Seminaries still teach from Augustine

[Peterlag]

 by: Chuck Fisher

Edited by me

 

Augustine Aurelius, Bishop of Hippo is considered one of the most influential theologians. He was the bishop in North Africa and one of the most prolific Church writers dealing with the many theological issues that faced the Church in his day. The history of Augustine's life is pretty straightforward and well-known. Son of a pagan father and Christian mother is how he became a well-known orator and studied the pagan philosophies of Plato. Augustine became a Christian at age 32 after discussions about Christianity with a friend and hearing a child's voice telling him to pick up a scroll and read it.

 

This conversion story is one the most famous in Christendom and I might add that it gives me much to wonder who this child's voice came from. Augustine has been called the great teacher of the Church and the doctor of grace because of his influence on the doctrines of the Church. His voice was so powerful that a simple "Augustine says" settled all arguments. Augustine is still a beloved theologian and is studied in seminaries and schools of philosophy around the world. However, there are a few things that those who sing Augustine's praises neglect to tell us.

Augustine studied two different philosophies that he allowed to influence him and brought their doctrines with him into the Church. The man was a Manichean, a devotee of the teachings of Mani, founder of a Persian moral cult. Like the Gnostics of the first century, Mani and his followers were dualistic, teaching that the flesh was sinful and impure, while the spirit was light and life. As a Manichean, this teaching was a comfort to Augustine, as it let him blame his continued sexual sin on his lower fleshy nature, but still be moral by emphasizing the separateness of flesh and spirit.

Augustine's years with the Manicheans left its impact on the Church as he brought this teaching into the Church through his teaching on Original Sin. Augustine's nine years with them [the Maniceans] accustomed him to regard human nature as essentially evil and human freedom as a delusion. He fell under the influence of Neoplatonism, and his theological views were strongly influenced by this philosophy as well. However, his doctrine of sin shows the obvious influence of the Gnostic teachings of Manichaeism in which he assumes the most ridiculous teaching of all the heathen philosophies, the teaching that matter can be sinful.

Augustine's doctrine of sin, with his belief in the inherent sinfulness of the physical constitution, is wholly Manichaean. His idea that sin is propagated through the marriage union, that sexual desire is sin and that sexual lust in procreation transmits sin is also Manichaean. Augustine built his doctrine of original sin upon this premise that sexual lust in procreation transmits sin. Augustine studied the teachings of pagan Greek philosophers, the Neo-Platonists, and converted to Christianity through Neo-Platonist philosophy! His study of neoplatonism convinced him that God existed in the soul of every human being and he brought the pagan philosophies into the Church and much of our doctrine today is based on this.

What is generally not known about Augustine is that he favored his philosophers more than the Old Testament revelation. Bishop Ambrose, who was instrumental in converting Augustine, had to help him overcome his problem with the Old Testament. Augustine felt the God of the Old Testament was capricious and vindictive and at odds with the God of the New Testament. Augustine took the teachings of the Old Testament as an allegory teaching saying that the Old Testament had nothing to do with God because it's only about God in pictures like in parables. In other words the Old Testament was not a perfect revelation of God and his character, but contained bits and pieces about God that we had to figure out with allegorical interpretation.

Augustine's influence was so great that for a thousand years his method of interpreting the Bible was the official method of interpretation used by the Church. Plato taught that everything that existed was merely a mirror of the one true thing that was perfection and this "perfect ideal" was unchangeable. It wouldn't be perfect if it could change and with that Augustine brought in an un-biblical definition about God's immutability that survives as orthodoxy to this day. From Plato comes the concept of "the forms" or perfect ideals. This gave students of philosophy (one being Augustine) the notion that God does not change in any way because he is perfect. What is perfect (it is argued) does not change because by definition "perfect" means the level beyond which nothing can exceed.

The Christian tradition being shaped by Augustine and others had to interpret what it means to present God as changeless. They had to decide if it meant that God did not change in character or if it meant that he did not change in some stronger sense. Because Augustine had a problem with promiscuity and lust is probably why he concluded that no one is able to choose to do good. This experiential theology based on his own moral failures caused him to attack the biblical theology of Pelagius and Celestius and Julian of Eclanum, who taught man's responsibility to choose to follow God.

Augustine's teachings became the touchstone for Church doctrine for both Catholic and Protestant. The Church after the death of Augustine and under the sting of Imperial pressure went on to declare all of Augustine's thinking as orthodox. Augustine was responsible for a whole bunch of bad theology being introduced into the Church and because of him we have the teachings of Gnostics and Pagans masquerading as Christian doctrine. And because of Augustine's appeal to force is how we ended up with a Church history marred with the image of blood-stained folks willing to kill to enforce their positions.

[Whyme]

The man sounds like a false teacher.

[R. Hartono]

35 minutes ago, Whyme said:

The man sounds like a false teacher.

Never know of him either, howbeit learning.

[Michael37]

1 hour ago, Whyme said:

The man sounds like a false teacher.

Certainly not infallible.