Augustine’s Philosophy: God, Man, and History
Augustine of Hippo
God and the World
Augustine understands God as the unchanging essence that justifies the variability of things in the world. These have been created by Him from nothing. God, according to Augustine, created the world by his word in an instant. In the divine mind are the ideas or models of possible things, and his will is deposited in the field of germs of all beings that are or will be in the future.
It is not because of evolution (in the modern sense); species are immutable, correspond to the ideas of the Divine Mind, and have existed since the beginning of the world.
On the other hand, Neoplatonic pessimism is eliminated; if the subject has also been created by God, it cannot be bad. This is called Augustine’s metaphysical optimism and is not based on biblical revelation. For Plotinus, evil was seen as a deprivation of good. Evil has no efficient cause, but no cause. So, do not look for a positive principle of evil. Evil is only natural for the particular individual who suffers. As for moral evil, this is always the freedom of man, which is good in itself. Thus, the problem of evil appears throughout the history of Western thought.
Man and History
Augustine understood man as a unity of body and soul but does not admit the prior existence of evil and its division: the soul is immortal, simple, immaterial, and spiritual.
In the soul, memory, intelligence, and will are one essence; it is the image of the Trinity in man. His philosophical view of man, therefore, derives from a religious concept based on the Bible.
In terms of origin, Augustine hesitates between the soul being generated by the parents and the soul of every man being created by God for him. Augustine thinks that the soul of Adam was created by God, but the existence of original sin in other souls leads him to doubt that they were also created by God. So, leaning on the soul of the son appearing as a torch lit from another, without detriment to the previous fire. As a consequence of original sin, the soul, made to turn to God, turns to matter, depleted in the production of images and sensations in this way, ends up being a prisoner of the body, dominated by ignorance and lust: it may only be waived by the grace of Christ.
Man has never lost free will, but as an effect of original sin, cannot stop sinning; therefore, authentic freedom—which consists of doing good—is no longer in the hands of man. Therefore, the mass of humanity is destined for doom, and only those predestined by Christ are saved. This is also the point of confrontation with Pelagius, who believed that human will never lost the ability to do good and, therefore, has no absolute need for the grace of Christ for salvation. When man does good, says Pelagius, it is done using his own strength, not God’s.
Despite this view, Augustine emphasizes the role of memory and desire in life and human psychology. Thanks to memory, man gets to build his own privacy and personal identity; memory, therefore, enables the search for truth. On the other hand, love is what drives man; it is the upward force that leads the soul to its true place, thus restoring order. Love takes precedence over knowledge and mixes Platonic and Christian elements.
Augustine wrote (from the year 413) a monumental work on the sense of history from the creation of the world to the Last Judgment: A linear, not circular, history—i.e., the way Hebrews and Greeks did not conceive of the events of time. Augustine believes in two “cities.” The city of the righteous, predestined by God, is the heavenly city, and the city of sinners condemned by God is the earthly city. Both remain mixed until finally their final separation occurs and the triumph of God.