35 - Augustine of Hippo Part 1

Okay, we press on for at least a little while in church history before I spend most of August and September overseas, most of October in Texas, and anyways, it's going to be crazy, but we've got to keep pressing on.

And we come now to a major topic, sort of the end of topics in the early church or relatively early church, sort of the last figure of what's frequently called the early church, even though once you get to the beginning of the 5th century, are we really in the early church?

They certainly didn't view themselves that way, but from our perspective, I guess it is all a matter of perspective, but that is an individual probably most often identified as the most influential person in Western Christianity.

The East is not overly enamored with this particular individual, and I refer, of course, to Augustine, and we won't have any arguments about the correct pronunciation of the name.

If you want to call him Augustine, that's okay with me, but Augustine flows a lot easier than Augustine does.

And interestingly enough, he was born into a Christian home in North Africa. It's unusual for us to remember and to think about the fact that North Africa was until the 8th century a primarily

Christian place. It had been evangelized in the 1st century, and all across North Africa, that entire coast there had become a primarily

Christian area. And he is born the 13th of November 354, so halfway through the 4th century is a time of the birth of Augustine.

Now everybody here knows his mother's name, and that's because you all have heard of Santa Monica, and Santa Monica simply means

Saint Monica, and Saint Monica was Augustine's mother. So that's where that comes from.

You may not have known that was the origination, but in fact, I have to wonder how many people who live in Santa Monica have any earthly idea.

Same with Corpus Christi, I mean, how many people in Corpus Christi have a clue what in the world that's about.

But anyway, Monica was Augustine's mother, and it has been frequently pointed out,

I think appropriately over the years, that here you have an example from Augustine's own testimony of a godly woman who consistently prayed for her son, even though her son became very wayward in his early life, and he of course credits that faithfulness as very much a part of the means that God used to bring him to salvation.

His was a nominal faith. He left that faith in his teen years, dabbled with this, that, and the other thing, and eventually became involved with a religion that had become, it was a fairly new religion, and it had become popular in the

Roman Empire in the preceding hundred years before him, known as Manicheanism, a fellow by the name of Mani.

It was a conglomeration of Gnostic and Christian and other ideas, basically dualistic, so the body -soul type thing, and it was sort of a mishmash of things.

But because of its Gnostic elements, he couldn't rise very high in the ranks because he had a mistress, by whom he had a son by the name of Adeodatus, a gift from God.

He taught rhetoric at Carthage, in of course Carthage, yes.

Well, these actually aren't the ones you bought me, but they're still on top of the fridge, but these were there.

Those ones theoretically worked. I checked them last week. Well, it looks good.

Okay, so we're talking about Augustine. Who is that strange woman that was hiding herself?

Ah, I don't know. Manicheanism, and what did

I, I had said 354, so born 354.

I guess I have to write more things on the board. Would you say his son's name was?

Yeah, Adeodatus. Yes, yes, Manicheanism and Adeodatus.

Okay. So, he taught rhetoric at Carthage, and it's hard for us to remember just how, again, how vitally important Carthage was.

When we think of North Africa, we think of Libya and places today that are rather backwards and primitive, but this was a very major center of learning

Carthage, the wars with Rome, major, major military power, things like that, a very important place.

So, he taught rhetoric there in 374, so only at 20 years of age.

And he also taught rhetoric in Rome 10 years later, well, 9 years in 383, and then moved to Milan in 384.

Somewhere during this period of time, he becomes disenchanted with Manicheanism, does not find what he is searching for, and so, in the summer of 386, this is probably one of the most famous conversion stories that you've ever heard, so probably just repeating what you already know, but there was a very, very famous preacher around in these days, someone we could have done a whole section on as well, by the name of Ambrose.

And by all accounts, Ambrose is a bishop in Milan, he's a tremendous speaker, tremendous preacher, and being interested in rhetoric, in the ability to communicate clearly and forcefully, and not cheaply,

I won't divert too far from the topic here, but it is fascinating that the idea of rhetoric, when we talk about rhetoric today, it's normally a dismissive term, that's just rhetoric.

