Saint Augustine

Ken Taylor
Coming up on Philosophy Talk: Saint Augustine of Hippo.

Bob Dylan
I dreamed I saw Saint Augustine alive as you are me.

Ken Taylor
To sing once is to pray twice.

John Perry
Nothing conquers except truth and the victory of truth is love.

Ken Taylor
Give what thou dost command, and command what thou wilt.

John Perry
To many, total abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.

Ken Taylor
Excess is the enemy of God.

John Perry
Love is the sinner and hate the sin.

Ken Taylor
Our hearts are restless, until they repose in thee.

John Perry
Grant me chastity and continence—but not just yet.

Ken Taylor
What does that mean?

John Perry
Our guest is James O’Donnell from Georgetown University.

Ken Taylor
Author of “Augustine: Sinner and Saint.” The philosophy of St. Augustine.

John Perry
Coming up on Philosophy Talk… after the news.

Ken Taylor
Welcome to Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

John Perry
…except your intelligence. I’m John Perry.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. We’re coming to you from the studios of KALW San Francisco.

John Perry
Continuing conversations that began at Philosophers Corner on the Stanford campus.

Ken Taylor
Today: St. Augustine, one of the most important theologians and philosophers, philosophers in Western history. We’ll start by looking at the relationship between Agustine’s life and his philosophy.

John Perry
Then we’ll dig into one of the major issues St. Augustine worried about, namely freewill good and evil.

Ken Taylor
And finally, we’ll talk about his thoughts on war and terrorism.

John Perry
Some basic facts… Augustine was born in 354 AD in the waning years of the Roman Empire. When Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in the year 410, many Romans fled to Augustine’s native North Africa for safety. He died in 430 AD at the hands of a later wave of invaders

Ken Taylor
And Augustine’s discussion of the sack of Rome and his ideas about just war are curiously relevant to modern issues of war and terrorism.

John Perry
Ken, given your Notre Dame education I suspect you dip into Augustine’s “Confessions” or the “City of God” every night before dropping off to sleep. How about sharing with the rest of us some reasons why we should be interested in an African Roman philosopher who died a millennium and a half ago and thought that sex was sinful?

Ken Taylor
John, I’m afraid you slightly overestimate my love for reading the great works of Christian philosophers. But Augustine is important for a variety of reasons. He’s the first author to write a personal autobiography. His “Confessions” is a really really great book. He tells how he began as a Manichaean, became a Christian, struggled with the thought of abandoning his love of the good life as a rhetoric professor in Milan with a mistress and a beloved child to become a celibate Christian back in North Africa. And at least the first nine chapters, before he delves into stuff about time and all this, make for really good reading like a really fine novel.

John Perry
Okay, okay. Confessions is good stuff. But I’ve got a copy of the City of God, it’s 1000 pages long, it does not read like a good novel.

Ken Taylor
You got me there with that one. You have to skip around a bit. I mean, but there’s one part that I think even you would like to read. That’s the part where Agustine worries about what sex would have been like in the Garden of Eden before Adam’s sin and God’s punishment. I mean, because Agustine thought that as a result of original sin, certain bodily urges, and certain parts of our body, certain crucial parts of our body were no longer within our control. And he wondered how, he was intrigued about what sex would have been like when everything was fully within our control before Original Sin.

John Perry
Well Ken, that does sound very titillating.

Ken Taylor
Yeah. But you know, it really does show something important about Augustine, that’s more important than mere titillation. He was a really great philosopher. He had a quality of mind that I know you would value he got seized by philosophical problems. And he found them everywhere, because he really wanted to think things through and get to the bottom of things. He’s the one who said, I know what time is when I’m not thinking about it. But as soon as I do, it’s a complete mystery.

John Perry
Okay, he can be fun to read. He’s a good philosopher. But still, aren’t his ideas just a tad dated? Do we really care about the worldview of a celibate fifth century bishop?

Ken Taylor
Well, if you care about history at all, you should care. I mean, I know we’d have to rank Jesus as the most important person in the history of Christianity. But surely, Augustine ranks second or at the very least third after St. Paul.

John Perry
Well, I know his views about sex and women had a big, big effect , mostly unfortunate What else is important?

