Augustinian Church
I. The Contrasting Assessments of Augustine
Augustine’s place in the history of Christian Apologetics can be dealt with only if we first understand the immensely different assessments that have been given of what lies at the heart of Augustine’s thought. Discovering the heart of Augustine’s thought is difficult. Van Til raises questions that show that discovering the true heart of Augustine’s thinking is hard. He asks if it is possible to discover only one controlling principle in the writings of such a great man. He also asks if Augustine might have failed in his long and active life to have come to a truly and thoroughly consistent position. He concludes that we may have to be satisfied with simply discerning the general direction of Augustine’s thinking.[1] Not surprisingly, according to Van Til, there are two major interpretations of the general direction of Augustine’s thought.
Some think that the direction of Augustine’s life and thought was to make the starting point of philosophy `inward-ness’, the absolute and immediate certainty of consciousness. Augustine did anticipate Descartes when he said: “I fear not the Academic arguments on these truths that say, `What if you err?’ If I err, I am. For he that has no being cannot err, and therefore my error proves my being.”[2] This certainly sounds similar to Descarte’s Cogito ergo sum. [This is Descarte’s famous argument for his own existence. The Latin may be translated, “I think, therefore I am.”] If this view is correct, then Augustine follows Origen and Plotinus (the great Neo-Platonists) by making the starting point of philosophy `inwardness.’ This view would make Augustine the great teacher of the self-sufficiency (autonomy) of the human consciousness.[3]
Windelband argues that, though there is a contradiction in Augustine’s thought, the basic motif of Augustine’s thought is the idea of inwardness. Van Til cites him as saying:
… the rich masses of thought…are in motion in two different directions … As theologian Augustine throughout all his investigations keeps the conception of the Church in mind, as criterion; as philosopher he makes all his ideas centre about the principle of the absolute and immediate certainty … of consciousness. By their double relation to these two fixed postulates, all questions come into active flux. Augustine’s world of thought is like an elliptic system which is constructed by motion about two centres, and this, its inner duality, is frequently that of contradiction. It becomes the task of the history of philosophy to separate from this complicated system those ideas by which Augustine far transcended his time and likewise the immediately following centuries, and became one of the founders of modern thought. All these ideas, however, have their ultimate ground and inner union in the principle of the immediate certainty of inner experience, which Augustine first expressed with complete clearness, and formulated and used as the starting-point of philosophy. Under the influence of the ethical and religious interest, metaphysical interest had become gradually and almost imperceptibly shifted from the sphere of the outer to that of the inner life. Psychical conceptions had taken the place of physical, as the fundamental factors in the conception of the world. It was reserved for Augustine to bring into full and conscious use, this, which had already become an accomplished fact in Origen and Plotinus.[4]
Others think that the whole direction of Augustine’s life and ministry was pointed toward the great doctrine of the sovereignty of God’s grace. In contrast to the first view stands that of Polman, a Reformed theologian. Van Til says:
Polman points out that Augustine’s mature thought is best expressed in the idea of the sovereign grace of God. It is the triune God who, ultimately, determines the final destiny of every human being. Man’s true freedom is found in the obedience he renders to the Christ who speaks to him in Scripture. And it is by the Holy Spirit’s regenerating power alone that sinners accept the salvation offered to them in Christ. It is, moreover, the God of sovereign grace who directs the course of all history.[5]
Van Til points out the breathtaking contrast involved in the two different assessments of Augustine.
