Archibald Robertson

“ Possidius, as Loofs has excellently remarked, shews himself saturated by the consciousness that he is erecting a lasting memorial to a great historical personage.
Without doubt Augustine is the most commanding religious personality of the early church. No Christian writer since the apostolic age has bequeathed to us so deep an insight into the working of a character penetrated with the love of God, none has struck deeper into the heart of religion in man. ”

“ Augustine pressed Pelagius with the implications of sacramental grace. If free will is as complete as Pelagius believed, sacraments are in reality superfluous as means of grace. If sacramental grace is as real as Pelagius admitted it to be, then man depends for his salvation not upon his own free will, but upon the gift of God. Augustine, assuming the church doctrine of sacramental grace, gave it a deeper meaning and a wider context, and brought it into close relation with the almost forgotten Pauline categories of sin, faith, justification, and the gratia Christi (see Reuter, pp. 40‒45) . ”

“ We saw above (§ 10) by what steps he was led, from the inward recognition of the sovereignty of grace in his personal life, to the logical conclusion that salvation depends upon the Divine will irrespective of merit or of anything which takes place on earth. Membership of the church, a holy life, use of the means of grace, may be indispensable to the predestined; but they are in no sense conditions of predestination, which is absolute. They depend on it, not it on them. Even the historical work of Christ is secondary to the Divine purpose to save some and "pass over" the rest of mankind. ”

“ It is easy to see that this idealism, taken by itself, tends to lower the importance of everything that takes place in time, of everything empirical and historical, in comparison with the transcendent being and unchangeable will of God, in which nothing "takes place," but all is eternally, immovably real. In Augustine this idealism did not stand alone; but under all his passionate appreciation of the church and the historical elements of Christianity there is in the background, as a limiting influence, the appeal to the view of things sub specie aeterni ”

“ Even, then, with regard to the authority of councils there is no real finality; Augustine sees, like Julius of Rome in 340 (see the writer's Roman Claims to Supremacy, iii. ad fin.) , no remedy but the revision of earlier councils by later. Clearly we have here no complete system of thought. Augustine falls back on the sensus catholicus, a real and valuable criterion, but not easy to bring within a logical definition. The church is infallible, but he cannot point to an absolutely infallible organ of her authority. ”

“ His answer, that the unbaptized infant is excluded, not from eternal life, but only from the kingdom of heaven, was a relic of Milleniarism with which the Eastern church had even less sympathy than the West. Pelagius allowed that man can do no good thing without the grace of God. ”

“ The number of the predestined is irrevocably fixed, and this certus numerus constitute the church as it will be in the perfect Kingdom of God. The church on earth, viewed as it is in God's sight, in its true "being," consists of the elect and of them alone. The old Catholic axiom extra ecclesiam nulla salus thus acquires a new and unlooked-for meaning: out of the number of the elect there is no salvation. This is the Augustinian doctrine of the communion of saints, which stands in contrast with the externa communio or visible church as the invisible reality with the semi-real phenomenon. ”

“ Paul's Epistles, he went on to talk to his friends of the wonderful history of the hermit Anthony, whose ascetic life had begun from hearing in church a passage of the gospel (Matt. xix. 21) , on which he had promptly acted; he then described the spread of the monastic movement, and informed his astonished hearers that even at Milan there was a monastery in existence. As Pontitianus told his tale, Augustine was filled with self-reproach. Conscience shamed him that after ten years of study he was still carrying a burden which men wearied by no research had already cast aside. ”

“ At all times, he writes, since the world began, the same faith has been revealed to men, at one time more obscurely, at another more plainly, as the circumstances altered; but what we now call the Christian religion is but the clearest revelation of a religion as old as the world. Never has its offer of salvation been withheld from those who were worthy of it (see references, Reuter, p. 91 n) , even though they may not be (like Job, etc.) ”

“ She has catholica veritas, but never as ultimate truth that man can explicitly grasp. To the church, as to the individual, it may be said, "ut et tu sis, transcende tempus." Ideally, authority is but the "door" to reason; authority is for the babes, the stulti, who are not the type of mature Christian growth. The intelligendi vivacitas is for the paucissimi, the credendi simplicitas is safest for the turba (c. Ep. Fund. 5) . But Augustine does not press these thoughts to their full issue. ”