Ken Taylor
Well, he formulated the standard Christian doctrines of freewill, the problem of evil, the relation of God and time, the Trinity. He merged Greek and biblical thought into a coherent system.

John Perry
I guess when I learned my catechism I was learning a lot of stuff pretty much straight from Augustine.

Ken Taylor
You betcha. And finally, he was the first great African philosopher in the Western tradition.

John Perry
Well, no wonder you’re such a fan. You philosophers of African ancestry stick together. Was Augustine black?

Ken Taylor
Well, he was a Berber and I think we call him a prison of color today.

John Perry
Okay, you’ve convinced me St. Augustine is an interesting and influential figure even for a guy born in the fourth century. But would his ideas have differed if he grown up in today’s world? Our Roving Philosophical Reporter, Zoe Corneli, tried to answer that question. She files this report.

Zoe Corneli
As a teenager, Augustine was sexually frustrated. He writes in his “Confessions,” he was boiling over in his fornications.

Augustine
Out of the muddy concupiscence of the flesh, and the bubblings of youth, mists fumed up which beclouded and overcast my heart, that I could not discern the clear brightness of love from the fog of lustfulness. Both did confusedly boil in me, and hurried my unstayed youth over the precipice of unholy desires, and sunk me in a gulf of flagitiousnesses.

Zoe Corneli
In other words, he was like many young men very interested in sex. And this he felt was evil. So what if a troubled young Agustine could have received the expert advice of sexologist Isadora Alman, author of the long running weekly column “Ask Isadora”?

Isadora Alman
Yes, it is a natural force in all human beings, not any more to be conquered than our desire to sleep, our desire to eat.

Zoe Corneli
Agustine may have recognized that lust is a basic part of who we are, but he felt it was a bad part. Allman disagrees,

Speaker 1
I will say our nature is period as opposed to our nature is bad, good. It simply is and how you want to deal with the fact of your nature is your choice as a functioning adult, and it is my job as a psychotherapist to help you deal with your nature.

Zoe Corneli
Augustine didn’t have the opportunity to see a psychotherapist. He decided he wasn’t the best person to deal with his nature. God was.

Augustine
And thou sent his divine hand from above and truest my soul out of that profound darkness.

Zoe Corneli
Agustine went on to become a big promoter of the idea that by accepting God you can overcome the bad parts of being human.

Augustine
Why then be perverted and follow thy flesh? Be it converted and follow thee.

Zoe Corneli
That notion doesn’t sit well with Alman.

Isadora Alman
The point of of psychotherapy is self acceptance, to take the essential nature and say part of it is bad, essentially, seems very wrong to me. It’s wrong because it sets one at war with oneself. And society already does that for us. Society already gives us norms, commercial norms, that are unattainable by 99% of people to be told that part of our essential nature is to conquer the other part, boy that really is setting up an impossible dichotomy and guaranteed way of misery for the rest of one’s life.

Zoe Corneli
Alman says in her practice, she sees examples of that kind of misery all too often.

Isadora Alman
I remember early on in my career, I saw a young man midlife probably late 30s, who was the son of fundamentalist Christians, and the guy was really tormented. And what he really wanted to do was cross dress. I mean, that’s really what he had been the demon that he had been struggling with. Now, you know, that’s a harmless thing he wanted in the privacy of his bedroom, to put on garments that our society says is for one sex and not the other. He didn’t want to you know, molest little children, he simply wanted to play dress up. And when I put it to him in those terms, that it needn’t affect anybody else at all, except him in his own private pleasure. The guy euthanized in front of his face I mean, he dropped 30 years worth of misery in order to recast the concept of what he was looking at as as a diversion as opposed to a sin.

Zoe Corneli
Augstine, on the other hand, found God and became celibate. If he had consulted a sexologist, though, the history of Christianity might have turned out very differently. For Philosophy Talk, I’m Zoe Corneli.

John Perry
I’m John Perry. With me is Ken Taylor.

Ken Taylor
And our guest today is James O’Donnell. He’s provost at Georgetown University, author of “Augustine, Sinner and Saint: A New Biography.” James, welcome to Philosophy Talk.

James O’Donnell
Well, how are you? Thank you for having me here.

John Perry
So James, tell us briefly how you became interested in St. Augustine.