Here then we have as sharp a contrast as is conceivable. Windelband thinks of Augustine’s great service as being that of pointing forward to modern philosophy as it concentrates on the self-sufficiency of man. Polman thinks of Augustine’s great service as pointing forward toward the Protestant Reformation as it concentrates on the self-sufficiency of God and his revelation in Christ.[6]
Van Til underscores this contrast in another way in the following paragraph:
According to Windelband, Augustine’s contribution lies in the fact that he points forward to Descartes; according to Polman, Augustine’s main contribution lies in the fact that he points forward to Calvin.[7]
II. The Contradictory Currents in Augustine’s Thought
What is the reason for such drastically different evaluations of Augustine? They exist because there really were different and contradictory currents flowing in the river of Augustine’s thought. Warfield says, “If we cannot quite allow that there were in very truth many Augustines, we must at least recognize that within the one Augustine there were various and not always consistent currents flowing, each of which has its part to play in the future.”[8] Warfield also speaks of “the only gradual crystallization of his thought around his really formative ideas” and adds “not even at death had perfect consistency been attained in his teaching.”[9] Van Til’s response to this matter is similar to that of Warfield. He says that there was genuine inconsistency in the thought of Augustine himself, an inconsistency of which Augustine himself was never fully aware, but that “Augustine’s mature thought” (to use Polman’s words) shows that his deepest commitment was to the concept of grace (the self-sufficiency of God) and not the idea of inwardness (the self-sufficiency of man). He cites Warfield’s assessment of Augustine:
Our answer may be couched in the words of B. B. Warfield: “Two children were struggling in the womb of his mind. There can be no doubt which was the child of his heart. His doctrine of the Church he had received whole from his predecessors, and he gave it merely the precision and vitality which insured its persistence. His doctrine of grace was all his own: it represented the very core of his being; and his whole progress in Christian thinking consists in the growing completeness with which its fundamental principles applied themselves in his mind to every department of life and thought.”[10]
Warfield here refers to the difference between Romanism and the Reformation. We would extend Warfield’s illustration to the difference between the principle of autonomy [self-sufficiency] that lies back of all Greek and modern philosophy on the one hand and the authority of the self-attesting Christ. Augustine’s basic commitment, even in his early writings, was to the self-attesting Christ.[11]
Three things must be said about these contrasting evaluations of Augustine. First, their basis was that there were, indeed, contradictory currents in Augustine. Second, Augustine’s basic commitments were to the self-attesting Christ and the doctrine of grace. Third, Augustine himself was not fully aware of his own inconsistency.
First, the basis of these contrasting evaluations was that there were, indeed, contradictory currents in Augustine. In order to illustrate this Van Til makes reference to Augustine’s early book On Free Will written against the Manichees. It is interesting to contrast this early work with the one entitled On Grace and Free Will written against the Pelagians at the end of his life. On Free Will clearly assumes the self-sufficient man of Neo-Platonism. On Grace and Free Will just as clearly assumes the self-sufficient God of Christianity. Van Til shows that the first work is deeply stained with Platonic philosophy. Within its pages Augustine uses Platonic philosophy to explain the origin of evil and solve the problem of evil. Basically, Augustine argues that evil is non-being. Man is evil only because he hovers on the brink of non-being.
Here is Augustine’s argument: “And then as to the man who chooses evil, what shall we say of him? How did he originate evil since “truth and wisdom are common to all”? Man’s very being involves participation in form and we admitted “that every form was good”. What then is the cause of evil? Is God? Of course not. We do not know. “That which is nothing cannot be known.” “Take away all good, and absolutely nothing will remain. All good is from God. Hence there is no natural existence which is not from God. Now that movement of `aversion,’ which we admit is sin, is a defective movement; and all defect comes from nothing. Observe where it belongs and you will have no doubt that it does not belong to God. Because that defective movement is voluntary, it is placed within our power. If you fear it, all you have to do is simply not to will it. If you do not will it, it will not exist. What can be more secure than to live a life where nothing can happen to you which you do not will.” [12]
Van Til’s opinion of such argumentation follows:
Are we then, we ask, to follow Origen? Is God to be presented as creating men with equal capacity leaving the final determination of their destiny to themselves? And is Plato going to rule over us instead of Christ? Are we to lose the integration of our personality that we have in Christ by a vain effort at understanding that ends in blind faith? Must I, created in the image of the triune God, having rebelled against my maker but having been saved by him as my redeemer, now think of myself as hovering near the realm of non-being, not able to sin or to be saved?
Augustine does indeed employ the idea of the scale of being in order by it to suggest something of an explanation of the idea of human freedom, and with it of the possibility of the entrance of evil into the world….”Therefore, it is true to say that any nature, so far as it is such, is good.”
