don't touch their opponents. They don't oppose, they don't refuse. This is not true with Augustine. Augustine loved the fight. He would fight. He wanted somebody to challenge him so that he would fight him. He was called to combat every heresy that arose in his time, the three heresies for whose total silencing, except for the Pelagian's, that I say, he was principally responsible were, first, Donatism, a North African separatist church movement, for the most part schismatic rather than heretic; second, Manichaeism, a mystical, rationalistic, materialistic, syncretist, dualist religion hailing from Persia in the east in which he was intensely interested in his twenties before his conversion to the east. He was called to combat his conversion but which he never really joined. For seven years he used to meet with them, discuss with them and defend their ideas and then he turned against them when he became Christian. And third, Pelagianism, a liberalistic interpretation of Christianity hailing this time from the west and from nowhere else than England which denies the radical change in man's being brought about by original sin and therefore preaches that grace is not needed for salvation. But all the sin on every page of his writing, as though he wanted to remind the reader that it is Pelagianism that he has in mind, insists that no man can possibly be saved except through the grace of Jesus Christ.

He also penned potent attacks on the dialectical rationalists of his age known then as the academics. Nothing will help you understand the falsity or the fundamental heritage of our age more than Augustine's polemical writing against the Donatists, the Manichaeans, the Pelagians and the academics. You want, some of you do, you want to know the pride and lack of love of separatism? You know every now and then in this country somebody creates a new sect, separates themselves. You want to know the pride and lack of love of separatism? Read his anti-Donatist writings. You want to know the emptiness and moral bankruptcy of the rationalistic materialism of our age? Read his anti-Manichaean writings. You want to know how to answer the attack of the rationalists on the God of the Old Testament? And the strange things he ordered his people to do? Read his book against Faustus, the Manichaean bishop.

You want to know the hypocritical superficiality and tendentiousness of the false liberalism of our age? Read his anti-Pelagian writings. You want to know the barrenness and rebelliousness and escapism of much of what is going on today in the universities of Europe and America, in the departments of the humanities? Read Augustine's Anti-Academic writings.

Now before I proceed, there is a list of technical terms. Every philosopher has his own technical term which he uses in a very special way, and which if you want to go deeply into him, you must develop the sense that he uses them exactly as he meant. You can do the same thing for every philosopher in history. Aristotle himself listed his own lexicon as he called it. He can. Each one has his own language, his own terminology, his own term. Technical terms. Now, I give you now a lexicon, I just enumerated it, with a couple of observations on one or two of them, so it's to help you in understanding what you read. And I tell you, these are all very important central notions in the mind of Augustine.

Memory. He wrote a great deal on memory. It's a mystery. Memory is a mystery. No man wrote on time in ancient times more than this man, long before the doctrines of time by Kant in modern times, and Bergson, and Whitehead, and Heidegger. He pondered the mystery of time as deeply as any, more than brighter on that pocket, and much more deeply because he did it in the presence of the Lord.

Providence. Everything is under God's providence. Everything, ladies and gentlemen.

Grace. Well, I said the word about grace in connection with Pelagianism. Grace, my dear friends, is a gift. It's a gift from God. It's always an unmerited gift, including our life. Our life is a grace. Why should we? Why should we exist if it were not for the love of God? Grace.

Next, love. And the important thing about love for Augustine and for all of us Christians who really go deeply into the Bible is that love again is a grace. And that we love only because he loved us. Love is not something that dwells out of our insight. It's something that's given to us. It is a response to his love.

Happiness. He believed in happiness. He believed that the end of life is to be happy. In that sense, he is not a stoic at all. He is not a Kantian. He is not the duty for duty's sake. All the total thing that is spoken about. But we seek happiness. But where do we find it? We never find it in ourselves. We can only find it when we are less than God, in the first sentence of the Confessions states.

The good. The good. Every creature of God is good. Without exception. Because so it says in the first chapter of the Bible. Every creature is good.

But now the devil. What about the devil? The devil is a created spirit who fell. How do people fall? Freely. Nobody pushes them to fall. They decide to fall. So, there you are before the mystery of freedom. And it's a mystery. And don't let anybody fool you to believe that you can solve the problem of freedom. But you can make a few absolutely certain statements that freedom entails responsibility and that we are responsible for our decisions.