James O’Donnell
Well, you asked me that question before, and I realized I can pin it to a particular day, November 15 1969. Wow. You guys may be old enough to remember that that was the day of the great march on Washington, protesting the war in Vietnam. I can’t quite remember why I didn’t go to march. But I was instead in the Princeton University library doing my homework for the week. What I happen to find I was reading by assignment was book 19, of Augustine city of God, which is where he talks about war and peace and freedom and society. And it really hit home at that particular moment for me that I was seeing a more comprehensive, more holistic, more generous, more inclusive way of thinking about the issues that were hot in everybody’s mind at that time than I was finding in our dormitory bulls sessions in the newspapers in the periodicals of the time. He hooked me, and I’m still hooked.

John Perry
Wow.I mean, on November 15 1969, I drove from Ithaca, New York down to Washington to march if I’d stayed there and Olin library and read my St. Augustine, wildlife might have been quite different. But let’s, let’s get to St. Augustine here and his philosophical ideas can explain to me why Augustine is historically important. Tell Tell me what you think are the most It’s important of his ideas for modern folk to understand.

Ken Taylor
Not all of them just the few and in brief compass.

James O’Donnell
Sure, well, one point I talked about how he does micro theology and macro theology made up those words. Micro theology, I say in him is about freedom, the perception of freedom, the fact that we feel constrained about what we do. He’s reading Paul and trying to make sense of him. What comes out the other end is predestination. We’re going to try to talk about that a little bit. He talks macro theology, when he tries to figure out how human society works. How do people live together and community side by side with each other, sometimes fighting sometimes at peace. I never say that the ideas he had are ones that are all right, by a longshot. But it’s important historically that he frames many of the debates that lots and lots of other people have participated in from that day to this. And if you know where he’s coming from, you can follow a lot more of what we’ve argued about since a lot better.

John Perry
I guess his contributions to Christian thought and theology come naturally enough after his conversion. Tell us a little bit about his life and how he got to that point. He was a mannequin and mannequins as I understand it, believes that God is not omnipotent and that there’s another force of evil in the world. What drew him to that in the first place?

James O’Donnell
Well, he was never not a Christian. His mother was a Christian wanted and baptize Manichaean ism was a particular kind of Christianity that said that Jesus and God were at war with the devil from all time, and that there was good and evil constantly in conflict in the world. And that was what he fell into when he was reading in the library when he was 19 years old. It took him another 15 years to get past that. And never afterwards when he was a Christian, he was always an ex manic he was always obsessed by the questions from before kind of like an ex communist, always an ex communist.

Ken Taylor
I take it that, as I understand, Manichaean is Manichaean ism, which is not too well. And mostly from reading stuff about Augustine. One of the things that drew him to mannequin ism in the first place was that the mannequin, the mannequins had a putative explanation of how there could be evil in the world, right? I mean, and they thought that sort of other kinds of Christianity didn’t have an explanation of other could be evil in the world. Do I have that roughly right?

James O’Donnell
Oh, exactly. How does an all good all powerful God let evil exist in the world? That’s the question. People still wrestle with a bunch. The Maliki’s had an answer, because there was another force in the world was evil. And there was a war going on.

Ken Taylor
Yeah. And so that means that the God wasn’t all powerful, all good, or God was all powerful, all good. But this other force was kind of equally powerful. I mean, what was the idea?

James O’Donnell
You know, God was all good, but me was about as all powerful as you are, if there’s somebody else all powerful standing next to you.

John Perry
Well, you know, you have to like a religion founded by a guy named Manny. I mean, it sounds like a religions that got started in New Jersey. But apart from that, it’s a natural explanation of, of good and evil. But But Augustine, when he converted, had to come up with another explanation. And I guess we’re gonna dig into the whole series of concepts about that in the next segment.

Ken Taylor
We are gonna dig into that. But I just want to say it strikes me from reading Augustine and reading about the time that there were lots of options around in those days that intelligent thinking people who were spiritual had lots of avenues for expressing that. And it’s kind of miraculous in some ways that Christianity went out and became dominant. What do you think about that thought?