But rhetoric has always been an important element of classical study and teaching, the ability to speak and to convince people but not to convince people cheaply, but to utilize sound reasoning and argumentation and skills of communication to convince people to do what is right, and what is moral, and what is ethical, and so on and so forth.

I can't help but think of a series of commercials I've been seeing on television,

I don't watch much television, but they've been on a certain news channel, all news channels are filled with fake news these days, but some more than others, and I've been thinking of these commercials that I've been seeing that are just the most obvious example of attempting to get people to do something that is actually evil, filled with lies, and it's all based upon emotion, it's purely emotional.

Rhetoric didn't ignore human emotion, but its focus was upon formulating philosophical, ethical, and moral arguments and communicating them with force and understanding.

And not exactly something that is a major issue today, unfortunately people have discovered that the most effective way to impact the current populace is not with facts, argumentation, logic, but with emotions, because people today feel that, well, to give you an example,

I did a program this week where I reviewed, played and reviewed comments by a well -known

Christian apologist by the name of William Lane Craig, and I have reviewed Dr. Craig's stuff for a long time,

Dr. Craig is an evidentialist, or he calls himself a classical apologist, but he's a

Molinist, he has a very synergistic theological system, and as I point out, theology determines apologetics, and so we've debated many of the same people in different contexts, but we do so differently, we do so with different arguments, different approaches, and it's important that people understand why we have those differences, and I've noticed a lot of people,

I just don't know why you're so mean to Dr. Craig, and I'm like, why do you use the term mean?

And I'm starting to understand, even within the church, we've got this microaggressions thing going on, and if you dare to disagree with someone, if you dare to, and I mean,

I play him, I let him state his perspective, and then I critique it, and for a lot of people today, even though this was just how things were done back in these days, this was part of rhetoric, this was part of debate,

I think I've mentioned to you in the late 1600s in England, to get to your second or third year of graduate work, and this would have been early 20s, in the age group of people back then in the university system, to become a minister, you had to not only be able to read the

New Testament Greek, you had to be able to debate in Greek. Vast majority, I can't debate in Greek, and I've taught

Greek for years, so I mean, this was just how high a level things have been in the past in comparison to today, where if you even critique someone, well, you're being aggressive, you're being mean, you're being violent, you know, and that's what we see in our university system, and I'm sorry, but the universities have brought this on themselves.

When you can have Richard Dawkins being kept from speaking because of allegedly nasty things he's said about Muslims, then you realize that we now live in a day of perpetual childhood.

It really is. It's perpetual childhood. I cannot hear someone say something that would hurt my feelings, and therefore, everyone must shut up and just say what

I want to hear them say. It's scary, because these people will eventually be in charge, and they plainly do not value something called the freedom of speech.

So anyways, all this is to say that Augustine, being a teacher of rhetoric, may have been thinking, you know,

I wonder if there's something to the Christian faith that I sort of walked away from as a child, or in all probability, he just heard of this man who could communicate with great force and clarity, so as a teacher of rhetoric,

I'd like to see how this guy does what he does. And so, in the summer of 386, he heard

Ambrose preach on the lusts of the flesh. And, obviously, as a man with a mistress, with a mother that was praying for him, he obviously had to know that there had to be some type of conviction of sin going on here, and so as he is pondering what he heard

Ambrose preach, and obviously preach was sufficient clarity that he understood the message.

The story is told that he went into the garden of a villa, and as he was sitting there on the other side of the wall in the next yard over, basically, he heard children playing, and he heard one of them saying tale, lege, tale, lege, take, read, take, read.

And, there was a Bible on a copy of the scriptures, so evidently it must have been a

Christian family, on the table, open to Romans chapter 13, verse 14, making no provision for the lusts of the flesh.

And, upon reading these words, Augustine is converted.

He is convinced of his sins, he turns to Christ, and now by this point in time, the tradition has developed, especially in the

West, of baptism taking place at particular points in time in the liturgical year, and especially around Easter.

