EMT 1 / Michaelmas 2005 / Outline for 2005-09-16

1. Love as the Governing Principle

Love for God as the correct object of the human desire for happiness (De mor. xi) God to be preferred to all else, and to reach God is happiness itself.

The disordered love of lesser things in the world separates us from God, but the mind is able to return to God by love (De mor. 12). Through love for God we are conformed to God, and this is done by the Holy Spirit (De mor. 13).

According to The City of God (esp. book xiv) the difference between the earthly and heavenly cities is based on the object of their loves: the good things of this life are the goal of those who are the earthly city, while God is the object of desire for the members of the city of God. Augustine makess the principle of love the foundation of his view of personal ethics, as well as social and political ethics.

Self love is natural; and for the Christian self-love is not wrong, but must be for the sake of Him who is the most fitting object of love (De civ. xiv. 14). Love for neighbor is also in the context of love for God, to do no harm and to seek to help them (ibid.). The one who loves the good will hate what is evil, including what is evil in another person (De civ. xiv. 6). This forms the basis of punishment (De civ. xiv. 16).

2. Flesh and Spirit

Augustine takes pains to show that the biblical language of “flesh” and “spirit” does not mean that the body is the source of human problems (the error of Platonists and Manicheans). This becomes clear when you consider that the “works of the flesh” in Paul (Gal. 5:19-21) include not only things concerned with sensual pleasure but also with faults of the mind such as jealousy, envy, hatred and pride (De civ. xiv.2). Thus it is really the soul that corrupts (xiv. 3). Remember that the devil has no flesh! To live by the flesh is thus to live by one’s own human standards (xiv. 4).

3. The Virtues

The theological virtues are faith, hope, and charity. When we attain eternal life, the first two die away, and charity remains forever, increased and more firmly established. (See De doctrina christiana, 1.39)

Where Plato and Aristotle and the tradition had spoken of four cardinal virtues as excellences of the soul, Augustine described them as dispositions of love:

Prudence Love choosing wisely between what helps and hinders our relationship to God

Justice Love serving God only, and therefore ruling everything else well

Temperance Love keeping itself whole and incorrupt for God.

Fortitude Love enduring all adversity for the love of God. (De mor. 15 and 25)

4. Political Theory

1. Theory of Government

Certain features of human society are the result of the fall: slavery, coercion, property and probably the state itself.

Augustine’s view of the state is minimalist. It exists to curb the excesses of sin and maintain order in an unruly universe. As long as the society retains justice, members of the city of God will respect it and help to maintain it. Thus Christians are not normally a threat to the civil society; there can be a kind of harmony based on the fact that both cities share the same mortal condition (De civ. xix. 17)

2. Peace and War

Peace [understood in its full sense of well-being, shalom] is the natural desire of all creatures. (De civ. xix. 11). The notion of peace applies to all life from the level of the soul to the entire universe, and may be defined as harmonious order (De civ. xix. 13).

Even those who are aggressive and desire to subjugate others desire peace, one they can shape for themselves. Even criminals must have elements of peace in their homes and groups to function (xix. 12).

Note that in “just war” thought inspired by Augustine, there must be a right intention, an aim to restore a just peace.. War is seen as corrective or punitive rather than defensive–Augustine undermines the right of self-defense.

Earthly peace is limited and imperfect, but it makes an important contribution to the well being of all society, including those called to the heavenly peace.

3. Punishment.

The purpose of punishment is to “readjust” the offender to the domestic peace from which he had broken away (De civ. xix. 16). Restoration is the aim, and punishment is thus corrective (rather than purely retributive), and also a deterrent to others.

4. Treatment of heretics

Threats and sanctions against schismatics and heretics is OK, under the corrective power of the state. This is the service to religion of Christians holding secular office.

5. Pelagianism

Dealt with in many works of Augustine

The main point of Pelagius: Christians are encouraged by Augustine to fall into moral sloth, either because they think sin is inevitable, or that only the grace of God can overcome it.

Augustine replied (in On Nature and grace, 43.50) that human beings were originally created healthy and without fault. But we are now dealing with a man left by robbers half alive, so that he cannot by himself get back uphill. He is recuperating, and what God commands, you should do what you can and ask for the healing help of grace for what you cannot do.

God does not order the impossible!

6. Sexual Morality

Beware of making Augustine a whipping boy for contemporary dissatisfaction with the Christian traditional teaching on sex. He was not Manichean, affirmed the goodness of creation, the body, and marriage.

With that said, however, there is a “dark strain”in Augustine’s thought, a suspicion of the rightness of pleasure within the sex act, and “the unruly character of sexual arousal” [J. Mahoney, The Making of Moral Theology, p. 66]. This contributes to a sense of pessimism in Augustine’s anthropology.

7. Lying

Augustine has an uncompromising, objective view [cf. Immanuel Kant]: inherent in the activity of lying is the will to speak falsehoods (On Christian Doctrine, i. 36).

In his work On Lying Augustine gave three reasons to consider:

1. We must conform to the divine will, and, looking at Scripture, God never approves of lying.

2. The benefits of eternal life with God far outway the temporary benefits achieved by lying.

3. We live in an overall order of truth, and lying would violate that (see also De civ.,

xiv. 4).