James O’Donnell
Well, the miracle was assisted by the power of the Roman state, and it’s always good to have the army and the police on your side if you want your miracle to work. Augustine was a young man, when the Emperor’s finally banned all forms of official traditional Roman sacrifice and religion. That was a pretty tough moment for a lot of people. Augustine himself when he went back to Africa was on the in a minority Christian sect locally, but again, the Roman government came in and backed his side against the other. And over 20 years of his career, he made his minority sect into the majority sect.

Ken Taylor
Right. We’ll talk more about that power. We’ll talk about more about Augstine’s lifetimes and thoughts and a bit you’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today we’re discussing St. Augustine with James O’Donnell from Georgetown University.

John Perry
St. Augustine was a philosopher who focused a lot of his thinking on temptation and sin and saw these concepts is fundamental to understanding human life. Do you see things this way? Do you see yourself as a bundle of mostly sinful urges that will rage out of control unless you seek God’s help? Tell us about your temptations, sins and, if relevant, redemption. Join us by calling toll free at 1-800-525-9917.

Ken Taylor
One saint and a bunch of sinners—plus your calls and emails, when Philosophy Talk continues.

Eartha Kitt
I want to be evil, I want to be mad. But more than that. I want to be bad.

John Perry
Okay, Eartha Kitt wants to be evil. How about you? Do you sometimes feel the urge to be evil? Is St. Augustine’s vision of evil at the core of human life a valid conception or 1500 year mistake on the part of Christianity? This is Philosophy Talk. And I’m John Perry.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. The toll free number is 1-800-525-9917. Or email us at comments@philosophytalk.org.

John Perry
Our guest is James O’Donnell from Georgetown University.

Ken Taylor
James, we talked a bit about the Manichaean solution to the problem of evil through two forces battling it out a good one and a bad one. And Augustine was for a while taken by that. Well, what how did he decide he could deal with this problem once he became a Christian? And what was the problem with the Manichaean solution anyway? I mean, tell us both about why the manikin solution doesn’t work for Augustine and how the Christian solves it better.

James O’Donnell
Well, the Manichaean solution leaves a lot of evil in the world. Agustin actually fell into Christianity by way of Platonism. You read Plotinus works in Latin translation. And they persuaded him that God and Bing were all completely good. And if that’s the case, then you’re left imagining that the only source of evil comes from you and me. It’s sin. It’s what we choose to do. And that’s the solution that worked better for him.

Ken Taylor
Wait a minute, just a second. You said the Manichaean solution left a lot of evil in the world. Well, isn’t there evil in the world? So isn’t that the right solution?

James O’Donnell
Well, sure leap but leaves that they are in a permanent way as though it belongs here. Agustin couldn’t accept that, in the end, he’s trying to vote in favor of a world that is entirely good and created by an entirely good god in which everything works out to the good and the end. And that’s a that’s a more optimistic vision.

John Perry
Okay, I get the idea, evils, evils, a fault of human beings and maybe a few fallen angels, and so forth. But after all, God created all of us. I mean, doesn’t he bear the ultimate responsibility for the evil we do?

James O’Donnell
Well, you know, you come to the point. There were other Christian writers in the early centuries, who were so taken by that argument, that in order to protect God, they did away with hell. And they said that after you die, maybe you go to hell, but after hell, then there will come a point at which everybody is reunited to God in perfect happiness and unity forever. The official church banned that because there’s just too much hell in the Bible. But it’s a pretty persuasive argument if you’re really trying to insist on the old goodness of God.

Ken Taylor
So James, I’m I’m confused. I’m confused and not the only one well so so okay, we’re trying to explain how there could be evil in the world given a perfectly good god who is its creator and the Manichaean had this answer and and Augustine said, that leads to much evil in the world. But he said the human we humans are somehow responsible for evil. But wait a minute, God created us, Gods perfectly good, where the issue of God so how could we be responsible without him being responsible since he did the creating? Right?

James O’Donnell
Well, because God, Mrs. Augustine talking now, not me, you understand that God gave man perfect freedom. And in that perfect freedom, it had to include the ability to goof up. And way back to the beginning. Humankind goofed up. God’s not happy with that Agustin says. And so the whole sending of Jesus and the redemption of humankind, is God’s repair work on the human species.

John Perry
Well, let’s go. Let’s go back to Genesis, you know, and let’s, and I’m I’m Adam. Right. And maybe I’m more articulate, Adam. I guess that sounds a little presumptuous.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, that’s Adams God direct issue.