And so he is baptized Easter of 387, Easter of 387.

And, likewise, I'm not sure how old Adeodatus was at this point, but he had

Adeodatus baptized as well, and what's interesting is

Augustine, Augustine's Christian life does not start off in a bed of roses, because he decides to return to Carthage, to North Africa, and as they travel,

Monica, his mother, Adeodatus, I don't know what happens, to the mistress, but both

Monica and Adeodatus die on the way to Carthage. And you might say, wow, were they killed, or something like that?

You gotta remember. This was a different day. You did not have tomorrow.

We did not have not only the sanitary conditions that we have, an understanding of microorganisms, but you didn't have antibiotics, you didn't have so many things, and there were just a lot of diseases that can kill mankind.

You get in ships and things like that, it can be close quarters, it can be mice, all sorts of stuff like that.

And, so one of the first things that happens upon his conversion is

Augustine loses his mother and his son within a very short period of time thereafter.

So, it does make you think about the fact that so much of fluffianity that is presented today is, you know, follow

Jesus and your life is just going to be wonderful and better roses and your teeth are going to be whiter than ever and that just amazing plague that afflicts so much of humanity of having one leg longer than the other, they're both going to be perfectly the same length and it's all going to be wonderful.

And, this just has never been an element of the Christian faith until recent days when we can all live like kings and queens and in comparison the vast majority of humanity of the past we all do live like kings and queens.

We're pampered, we have more food than the vast majority of generations that have ever lived before us.

so this, you know, you look at this situation and if Augustine had been converted by a message of easy

Christianity losing your mom and your son within weeks or months of your conversion might make you go maybe this isn't really what was for me but we just don't see that as a major element in the past because the call was to follow

Christ and to repent of one's sins and it was always within the context of the brevity of human life and we see that both in the

New Testament as well as in church history and so when he arrives at Carthage you know bury your mom and your son and he went off to live as a monk went off into the monastic life which was considered to be the high you know already at this point in time this was considered to be a high spiritual calling but what happens and the only reason we know much about Augustine is because when the

Bishop of Hippo died H -I -P -P -O Hippo itself put it up here on the board

I'll write it up here in green Hippo North Africa not an animal but a city when the

Bishop of Hippo died Augustine was unwillingly elected to the office because again even in Rome up until the 11th century

I've got the date in here we'll find it a little bit later on up until the 11th century I think about 1050 something even the

Bishop of Rome was elected by the people of Rome and so there are a number of big names in this time period who unwillingly took the positions of authority that were theirs and this was the case of Augustine he didn't want to become

Bishop he wanted to you know it reminds me you think of Farel and Calvin when we get to the

Reformation Calvin didn't want to stay in Geneva either but there are times when you're sort of forced to do things you don't want to do and so he becomes the

Bishop of Hippo and this time period the late 390 so on and so forth onward there are as we're going to see there are two major conflicts that he is engaged in the first is going to be focused upon the church and then the second will be upon the issue of salvation so in the 390's one of the primary things he's focused upon we've already talked about but we have a lot of visitors and it's been a little while so let me just remind you of it he immediately once he is put in the position of Bishop has to deal with the issue of the

Donatist controversy and the one

I was given doesn't have any blue in it I'm really disappointed by that so I'm going to have to it's really okay but that's right so yeah well we'll save him the

Donatist controversy and you will remember the

Donatist controversy I hope because of the fact that this was one of these results of persecution and just remind you what had happened it's had its origins this is a situation where Augustine is dealing with something that he had nothing to do with he just inherited the controversy it went back into the time period of the great imperial persecution between 260 and 313 it was actually around right toward the end of that in the early 300's before the peace of church in 313 and what had happened was this takes us back to the ex opera operato ex opera operanti stuff in regards to the nature of sacraments and to remind you what had happened is a man had been consecrated as a bishop and one of the men who had laid hands upon him was accused of apostasy was accused of being a trotator now what was a trotator someone who gave up the sacred scriptures to the