The same. Disobedience and rebellion. Obedience to Augustine is the mother of all virtues. All virtues. Pride is the opposite of obedience.

Sin and evil. Sin and evil, you see, are the result of our free fall. We fall freely.

When you and I fall, nobody has pushed us into falling. We just want to fall. We like it. It's delectable. But now he has a very important doctrine which is called the doctrine of evil as a defect. Evil is not a substantial thing in you. It's a defect in you. And therefore, it's remediable, but never by you, but only by you, a creator who created you out of nothing. He can remove that defect from you. Evil is not a substance. It's not a being. It's not a nature because all nature is good. Evil is the result of the fall of man. So, he has a wonderful doctrine entitled the defect, the which you from which you get the word, the lack. Evil is a lack. It's not a positive thing. The privation. Evil is a privation of a substantial being.

Then the notion of nothing. That's a very important technical term. Nothing. We were created from nothing. Not from an antecedent substance that existed, such as matter. Not at all. Matter itself was created from nothing. But now because we are creatures and created from nothing we can fall through freedom and the fall arises from this sort of thing I call lack, which itself comes from nothing. Nothing is a very important notion in Augustine's mind. And you will be surprised that more than discussions of nothing whether they are by Hegel, he certainly discussed it, nothing. The beginning was logic. Or whether they are by Bergson. Or whether they are by Heidegger. All modern discussions of nothing and nothingness, you have no idea how much either they owe directly or indirectly to the discussion of nothing by Augustine.

Then you have as I said freedom and the will. Freedom or the will. And in a moment I'll read you a passage from him on that. But I want not to read the listing of the technical terms.

Predestination. Now ladies and gentlemen predestination troubles the Pelagians. How can you predestinate? How can you be predestined? Well, you are predestined. This is a given fact of life. If you don't believe it, you don't know the Bible. You are not a Pauline. You don't know what Paul was talking about. You don't know what Augustine was talking about. You don't know the teachings of the church. You are predestined. And the number of saints must be completed before Jesus returns. You know why Jesus has not returned? Because the number of saints has not yet been completed. That's Augustinian. Predestination is very important. It's a mystery. It's like freedom. Great mystery. But the Reformers, all of them believed in predestination. And they quarreled with the Catholics because certain doctrines, not based on Augustine, in the Catholic Church, tried to equivocate when it comes to predestination. But the Reformers would never accept that equivocation. Certainly John Marx, after whom this church is not named, but in whose memory it exists, believed in predestination. You can't be a Christian, a reader of the Bible, and play with that idea. You can't do it.

Worship of the creature, which is the source of all misery and sin. Adam fell, the devil who was a shining light in heaven fell because he wanted to worship less than the Creator. Idolatry is a tremendous thing.

The body, another one, I'm listening to you to put you in the world of Augustine. The body is good. The Manichaeans said the body was bad and it was because of all our trouble. It is nonsense, says Augustine. It's marvelous to have this body. It's against our sight and have it strong and live in it and work with it and enjoy it. It's a marvelous thing.

The trouble is not the body at all. The trouble is the will. The trouble is freedom. The trouble is we choose. The trouble is that we worship less than the Creator. The body is good. Therefore, another one, the resurrection of the body. People who tell you that we are going to be floating spirits is nonsense. We are going to be living bodies, only spiritual bodies this time, as Paul would say. What a spiritual body is and what a carnal body is another matter that can be easily discussed. If we discuss it at the next, the resurrection of the body, Christians believe that the bodies are going to be resurrected. And if you want to know how your bodies are going to be when you are resurrected, read the 24th chapter of this book. He collected as much as he could from all the Bible, using his mind, of course. All hints about how our bodies are going to be in the resurrection. Man is body and soul joined together, both. Not one alone, nor the other alone.

