How St. Augustine Helped Defeat the Good News

We need look no farther than the general thrust of Augustine and Aquinas to find substantial assistance to a church that would avoid the manifest implications of the good news.

Three ideas to which Augustine gave voice may be said to form the foundation of the Holy Roman declension of Christianity.

Idea One - The Devil

Augustine enshrines in his work the notion of Satan and of devils in general -- of a principle of evil outside the person to which ill-fortune, capitulation to temptation, diabolical behavior and all manner of sin can be attributed. Jesus' holistic teaching did away with the "reality" of Satan.

We have already alluded to the probability that Jesus came to overcome all of the pathologies that result from a dualistic understanding. Nonetheless, by acting as though there is no question of Satan's continuing reality, Augustine helped to establish a course by which anything approaching a notion of a city of God upon this planet was at best a chimera and at worst a vain imagining for which Satan was responsible.

Idea Two - Justified Violence

In "The City of God", Augustine justifies violence in an almost off-handed, but certainly comprehensive, way.

First he states that "he to whom authority (to kill) is delegated ... is but the sword ... in the hand of him who uses it (authority) ... [and therefore] is not himself responsible for the death he deals."

This is a familiar argument that, by implication, makes exercise of individual conscience and religiously motivated personal responsibility impossible.

It hallows the concept of the authority and thus gives religious sanction to both nationalism and the military chain of command.

Augustine assumes also that one wages war "in obedience to the divine command."

While some justification for this interpretation might be found in portions of the Old Testament (though the prophet Mikiah is always a felicitous exception to the bellicose rule), there is none whatsoever in Jesus' declension of the law.

Still soldiers who kill have not, says Augustine, "violated the commandment, 'Thou shalt not kill.'" (The Kingdom of God, Book One, Chapter 21)

Idea Three Creed Trumps Peacemaking

From Augustine's presuppositions flow a chain of corollaries which, to this day, continue to confound the Beatitudinal ethic of Jesus, in particular his blessing of peacemakers.

Beyond a wholesale authentication of the dualism of good-evil, God-Satan and an almost casual condoning of official killing, Augustine also did much to suggest that practice does not hold a candle to creedal affirmation.

Let us read with some care the following from Book One of "The City of God".

Augustine is wondering why, during the recent sack of Rome, barbarians showed themselves to be gentle victors, filling the largest churches in the city with persons to whom they gave quarter.

He states that "in them none were slain, from them none forcibly dragged; ... and ... none led into slavery ... Far be it for any prudent man to impute this clemency to the barbarians. Their fierce and bloody minds were awed, and bridled, and marvelously tempered by Him who so long before said by his prophet, 'I will visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquities with stripes' nevertheless my loving-kindness will I not utterly take from them.'"

Augustine continues: "Will someone say, Why, then, was this divine compassion extended even to the ungodly and ungrateful? Why, because it was the mercy of Him who daily maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good ... Therefore, though good and bad men suffer alike, we must not suppose that there is no difference between the men themselves ... Stirred up with the same movement, mud exhales a horrible stench, and ointment emits a fragrant odor." (Chapters 7, 8 passim)

It is not a misrepresentation of Augustine to say that he lays the groundwork for a full-blown Christian triumphalism.

Abba's Way

Abbas way is tolerance, helpfulness, democracy and non-idolatry.

And daily meditation on the prayer that Jesus taught the whole world to say.

Abba whose home in heaven is
Hallowed and holy is your name
Let your realm come your will be done
Till earth and heaven are the same

Give us this day our daily bread
Forgive the wrongs that we have done
As we forgive those who do wrong
Lead us not into temptation

Deliver us from evil Lord
And safely guide us to your shore
Yours is the power to heal and mend
Yours is the glory evermore

This is not the way that Augustine helped to establish.

How St. Augustine Helped Defeat The Good News