St. Augustine’s Philosophy: Reason, Faith, and the City of God
St. Augustine’s Philosophy
Reason and Faith
For Augustine, human beings yearn for happiness and the supreme good, which he identified with God. However, the enjoyment of happiness requires knowledge of the truth, and this can be sought in two ways: by reason and faith. These two are not incompatible; rather, they should work together. Faith directs our intelligence in the search for truth, and reason can understand the contents of faith, which is supported by our intelligence.
Knowledge of God and Reality
Our search for truth is driven by spiritual love, which seeks to rise to the only unchanging and eternal truth. There are two types of love: the pleasure that aims to remove the knowledge of one’s desires, or the love that keeps us from the truth, God. Truth is the inner certainty that provides self-awareness. Therefore, truth lives inside man. One must take a path of spiritual ascension that crosses sensitive knowledge, which generates Doxa, the less rational knowledge. Superior sound is called the universal and necessary knowledge, possibly the absolute culmination of the truth in our view. These truths are developed in the soul. God has made every man, and after the Enlightenment theory, man must discover them.
The existence of God, according to St. Augustine, is true. He attempts to prove this on the basis that reality has not been created by intelligence, and, in turn, men are believers and the ideas of these men are immutable and created by God eternally. God consists of a trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Augustine defends creationism, stating that everything has been created by God. This is explained on the basis of the Theory of Forms: God is transcendent to the world, making concrete beings from those ideas which are eternal in the divine mind (archetypes). In addition, material is deposited in the seminal reasons of all future beings to make them appear in time. This God created and governs with care and intended the eternal law, based on the world created by God, being provident. On the other hand, evil is considered something real, with a lack of being, without being considered a creation of God. Thus, moral evil is the result of a greater good: freedom. He defends freedom and free will. The free will to sin exists under the law of God. Human action must be judged in relation to the intention that guides it: if under the law of God, it will be good; if not, a sin. Moral evil is the abuse of free will. Finally, man can only be happy with the contemplation and love of God.
Man and Ethics
Augustine defends dualism, i.e., that man is composed of body and soul. The soul governs the body and must return to God. Moreover, God has endowed man with free will so he can choose between good and evil, and thus deserve reward or punishment. Regarding the origin of the soul, Augustine holds Traducianism, whereby the soul loops through families transmitting original sin. On the other hand, the soul cannot survive alone but requires grace, special help from God, which encourages people to avoid the love of the sensitive and inclined to love virtue. In turn, the power leads man to respect the order established by God in the universe and achieve peace, which is guaranteed by justice and exercise.
The City of God
Society is the scene where God reveals himself to man and where salvation occurs. There are two groups of humans: those who love themselves above all (the earthly city) and those who love God above all (the City of God). Both maintain an ethical struggle between their components.