Roman authorities right so he was accused of having given up the scriptures to the

Romans and he said he didn't and so on and so forth well the hardliners who held well of the two views ex opera operato ex opera operanti the hardliners would hold to which of those two aren't you all glad you've got

Sean because you all can just sit back and just relax and not worry about anything because you all know that Sean's just going to answer everything so Sean and I can just have this little conversation here

I almost feel like they had his head down like there yes that's correct

Sean Hermione a little story there in the backdrop anyways ex opera operanti was the idea that a sacrament was only valid if the one or ones in this case performing it are in a state of grace so the effectiveness of the sacrament is dependent upon the people ex operanti is a participle the one performing it versus the other perspective which is ex opera operato which becomes official

Roman Catholic doctrine in later centuries because of this controversy and because of Augustine and that is that the sacrament is valid as long as it is done as the sacrament it doesn't matter who performs it the state of grace the person performing it doesn't matter that's the difference between operanti and operato and so the hardliners would not follow the man who was ordained because they said he's not been validly ordained and they become the donatists and those who eventually would be of Augustine's camp they call themselves

Catholics not Roman Catholics who wouldn't have any idea what Roman Catholic meant Augustine himself becomes the primary originator of ex opera operato

Cyprian a man honored as a martyr bishop in North Africa held the hardline perspective ex opera operanti so Augustine had to be very careful in how he dealt with the donatists this controversy one of the reasons it was so important is because in the days of Augustine when the donatists got together for a council they had 700 bishops present it was pretty much just a

North African thing 700 churches in North Africa and they would you could recognize their churches because they were all white washed they were all very white and pure because they were the pure hardliners over against the uncompromised

Catholics you see and theologically there wasn't all that much difference between them as far as worship and who

God is or Christ is there really wasn't all that much difference but there was a difference that's not going to go onto the tape very well well tape who uses tape well

I don't know that's just how we used to say things back when I was young back when I was young and we always on the recording very well but there was a snootiness shall we say amongst those who viewed themselves as holier than than others and it was a scandal to the

Christian mind that you would have in one city multiple churches that are divided from one another we drive past half a dozen churches of other denominations on the way to our own church and it it's just all we've ever known but we need to realize that we're the weird ones historically speaking at that point that historically and this is going to become really important some of you know that almost next month in September we're doing a reformation tour in Europe primarily

Germany Wartburg castle we're going to stand where where the the

Diet of Worms unfortunately the building's gone so you have to sort of clean the clean the the leaves away from this one little plaque where where Luther stood and said hier steht es ist kein anderes

Gott helfen mir but we're going to visit Worms and the Wartburg castle and Eisleben and of course

Wittenberg and a lot a lot of what

I'm going to have to say as we talk about events in the reformation during that tour is going to go back to the existence of what's called sacralism and it's the concept of the state church and sacralism really grew out of this you know it was very connected to this scandal in the

Christian mind of there being any kind of division that would exist in the in a city as far as having the

Donatists and the Catholics in one city that's just and all the way through to the time of Martin Luther you know the reason that we will visit a dungeon in the

Wartburg castle where an Anabaptist was imprisoned for eight years until he died 15 years after the reformation was because the reformation was a sacral reformation now there were in that early period there were people that went

I wonder if the church should be separate from the state hmm seems so because if it's not it will never really be a pure church and Zwingli had that idea

Luther had that idea but they couldn't see how it could possibly work and it hadn't been that way for over a thousand years so remember in 380ish

Theodosius had proclaimed the Roman Empire Christian Empire so from that time onward that's how people thought and that's right before Augustine Augustine's conversion so that impacts his thinking his thinking as well and so the

Dante's Controversy Ex Opera Operato Sacramentalism this is this is the early and first controversy of Augustine's life now here's another big date here's a blue one

I wonder if it's a it doesn't work decoy 410

AD now that's only what 85 years after Nicaea right?