Herewith we have reached the bottom of the ladder. Man is good. If he has any being he is good and has truth. So long as he has being and is good he cannot do evil. And he always has and will have being and be good. So he will never originate evil.
Whence comes the evil? It has no positive cause. It comes from a “defective movement.” And “because that defective movement is voluntary, it is placed within our power.” Thus evil must originate from man so far as he participates both in being and in non-being. And herewith the Platonic dilemma earlier noted appears at its baldest. If man has any being and any knowledge he is deiform [the form of deity‑-SW]. As such he need ask no questions and can do no wrong. On the other hand so far as man has no being and no knowledge he cannot know himself and can do nothing. A purely rationalist principle of unity and purely irrationalist principle of diversity cross each other out and even as they do they are supposed to account for human nature.[13]
Rather than seeing the contradiction between the two writings, Augustine defends the fact that On Free Will says little about grace. Van Til notes: “In his Retractations he thinks of himself as having omitted all discussion of grace only because it was not then in order to do so.”
Van Til then traces the gradually emerging dominance of grace through the writings of Augustine. At the same time he points out place after place where Augustine is profoundly influenced by Neo-Platonism. In The City of God, though there is some progress toward a right understanding of grace and predestination, there is still a very appreciative note regarding Plato.
And then listen to what he says about Plato. “It is evident,” he says, “that none come nearer to us than the Platonists.” “For those who are praised as having most closely followed Plato, who is justly preferred to all the other philosophers of the Gentiles …. It is Greek theism…that Augustine confuses with his own biblical conception of providence. This is a falling back on the Neo-Platonism by which at first he tried to justify his faith as rational, by which he sought to explain the origin of evil ….[14]
Second, Augustine’s basic commitments were to the self-attesting Christ and the doctrine of grace. The greatest support of this assessment of Augustine is that Augustine’s development of his doctrine of grace in the anti-Pelagian writings is the emphasis of his latest and most mature thought. The books in which Augustine’s doctrine comes to its ripest and clearest expression are his last ones, shortly before his death.
- On Grace and Free Will: 426-427
- On Rebuke and Grace: 426-427
- On the Predestination of the Saints: 428-429
- On the Gift of Perseverance: 428-429
The contrast between the two assessments of Augustine under discussion is in part a contrast between the earlier and the later Augustine. The earlier Augustine has been described shortly after his conversion as “really a Neo-platonic Christian recluse committed to Neo-platonic contemplation.”[15] This description is confirmed by Augustine’s actions shortly after his conversion. Augustine, with his friends, resolved to return to Africa in order to form a community. This community combined the two ideals of cultured philosophical retirement and the “Christian” monastic society.
Third, Augustine himself was not fully aware of his own inconsistency. The growing clarity of Augustine’s teaching on grace toward the end of his life does not mean that Augustine had achieved complete consistency by the end of his life or that he was even aware of how inconsistent he was. Augustine never did clearly see how alien to Christianity much of the argumentation in On Free Will actually was. Here are Van Til’s comments on Augustine’s statements about his book On Free Will in his Retractations.
In his Retractations Augustine speaks of the Pelagians as a “new brand of heretics who assert the freedom of the will in such a way as to leave no room for the grace of God …. ” But there is no more room in Plato’s view of freedom than there is in that of Pelagius. Augustine did not realize this adequately even after his own doctrine of grace was developed. He says in his Retractations that he had not been “completely silent about the grace of God” in his work On Free Will. He even adds: You see that long before the Pelagian heresy emerged, I disputed as if I were already arguing against it.” Says Burleigh: “Augustine’s defence is not altogether convincing …. ” We agree.
III. The Conflicting Interpretations of Augustine’s Apologetics
Credo Ut Intelligam is a Latin phrase which means, “I believe in order to understand.” It summarizes Augustine’s approach to the relation of the Christian faith to reason. In so doing it is the embodiment of his approach to a rational defense of the faith or Apologetics.
