commit the care of my sick soul.» ‡
In Milan he was joined by his mother, who had a powerful influence in hastening the last steps to his conversion. She was a very earnest Catholic, and he writes of her always in a tone of reverence. She was the more important to him at this time, because Ambrose was too busy to converse with him privately.
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* Confessions, Bk. II, Ch. VII.
€ Ibid., Bk. V, Ch. X.
â
€ Ibid., Bk. V, Ch. XIV. ¡
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There is a very interesting chapter * in which he compares the Platonic philosophy with Christian doctrine. The Lord, he says, at this time provided him with «certain books of the Platonists, translated from Greek into Latin. And therein I read, not indeed in these words, but to the same purpose, enforced by many and diverse reasons, that ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God: the same was in the beginning with God; all things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made: that which was made by Him is life, and the life was the light of men, and the light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.’ And that the soul of man, though it ‘bears witness to the light,’ yet itself ‘is not that light,’ but God, the Word of God, ‘is that true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.’ And that ‘He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not.’ But that’ He came unto His own, and His own received Him not; but as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His Name’: this I read not there.» He also did not read there that «The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us»; nor that «He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross»; nor that «at the name of Jesus every knee should bow.»
Broadly speaking, he found in the Platonists the metaphysical doctrine of the Logos, but not the doctrine of the Incarnation and the consequent doctrine of human salvation. Something not unlike these doctrines existed in Orphism and the other mystery religions; but of this Saint Augustine appears to have been ignorant. In any case, none of these were connected with a comparatively recent historical event, as Christianity was.
As against the Manichæans, who were dualists, Augustine came to believe that evil originates not from some substance, but from perverseness of will.
He found especial comfort in the writings of Saint Paul. â€
At length, after passionate inward struggles, he was converted (386); he gave up his professorship, his mistress, and his bride, and,
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* Confessions, Bk. VII, Ch. IX.
€ Ibid., Bk. VII, Ch. XXI.
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after a brief period of meditation in retirement, was baptized by Saint Ambrose. His mother rejoiced, but died not long afterwards. In 388 he returned to Africa, where he remained for the rest of his life, fully occupied with his episcopal duties and with controversial writings against various heresies, Donatist, Manichæan, and Pelagian,
CHAPTER IV Saint Augustine’s Philosophy and Theology
SAINT AUGUSTINE was a very voluminous writer, mainly on theological subjects. Some of his controversial writing was topical, and lost interest through its very success; but some of it, especially what is concerned with the Pelagians, remained practically influential down to modern times. I do not propose to treat his works exhaustively, but only to discuss what seems to me important, either intrinsically or historically. I shall consider:
First: his pure philosophy, particularly his theory of time;
Second: his philosophy of history, as developed in The City of God;
Third: his theory of salvation, as propounded against the Pelagians.
I. PURE PHILOSOPHY
Saint Augustine, at most times, does not occupy himself with pure philosophy, but when he does he shows very great ability. He is the first of a long line whose purely speculative views are influenced by the necessity of agreeing with Scripture. This cannot be said of earlier Christian philosophers, e.g., Origen; in Origen, Christianity
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and Platonism lie side by side, and do not interpenetrate. In Saint Augustine, on the other hand, original thinking in pure philosophy in stimulated by the fact that Platonism, in certain respects, is not in harmony with Genesis.
The best purely philosophical work in Saint Augustine’s writings is the eleventh book of the Confessions. Popular editions of the Confessions end with Book X, on the ground that what follows is uninteresting; it is uninteresting because it is good philosophy, not biography. Book XI is concerned with the problem: Creation having occurred as the first chapter of Genesis asserts, and as Augustine maintains against the Manichæans, it should have occurred as soon as possible. So he imagines an objector arguing.
The first point to realize, if his answer is to be understood, is that creation out of nothing, which was taught in the Old Testament, was an idea wholly foreign to Greek philosophy. When Plato speaks of creation, he imagines a primitive matter to which God gives form; and the same is true of Aristotle. Their God is an artificer or architect, rather than a Creator. Substance is thought of as eternal and uncreated; only form is due to the will of God. As against this view, Saint Augustine maintains, as every orthodox Christian must, that the world was created not from any certain matter, but from nothing. God created substance, not only order and arrangement.
The Greek view, that creation out of nothing is impossible, has recurred at intervals in Christian times, and has led to pantheism. Pantheism holds that God and the world are not distinct, and that everything in the world is part of God. This view is developed most fully in Spinoza, but is one to which almost all mystics are attracted. It has thus happened, throughout the Christian centuries, that mystics have had difficulty in remaining orthodox, since they find it hard to believe that the world is outside God. Augustine, however, feels no difficulty on this point; Genesis is explicit, and that is enough for him. His view on this matter is essential to his theory of time.
Why was the world not created sooner? Because there was no «sooner». Time was created when the world was created. God is eternal, in the sense of being timeless; in God there is no before and after, but only an eternal present. God’s eternity is exempt from the relation of time; all time is present to Him at once. He did not precede His own creation of time, for that would imply that He was
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in time, whereas He stands eternally outside the stream of time. This leads Saint Augustine to a very admirable relativistic theory of time.
«What, then, is time?» he asks. «If no one asks of me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not.» Various difficulties perplex him. Neither past nor future, he says, but only the present, really is; the present is only a moment, and time can only be measured while it is passing. Nevertheless, there really is time past and future. We seem here to be led into contradictions. The only way Augustine can find to avoid these contradictions is to say that past and future can only be thought of as present: «past» must be identified with memory, and «future» with expectation, memory and expectation being both present facts. There are, he says, three times: «a present of things past, a present of things present, and a present of things future.» «The present of things past is memory; the present of things present is sight; and the present of things future is expectation.» * To say that there are three times, past, present, and future, is a loose way of speaking.
He realizes that he has not really solved all difficulties by this theory. «My soul yearns to know this most entangled enigma,» he says, and he prays to God to enlighten him, assuring Him that his interest in the problem does not arise from vain curiosity. «I confess to Thee, O Lord, that I am as yet ignorant what time is.» But the gist of the solution he suggests is that time is subjective: time is in the human mind, which expects, considers, and remembers. †It follows that there can be no time without a created being, ‡ and that to speak of time before the Creation is meaningless.
I do not myself agree with this theory, in so far as it makes time something mental. But it is clearly a very able theory, deserving to be seriously considered. I should go further, and say that it is a great advance on anything to be found on the subject in Greek philosophy. It contains a better and clearer statement than Kant’s of the subjective theory of time—a theory which, since Kant, has been widely accepted among philosophers.
The theory that time is only an aspect of our thoughts is one of the most extreme forms of that subjectivism which, as we have seen,
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* Confessions, Ch. XX.
€ Ibid., Ch. XXVIII.
â
€ Ibid., Ch. XXX. ¡
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gradually increased in antiquity from the time
