St. Augustine’s Philosophy and the City of God
Principal representative of the philosophical named Christian Platonism, which runs through the end of antiquity, and virtually all the Middle Ages to the s13. Christian philosophy is based primarily on the Fe (Christian beliefs), but authors such as St. Augustine, trying to systematize and streamline its dogmas (as far as possible) through the Greek philosophical theories. / / It should be mind that Christian philosophy there are two radical changes regarding Greek philosophy. On one side it breaks the “necessarianism” Greek for a “contingent” radical, God created the world out of nothing (including the “matter”). The world is almost nothing could have been otherwise if God had wanted, is a work “free” of God (God’s Grace). You can adjust the notion of Reason subrogation (subject) to God (understood as “infinite person.”) For St. Augustine, for example, “reason” of God, but men can not understand it, is all over the universe through rationes seminal ideas copied from those present in your Mind (Sample) providential and implanted in things. / / Therefore, Christianity introduces a radical split between two royal command, the realm of nature, and the kingdom of grace (spiritual supernatural). Correspondingly, the Augustinian anthropology that man is considered a “composite” of two separate radical principles: body (natural) and soul (spiritual, which depends on divine grace to endure, to be saved after death). / Theory St. Augustine’s KNOWLEDGE of these principles. Human reason is impotent, naturally, to reach the truth (taking into account relapse with the original sin of Adam, who will require Christ to redeem and save). Based on that Plato said that the senses do not provide true knowledge, Augustine seeks the source of truth in God, which illuminates the soul by providing the principles you need to know the truth (theory), and the saved (life skills) .. Only Reason with Faith can save your darkness and degradation. Our search for truth would be driven by love, but not selfish and carnal love, but spiritual love or ordered (charity), which seeks to rise to the truly unique, unchangeable and eternal God (return to God who saves). / / D ince the whole philosophy of St. Augustine depends on God (knowledge, moral)
, you need to prove its existence. Based on the “evidence” of eternal truths, Augustine seeks to “prove” that such “immutable truths” could not be an invention of man, imperfect, but should be based on an eternal and like them. Another attempt, more faith–
Driven, to prove the existence of God is based on “trust” (faith) in what they say the “wise men” of his time (story of Authority). / / As regards the moral and politics, San Augustine believes that free will exists, but true freedom would necessarily choose the good. However, the evil inclination that we carry original sin sometimes produces bad consequences (that would be justified the existence of evil without denying that God and his works are good, against the Manichean)
. Despite this imperfection particular ontological universe as a whole would be good, and man would be responsible for his deeds (virtuous or vicious, evil moral-), it could choose the greater good versus evil, or inferior goods, “accepting God’s grace, we would be donated as a gift. Only if there is a “responsibility” (causal) sense of justice to reward and punish our actions (on earth or beyond). / / According to Pelagius, his contemporary, the human will can always choose good, and save even without Divine Grace. But Augustine rejects this theory saying that man has free will without grace, but their fallenwould lead to sin. The “freedom” would be wise use of free will, taking into account all of our behavior, our lives, and who chooses to operate passenger moved by his whims would become “a slave to his passions. / / The story would therefore, the result of the free actions of men, but at the same time, so would a divine plan. In the same way that each man may choose an inferior good ignoring the greater good or not, mankind has been divided into two groups: harvesting and weed, “two cities.” The first, “City of God“, is formed by those who are in the grace of God, “those who love God to the contempt of self” and the second, “the earthly city,” for those who love themselves to contempt of God. ” The order and political peace could only be achieved if leaders assume God’s plans (Augustinian political) present in the Church Militant, in the end times will be triumphant.
IV and V centuries after Christ, and witness the end of the ancient world and the beginning of a new stage of history.
Augustine was born the year 354, when Christianity is now the official religion of the empire (Edict of Milan, 313). The emperor Julian the Apostate, pagan restoration attempt, but later return to Caesars declare Christianity as the only imperial religion (Edict of Thessaloniki, 380). Thus, in less than a century, Christianity has gone from being a persecuted religion to be defended by the law. / / In previous centuries the new religion, which originated in Palestine as a Jewish sect, it was infiltrating the Empire and doctrinally settled at the confluence with Greek philosophy (Neoplatonism is an attempt at synthesis of both) and other pagan doctrines. Finally, the emperor Constantine supported Christianity, yet their greatest concern was the religious peace in the Empire, one of his first acts was to end the internal divisions within Christianity and impose a single orthodoxy: it would be fixed by Council of Nicea (rejecting as heretical Arianism) and later, already under Theodosius in Constantinople. The result has been called the Nicene Creed, which is still today the main reference doctrinal of all the churches that are recognized as Christian. / / As Christianity moved the Roman Empire ceased to be the solid structure of the past and threatened to crumble. Divided into two parts (East and West) from the late third century, had to tolerate the presence of peoples “barbarians” (foreigners) within their borders. Under Alaric, the Goths break their covenant with Rome and rise up in armed rebellion, are defeated in Pollentia (403), but at the cost of removing the Roman army of the Rhine frontier. Alaric himself will lead the sack of Rome in 410. The Pagans accused the Christians of this misfortune, and St. Augustine writing replicate them nothing less than <<The city of Dios>>. / / Not this the only sack of Rome of the fifth century Augustine died in 430 in besieged Hippo by the Vandals, who, after settling in North Africa, attacked and returned to sack Rome in 455. Attila few years earlier had been arrested at the gates of Rome by the prayers of Pope Leo the Great, the only authority left in the city after abandoning it for the emperors. From this moment until his death in 476, the Western imperial title was purely nominal, without posing any real power.The people formerly known as “barbarian” kingdoms established in the different territories of the Empire, while the monasteries kept in libraries all they could salvage from the old culture. Starting the Middle Ages. / / For philosophy, Christian Platonism of St. Augustine and other fathers (patristic) is a derivation of Platonism Jewish authors like Philo of Alexandria, who translated the Platonic ‘world of ideas>> a kind of ‘shadow>> of divinity, belonging to his very being, which he called Logos (which term also appears, with the same meaning of “divine right>> in Heraclitus and the Stoics). In the Gospel of St. John the Logos is identified with Jesus Christ, who existed with God before the creation of the world. Platonism and Christianity took place, when mixed, a lot of ideological constructions: most of them self-styled as’ Gnosticism>>, were rejected as heretical, but others such as Origen, Clement of Alexandria and Augustine of Hippo himself went part of the orthodox doctrine. / / In the early centuries of the Christian philosophical schools are not kept pure, but tend to eclecticism: Platonic elements, Aristotelian and Stoic mixed in different proportions are also philosophies that, similarity of religion, appear as knowledge of salvation and approaches to the divine. The Stoics maintain a pantheistic concept in which each man ap read as a “cell” of this great living body is the Universe, whose consciousness is identified with the Logos. And in the third century, the neo-Platonist Plotinus attempt a synthesis of classical philosophy above Christianity. The patristic introduce new problems outside the classical Greek world: the relationship between reason and faith, demonstrating the existence of God, Creation, the problem of human freedom (related to the “guilt” and the “sin”) and the role of God in History (political theology).