An understanding of what Augustine meant by this (“I believe in order to understand.”) will make clear both the contribution of Augustine to Apologetics and the ambiguity or vagueness of Augustine’s defense of the faith. On the one hand, this phrase makes plain that it is legitimate and proper to believe before reasoned argument. Faith knows on the basis of testimony, that is to say, divine revelation. Without rational arguments men know by nature that there is a God. Therefore, it must simply be believed. As the Scripture says, “he who comes to God must believe that He is.” Says Gordon H. Clark:
Augustine certainly does not begin with physical motion and laboriously argue to an unmoved mover, though he does offer what probably seemed to him not only a convincing but a conclusive demonstration. But it is not the difficult series of syllogisms that Aristotle offered, for Augustine thinks it so easy to prove God’s existence that he does not use extreme care to produce formal validity. Nor does he place the same weight on rational demonstration that Aristotle has done. There is a more natural way to begin. It is natural because all men know there is a God; such knowledge is inseparable from the human spirit. And if some fools say in their heart there is no God, theirs is a willful ignorance; God is still present to their minds, if they would but pay attention. Rather than beginning with rational proof, Augustine chose the way of faith, and in doing so he raised the problem of the relation of faith to reason.
To the secular mind reason and faith are antithetical, the former good and the latter intellectually dishonest. How dishonest then must all secular minds be! Faith is not something strange or irrational, used only in accepting divine revelation; it is an indispensable mental activity. Faith is the acceptance of a proposition as true on the testimony of witnesses …. Nearly all the contents of even the most secular mind are matters of faith. Augustine uses this illustration. A young man believes that a certain older man is his father on the testimony of his mother; and even the identity of the mother is a matter of faith …. Granted that faith is not direct knowledge, still it is not irrational. It is not blind. There are reasons for believing a witness. If a man had never seen the walls of Carthage, it might be irrational to take his word as to their height. But if he is an eyewitness and if he is trustworthy, faith in him is neither unnatural nor unreasonable. In fact, not only is most so-called knowledge faith, but also there can be no knowledge in the strict sense without faith. Our parents and teachers tell us things, and we believe them. Later in life we may reason out some of this information for ourselves. But we could not have obtained the later understanding without the prior faith; and Augustine formulates a sort of motto, which St. Anselm afterward borrowed: credo ut intelligam‑-I believe in order to understand. Understanding as the goal is superior to faith as the starting point; but the start must be made …. The application of this view to the existence of God is that the apostles were eyewitnesses of Christ; both they and he attested their divine message by miracles; and the message informs us that God exists.[16]
This emphasis on faith and man’s natural knowledge of God is Augustine’s contribution to Christian apologetics. Taken together with his emphasis on the sovereignty of divine grace, it points the direction toward a consistently Christian defense of the faith.
On the other hand, Augustine affirms that it is possible to reach the knowledge of God without faith in the Bible. Gordon H. Clark remarks:
Once a person has divested himself of pride so as to believe this message, he can advance to a rational proof of God’s existence. In fact, although faith of some sort is prior to all reasoned knowledge, faith in the Bible is not a necessary prerequisite for avoiding skepticism, learning mathematics, or even proving God’s existence. Though not a necessary prerequisite, it is the easiest way, none the less; and we must remember that the eternal destiny of individuals, most of whom are not philosophers, is too important to hang on the accidents of formal education.[17]
Natural theology means proving that God exists and other truths about God and men from reason and nature without the Bible. Augustine clearly teaches that natural theology is proper and may act as a preamble or preparation for faith in the case of some men. In this, Van Til argues, Augustine betrays an insensitivity to the intellectual (noetic) effects of sin and his own insights on divine grace.
In his theology of grace Augustine has expressed better than any one before him the fact that at the beginning of history Adam and through Adam all men fell into sin and became thereby spiritually blinded to the truth. But as noted above in his early writing Augustine speaks all too often as though the Greeks and especially Plato had not suffered the noetic effects of sin. Are they not, as Paul tells us in Rom. 5:12, seeking to suppress the fact that they are creatures of God and responsible to him? Is not Plato’s idea of man as inherently participant in divinity a virtual denial of man’s creatureliness and sinfulness? Is not Plato’s idea of the inner man who seeks eternal rather than temporal things still the unregenerate man seeking to suppress the voice of revelation that speaks to him and challenges him to obedience in every fact of nature and history? And is not Plato’s Socrates who wants to understand, that is, penetrate the concept of the truth, regardless of what gods or men say about it, the very paradigm of the principle of autonomy?[18]
Thus, on the one hand Augustine points the way to a consistently Christian apologetic. On the other hand, he lays the foundation at the same time for the classical Roman Catholic system of apologetics. Despite all his inconsistency (inconsistency which Augustine himself did not recognize) there emerges in him an explicitly biblical view of free will, sin, and grace.[19] Thus, biblical views of God and man lay the foundation for a biblical apologetic.