“ The Pelagians, who naturally insisted on human effort as a condition of salvation, took a severer view of wealth than did Augustine (Epp. 157, 18632, divites baptizatos, sqq.) . He combats them on Biblical grounds: Dives and Lazarus, the rich Abraham, the rich young man, the camel and the needle's eye, St. Paul's charge to the rich in this world; but his treatment of the question is not constructively built on first principles. He perceives that it is the spirit, not the mere fact of riches or poverty that is all-important ”

“ The recognition of the validity of Donatist orders and sacraments was imposed upon Augustine by the settled judgment of the Catholic church, especially of the council of Arles, in 314 (Can. xiii., cf. viii., rejecting the Cyprianic view) . But he clearly found it difficult to grasp habitually the distinction between the "Spiritus Sanctus," the agent in every "valid" sacrament (="gratia gratis data") , and the "Spiritus caritatis," which makes the sacrament a means of grace ("gratum faciens") to the Catholic recipient. ”

“ The question at issue went behind these points to the spiritual conditions necessary to the saving efficacy of means of grace. This exists, argued Augustine, only in the Catholic church. The baptism and orders of the Donatists were valid sacramentally, but useless spiritually. In a sense, the Holy Spirit operates in schismatical sacraments, so that a convert to the Catholic church will not be re-baptized or re-ordained. But it is only in the Catholic church that the Spirit operates, as the Spirit of peace and love. ”

“ God shows mercy on no man in vain; but on whom He has mercy, him He calls in such sort as He knows to be fitted for him [congruere] , so that He does not reject him that calleth." Here we have the essential of the "Augustinian" doctrine of grace, the distinction of the vocatio congrua and vocatio non congrua ("Illi enim electi qui congruenter vocati " ) , formulated more than fifteen years before the Pelagian controversy began (see also Loofs, pp. 279‒280, who shows in detail that Augustine's whole later position is virtually contained in de Div. Quaest. ad Simplician.) ”

“ But the drift of church feeling was too strong for this thought to prevail. Augustine and Pelagius were agreed that monks as a class must rank above "secular" Christians; widely removed as Augustine was from the Pelagian idea of merit, yet practically he often subordinates the importance of the inward to the outward, of character to works. But monks must live, and, as we have seen, Augustine would have them work. To "take no thought for the morrow" means to seek first the Kingdom of God ”

“ This "Christian communism," it may be remarked in passing, differs from that of Proudhon ("la propriété c’est le vol") as the duty to give differs from the right to take. In one point Augustine takes the opposite view to Ambrose, namely, in the theory of church property. Ambrose, in his resistance to the action of the empress Justina, who attempted to transfer the church at Milan to the Arian bishop, anticipated the medieval theory of the absolute right of the church to ecclesiastical property, a right with which the emperor, who is intra ecclesiam, may not presume to tamper. ”

“ In that cent. the influx of heathen society into the church threatened her distinctive character as a holy society. The monastic ideal of life, with its corollary of a double standard of Christian morality—baleful as the latter was in its effects—was probably the church's then only possible response to the challenge of a momentous peril. Augustine introduced monachism into North Africa, and its spread there was rapid. In Hippo it was compulsory for the clergy. At first, Augustine permitted a "secular" clergy, but toward the end of his life the permission was revoked. ”

“ The Catholics, in reply, insist on the fact that the church throughout the world is on their side, and that the Donatists are, by their separation, offenders against the bond of charity which maintains the peace and unity of the church: "Una est columba mea, speciosa mea" (Cant. vi. 9) .
(b) Earlier History of Donatists.—It is not necessary here to detail the phases through which the controversy had passed in the nearly three generations which preceded the episcopate of Augustine, nor to unravel the intricate charges and counter-charges which encumber the real principles at issue. ”

“ On the whole, Augustine's tone and attitude towards the pagans is dignified and conciliatory (Epp. 133, etc.) , but he shares in the general responsibility for persecution which must be allotted to the churchmen of this degenerate age.
In 408 and 409 the Goths, under Alaric, had laid siege to Rome, and after long and fruitless negotiations, the city was taken and sacked on Aug. 24, 410. The sack of Rome, in its direct effects, was but an incident in the profound abasement of the empire in the miserable reign of Honorius. ”