so what is so important about 410

AD everyone's looking at you they're on their own they're on their own

I haven't said so I'm just sort of and you notice the kind instructor that I am

I'm not going to look over at the PhD historian along the wall there we go alright how high did your heart rate get on that though that's the question no no 410

Alaric the Visigoth sacks Rome and you go wow we're supposed to know that as well as Nicaea I'm not really sure what the it's real easy for us to sort of go oh ok why is that so important but it really really is important everyone in Europe at least around the

Mediterranean around the centers of what we would call western civilization in the great learning centers of Athens and Rome and places like that centuries have gone by centuries have gone by where at first Greece and then especially

Rome had provided an incredible amount of stability so much so the idea of a world without Rome at it's center was a frightening thing to many people and historically there's no question now obviously historians of Rome can trace the decline all the way from the days of Julius Caesar and there were many many signs of the deterioration of the

Roman Empire before 410 it's not like it's happened overnight this had been happening for a long time people knew it had been happening for a long time but until Rome itself now

Alaric didn't really didn't really damage the city it's not like you know you had raping and pillaging and burning and I mean there was much less much much much less damage to the city than anything

Nero did you know the Roman fire and stuff like that I mean that was catastrophic in comparison to Alaric but the point was that a foreign power a not only pagan power but a barbarian power had sacked

Rome and the psychological impact as the news spread across the

Mediterranean both directions was something you've got to it's hard for us to begin to comprehend just how much of a a game changer this was we we today have such rapid exposure to such an overabundance of information only a part of which is actually news that it's it's hard for us to comprehend what it was like when the news came into Hippo that Rome had been sacked by the

Visigoths there weren't any pictures there weren't any tweets there was no video no mp3 coverage nothing like that so everyone was left to sort of imagine what that looked like and what must have happened and I'm sure there was probably some exaggeration in people's minds but it shook to the core everyone's concept of what the future was going to look like and what civilization would continue to involve now we know it was just simply one step we know that the center of power had been shifting for many decades before this from Rome to Constantinople and this would only accelerate that and it is going to result in something extremely important theologically speaking which we'll talk about a little bit more when we talk a little bit more about the papacy but with the decline of the secular if we call it secular it has different meaning now than it did then but non -church governmental authority in Rome itself this left a power vacuum and into that power vacuum stepped the bishop of Rome and so part of the politicalization part of the development that eventually becomes the idea of the sun and the moon the sun's the papacy the moon is any type of worldly government kings, emperors so on and so forth and one's reflective of the light of the other and all the conflicts we're going to see in the 10th, 11th, 12th centuries really the 11th, 12th centuries between a massively ascendant papacy politically speaking and various emperors and kings and things like that has it's origin back here the bishop of Rome would not have been able to take those positions you wouldn't have had the development of the

Roman Catholic papacy had Rome remained the center of authority but 410 marks a major turning point there and what's interesting is this was only 30 years after the proclamation of the

Roman Empire to be a Christian Empire and so guess what the pagans did the pagans blamed it on Christianity in fact they had an argument as long as Rome had been focused upon serving the gods worshiping the gods sacrificing to the gods

Rome had been the ascendant power all through her domains but the decline had pretty much marked the rise of Christianity you could trace the decline back to the first century and gee what else goes back there

Christianity and so the pagans blame the sack of Rome on Christianity and as a result

Augustine began writing one of what would become absolutely classic works and it is as a result it is entitled

The City of God he starts writing it in 410 he doesn't finish it but he starts writing it

I mean he does finish it eventually but doesn't finish it in 410 he is responding to the pagan accusations that it's because of Christianity that Rome has fallen to the state that it has and Augustine's argument is it's not because of Christianity it's because of sin

Rome has fallen because of sin and he says there is no enduring city on earth but there is a city of God composed of righteous men and women that is eternal and so the kingdom of God is not to be associated with a particular political entity no matter how grand that political entity might be no matter how long it might last no matter how powerful it might be there's a lot of folks in our land today that need to read