Yet, such is the influence of Neo-Platonism upon Augustine that the fruits of his insights must wait a thousand years to bear fruit in a biblical apologetic. Roman Catholics, therefore, have some reason because of this inconsistency to claim Augustine. Says Van Til:
The Roman Catholics claim Augustine as one of their great fathers, chiefly because of the fact that in his doctrine of the church Augustine seems to favor their view rather than that of the Reformers. We cannot discuss this point. Warfield holds that on the church Augustine held to the traditional view and did not do really reformatory work.
However, one further point may be mentioned. The theology of grace of Augustine is obviously opposed to the semi-Pelagianism which, though officially rejected, yet informs most of the theology of Romanism. And then, too, the Romanists may appeal to the remnants of Neo-Platonism in Augustine so as to justify their own construction of a natural theology as a foundation for revealed theology. And as Pelagius appealed to Augustine’s earlier writings in justification for his own view of the human will with some plausibility, so Romanism may do the same. In short, so far as Augustine had not attained to his own mature theology of grace so far a plausible appeal may be made by Romanism to him as one of their fathers.
We must now turn to that Medieval blend or synthesis of faith and natural reason (Greek philosophy) which claimed as its father this same Augustine. After we have looked at the Apologetic developed by the great doctor of Medieval theology, Thomas Aquinas, we will turn to the Reformation which rejected this blend or synthesis on the basis of Augustine’s doctrine of grace.
[1]Van Til, Conflict, 110. Van Til remarks: “Granted then the unexcelled greatness of the man we naturally inquire as to the leading motif of his life. But is it really possible to speak of any such thing as an all-controlling principle in the literary corpus of this great mind? Was he not too great a mind to be bound by any system. And did not Augustine’s thought develop and change as he grew older?
These questions suggest that if we are to understand anything of Augustine at all we shall do best to follow him as he struggled with himself to find himself in his relation to his environment in the course of a long and extremely active life. Our basic question may well be as to the direction in which Augustine was working.”
[2]De Civitate Dei, XI, 26; cf. De Libero Arbitrio, II, 3).
[3]Van Til, Conflict, 111.
[4]Ibid.
[5]Ibid.
[6]Van Til, Conflict, 111-112.
[8]B. B. Warfield, Studies in Tertullian and Augustine (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981) 119.
[9]Warfield, Tertullian and Augustine, 117.
[10]B. B. Warfield, Studies in Tertullian and Augustine (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981) 119.
[11]Van Til, Conflict, 122.
[12]Van Til, Conflict, 147.
[13]Ibid.
[14]Van Til, Conflict, 147.
[15]Robert Letham, unpublished lectures.
[16]Clark, Thales, 226, 227.
[17]Clark, Thales, 226-227.
[18]Van Til, Conflict, 130.
[19]Van Til, Conflict, 116. Van Til cites Adolph Harnack himself as his witness to this fact. “Harnack himself our witness says that it must be said that the sovereign grace of God first found its open and unreserved expression in Augustine.”
Dr. Sam Waldron is the Academic Dean of CBTS and professor of Systematic Theology. He is also one of the pastors of Grace Reformed Baptist Church in Owensboro, KY. Dr. Waldron received a B.A. from Cornerstone University, an M.Div. from Trinity Ministerial Academy, a Th.M. from Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. From 1977 to 2001 he was a pastor of the Reformed Baptist Church of Grand Rapids, MI. Dr. Waldron is the author of numerous books including A Modern Exposition of the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, The End Times Made Simple, Baptist Roots in America, To Be Continued?, and MacArthur’s Millennial Manifesto: A Friendly Response.