“ Early Christian Life. Death of Monnica. Return to Africa. Life as a Layman (387‒391) .—While waiting for baptism at Milan, Augustine had written a short book, de Immortalitate Animae, and the first part, de Grammatica, of a work on the "liberal arts": the latter, though included by Possidius in his list of Augustine's literary remains, was early lost by him (Retr. I. vi.) . After the baptism, Augustine, with Alypius, and Evodius, a fellow-townsman, converted before Augustine himself, who had joined him at Milan, set out for Africa, with the intention of continuing their common life. ”

“ Even building he left to his clergy, only interfering if the plans seemed extravagant. If the annual accounts shewed a deficit, he would announce to the Christian people that he had nothing left to spend on the poor. Sometimes he would have church plate melted to relieve the poor or ransom prisoners. His clergy lived with him, and no one who joined them was permitted to retain any property of his own. If one of them swore at table, one of the regulation number of cups of wine (these were strictly limited, even for visitors) was cut off by way of fine. Women, even near relatives, were excluded. ”

“ Its sense is, moreover, wholly altered in the utterance invented for Augustine by some Roman Catholic apologists: Roma locuta est, et causa finita est. It occurred to no one in those days to put any bishop, even of an apostolic see, above a council, although there are signs at Rome of a tendency to work the Sardican canons in that direction. Augustine experienced, as we have seen, a signal, and to him especially galling, papal blunder in the action of Zosimus with reference to the Pelagians. ”

“ Augustine bases this on the temptation to misuse of wealth; this would tend to place the man who uses his wealth well and wisely, overcoming temptation, in God's service, higher than him who evades the trial. ”

“ To him, as to many in most diverse conditions, they seemed to interpret the depths of his soul and the inmost experiences of his life (Conf. IX. iv.) . But Augustine's main intellectual interest was still philosophical. Except when engaged upon the classics with his pupils, or on fine days in country pursuits ("in rebus rusticis ordinandis," c. Acad. I. v. 14; cf. II. iv. 10) , the time was spent in discussing the philosophy of religion and life. ”

“ Theistic Transcendentalism.—The passion of theism was the core of his personal religion. His was an experimental theism, a theism of the heart. The often quoted words, "Tu Domine fecisti nos ad te, et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te" (Conf. I. i.) , sum up his inmost personal experience. This is, above all, what Augustine found in the Psalms, which were his introduction to the deeper study of Scripture (supra, § 6) . "Mihi autem adhaerere Deo bonum est" (Ps. lxxii. 28, Vulg.) is the immovable centre upon which his whole religion and theology turns. ”

“ A stringent law, passed apparently at the instance of the provincial council at Carthage, of which Augustine was not a member, ordered rigorous penalties against all the offenders, and against conniving officials. Alarmed by the state of the empire, the ministers of Honorius appear to have relaxed for a time the rigour of the laws against paganism and heresy alike, but at the urgent request of the African bishops they were again strictly enforced. ”

“ These "semi-Pelagians," who may with equal justice be called "semi-Augustinians," were not a sect outside the church, but a party of dissentient Catholics. Excepting the above-mentioned points and certain obvious corollaries, such as the doctrine of "particular" redemption, they accepted the entire Augustinian position. The controversy, which is in reality insoluble, lasted long after Augustine's death. ”

“ The catholicity of the church, he argues against the Donatists, is to be tested by communion, not only with the apostolic see of Rome, but with the other apostolic churches, and with Jerusalem, the common source of all (ad Don. Post Collat. xxix. 50; de Unit. x. xi.; Ep. 523) . In Augustine's time the first symptoms of the coming rift between the Greek and Latin churches had indeed appeared, but few realized their meaning. Augustine certainly did not. He meets the arguments of Julian, who claimed the Greek Fathers for his side, by an appeal to the Greek text of Chrysostom. ”

“ This is the old Cyprianic doctrine, which Augustine, like Cyprian, finds in the symbolic foundation of the Church upon Peter, who represents the whole body. All bishops are equal; there is no Episcopus episcoporum (de Bapt. III. 5, VI. 9, quoting Cyprian) . But as Peter represented his co-equal colleagues, the Apostles, so his successors in the Roman see represent their co-equal colleagues the bishops (cf. ad Classic. in Ep. 250, ad fin. . . . "in concilio nostro agere cupio, et si opus fuerit ad Sedem Apost. scribere, ut . . . quid sequi debeamus communi omnium auctoritate . . . firmetur") . ”