Now, of course, textbooks on psychology today never use the word "soul". Never. The word "soul," you don't find the word "soul" in any modern textbook on psychology. And yet, you know, all psychology was founded in a book written by Aristotle called "De Anima," on the soul, the very words here. Psychology, the study of the psyche. And yet, the word "soul" doesn't figure in books on psychology. Now, as Karl Barth repeatedly says in these matters, he says you can omit a thing, but you will slip it back surreptitiously in all sorts of other ways. If you read carefully what these psychologists are saying, you will find that the soul is there. But they don't use that name because they are afraid it will lead them into theological, religious, spiritual connotations. And they hate that. This is the spirit of the age. Everything except that. Man is both soul and body.

Then the whole notion of the two cities. I'll read you a passage on that shortly. The whole notion of the two cities. And that is, of course, the subject of our discussion. The most important. How we got that notion. What it really means in his mind. Then the problem of the Church and the City of God. Are they coextensive? Does the City of God extend beyond the Church? What is the place for the Church in the City of God? All these questions are very intricate.

Then the notion of the pilgrimage of the City of God on this earth. He repeats it everywhere. We are pilgrims, ladies and gentlemen. Those who are predestined are pilgrims on this earth. The notion of being a pilgrim. We are not at home here. Although, of course, although, of course, we are also citizens of one other city. That's the two cities. The City of Man. Now, citizens in the City of Man are not pilgrims. They are at home there. But citizens in the City of God are pilgrims in the City of Man.

Then the notion of, and this is most important, most important. The notion of we are not destined to be alone. We are destined to live in a society, in a community, in a fellowship, in an ecclesia, in an association. We are destined to be part of the "we" and not only "I". I hear people get up and witness and only mention "I". I had this experience, I had that experience and this and that. I wish someday they would start using the "we". We had the experience, the whole society had an experience, the whole group had an experience. Now, to Augustine, the City of God is a society, is an association, is a fellowship.

He keeps repeating the fellowship, the word "hatch." I said you've got to determine exactly its relationship with the Church. I'll say a few things about it. Finally, to understand Augustine, this is the listing of his technical terms or technical structures.

Finally, Augustine is a master in interpreting the Bible allegorically. He is a master over there. He tells you there are four ways in which to interpret the Bible. Every word in the Bible has four ways of being interpreted: the Literal interpretation, the Allegorical interpretation, and two other ways. Then he goes on to tell you which to choose of these four ways for any particular occasion. You can never tell ahead of time. The Holy Spirit will tell you which to choose. You see, he lived always in the presence of the Holy Ghost. When you are meditating on any passage in the Bible, let the Holy Spirit, if you are really holy in the hands of the Holy Spirit, direct you either to allegorize it or to interpret it literally. He was a master at allegorizing.

A gentleman by the name of Bultmann, who came along this century under the influence of Heidegger, he started what is called the de-mythologizing of the Bible. Now, of course, Bultmann is a very learned man. He knows his Augustine very well. And he knows very well that this business of de-mythologizing, and so far, of course, it's used in a pejorative sense when you say "mythologize" or "de-mythologize," he knows very well that Augustine was a master in allegorizing 13 passages of the Bible that admit of allegory. But he will never allegorize, for instance, the fact that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead bodily on the third day. He will never allegorize that, like your liberal purposes here. He will never allegorize the fact that there is heaven and there is hell. He will never allegorize that. He may tell you, allegorically, yes, in our life there is heaven and hell, and he may use all kinds of allegorical ill-effects of how you are in hell and you are in heaven right now, all that sort of thing. But never, never would he doubt that there is a real heaven and a real hell, although he allegorizes whatever the Holy Spirit guides him to allegorize at the time.

Now, I told you, I'll read you a couple of passages. First is about freedom and the will. It's the most important, because some of you have problems with it. Book V, Chapter IX. Book V, Chapter IX. No, not this one. This one. Very brief, but it gives you the setting within which you've got to think about freedom of the will. He says, this is Book V, Chapter X. He says, and the title of the chapter is "Whether Necessity Reigns Over the Will of Men." That's the title of the chapter. Whether necessity reigns over the will of men. Namely, whether we are totally determined. He is discussing the problem of freedom and determinism. Whether necessity reigns over the will of men. And he says, it is not true then, now we then refer to what he has been saying before. I read this passage. It's not true then that there is no reality.