The City of God his point is that empires will come and go the kingdom of Christ will endure and it will survive whatever takes place in this world and this book made

Augustine famous up until then he was just simply the Bishop of Hippo once this book is published and again remember that's just handwritten over and over and over again but it makes him a famous name all across the

Mediterranean world it gave a Christian view of history because many the pagans they had a different view they there was a man by the name of Thucydides and I'm not going to write

Thucydides I'm sorry but that's correct alright

Thucydides and Thucydides as a

Greek historian Greek and Roman historian it was very common to view history as a as cyclical as just repeating a cycle over and over and over again you know just a circle now this is a pretty cool example of where church history has impacted each person in this room because we are all children of western culture and we don't think of history as a cycle as a circle none of us do what you were taught in school was to think of history chronologically and progressively as a linear line moving from one point to another point we have certain things in history you know birth of Christ you know before Christ on a domino year of our

Lord and that only makes sense if you are moving in a particular direction and not going in circles and the city of God probably the single most important work that broke down the cyclical understanding of history and replaced it in the broad thinking of western

Christianity and hence western culture of history as a line has a history has a meaning it has a beginning it has an end it's linear and you and I think that way because Augustine wrote that book basically now that's a simplistic way of putting it but you may not realize you may not have known when you walked in the room this morning that your way of viewing history and the progression of time and things like that had ever been impacted by a guy named

Augustine but it was and so your way of thinking was impacted by events in 410 when

Alaric the Visigoth sacked Rome and what that resulted in that's sort of a really neat practical sort of oh

I guess this really does have something to do with how I live and so on and so forth because again the less you know about the influences that have formed the matrix in which you live and think the less you can analyze those things and the less you can recognize the forces that have formed your way of thought so because of this

Augustine becomes a much sought after teacher leader in the church a lot of his correspondence that we have his letters are really important to us today come as a result of of this and as a result of his writing this now in 397

I'm not sure we have time for this but go back a little bit here to 397 you have the council of Carthage 397 and one of one of the important another of the many important things that we trace back to Augustine has to do with disputes over the canon of scripture

I think I mentioned to you before that Athanasius Bishop of Alexandria in 367

I think it was put out his 39th Festal Letter where he announced the date of Easter and in the process also listed the 27 books of the

New Testament in the order and content as we have today is the earliest full canon that we have written down and Augustine and Jerome Jerome is

I believe the next fellow that we will get to here eventually yes

Jerome is next Augustine and Jerome disagreed over the issue of the canon of scripture and the reason this is only in regard to the

Old Testament not the New the reason they disagreed was because Augustine only knew a small amount of Greek primarily a

Latin speaker and writer did not know Hebrew and as a result he thought that the what we call the apocryphal books which

Roman Catholics called the deuterocanonical books were he thought they were part of the

Hebrew canon and because everybody recognized Romans 3 says it was to the children of Israel the script the oracles of God had been committed so what the

Jews thought about the Old Testament canon was important and Augustine thought they accepted those books

Jerome knew better recognized they did not and they had a written correspondence and argument over this particular issue and the council of Carthage which is under Augustine's control basically he is the biggest name there they put out a canon list which includes the apocryphal books and so a lot of people point to that and say see there you go there's there's there's there's your proof at the same time

Jerome's saying no so there's a long story in regards to that but here's an example of where someone had a wrong idea ends up when

Augustine had good ideas ends up influencing people when he had bad ideas ends up influencing people as well the same thing as the

Donatist controversy but we'll pick up at that point because we still have the Pelagian controversy and I actually just discovered down below I've actually got a few more things to throw out about the

Donatist controversy as well I'll need to move that in my notes so it's a little bit easier to get to but anyways that's just the start of Augustine Augustine's going to take us a few weeks

I think to get to because rather rather important name but gone over time let's close the word of prayer

Father thank you for this time the freedom you've given to us to once again look into the past the history of what you've done with your people we ask that we would once again be wise in hearing these things learning from the good and from the bad as well continue to guide us even as we go into worship now we pray in Christ's name