John Perry
Yeah, God says, you ate the apple. You’re out of here. childbearing will be difficult, your body won’t, will have these uncontrollable urges. It seems like Adam should say, but look, I mean, you’re all perfect. You’re omniscient, omnipotent. And, and apparently a really nice guy. I mean, and you created me just a few days ago. You must have known that I would eat the apple. Why are you so angry? Now? What’s Augustine is the answer to that.

James O’Donnell
You know, there weren’t lawyers around when Adam was there, and have you to argue for let me kind of frame it this way. Agustin ‘s biggest both opportunity and problem is he’s got the Bible standing in the way. He’s accepted the Bible as a true story about human past. And lots of stuff he does is his way of making sense of the stuff that comes to us in the Bible. And when he gets an argument like that, his natural answer is going to be to fish out the right biblical passage from his point of view that sets up a good answer to it. He’ll do it as a sophisticated interpreter and a philosophically trained interpreter. But the Bible is going to trump for him.

Ken Taylor
So well, so okay, the Bible is going to trump but I’m still the lawyers around now, John’s John’s a very good advocate. What would Augustine arm with the Bible have said back then. John, who said, Wait a minute, you knew this was gonna happen. You created me knowing it was going to happen. So you in a way chose it. I mean, you chose my choosing it or something.

John Perry
I mean, I guess I guess God was a well, I created you free. And you know, since I created do free, I guess you can screw up. But what what’s so great about freedom? I mean, why didn’t he just create us? So we do the right thing?

James O’Donnell
Because freedom is being more like God, that’s the customers answer. And He created man and the image and likeness of God. And once man decided to screw up, it takes a big complicated process to get things fixed, right?

Ken Taylor
Wait a minute, I still I still have I’m still troubled. Okay, God doesn’t screw up. Right God, I know God supposed to be all powerful. But in some ways, I would think God, I think I learned this at Notre Dame and before God doesn’t have the power to screw up. Because God seek conceives the good and automatically wills the good, it would be some defect, to cognize the good and not will the good. Well, so how come God made us such that we could cognize the good, but then I guess cognize it as good because cognize it as God’s divine command, because Adam was indirect but then nonetheless, we have this power to not do the good and that seems like an imperfection that God introduced.

John Perry
But you’re making an assumption can may turn out that this is the best of all possible worlds. And we’re just you know, we’re going through a little patch Yeah, where that’s not obvious.

Ken Taylor
So James well, so you know, Socrates would have said you know, if you see the good you do that you will the good right, Adam saw the good and will not the good how could that God have made such a a combination of mind and will of intellect and will.

James O’Donnell
Boy, you know, you guys are good. I’m Augustine spent the last 10 years of his life fighting with a bishop in Italy named Julian of a quantum who’s a lot like you guys, you remind me of him.

John Perry
Did he have a radio show?

James O’Donnell
No but he had a press agent.

Ken Taylor
Yeah he had a bully pulpit.

James O’Donnell
Augustine does wind up with with a theory in which Adam had freedom, but he could go either way. We don’t have freedom. We don’t really have freedom because the way Adam screwed up makes us less free to choose. And we need to get redeemed and get grace in order to get free when we do and we go to heaven, then we’ll be like what you’re describing nobody in heaven gets to sin, because they see the good so directly, that they just see the good know the good do the good, no problem.

John Perry
So James, we’ve got a really interesting email here from John and Berkeley. It goes like this. Maybe most mildly theologically reflective Christians would be Palladian, you’re gonna have to explain to us what that is. Original Sin is just Adam’s bad example. blessedness is framed by Jesus good example. The moral individual can choose well, or Ill between these exemplars. Now, that sounds like common sense to me, but I guess it’s a heresy, the Palladian heresy? And Augustine said, No, it’s much more complicated than that. Can you explain this aspect of Augustine thought.

Ken Taylor
Well, wait a minute. John, can you explain the common sense thing you see in there? I’m not quite sure I follow it.

John Perry
Well, the common sense is we have the power just like Adam did to choose the good or evil, but it’s but but and that’s was Palladius his view. But But Augustine had a more complicated view. Palladius was reacting to it. And he ended up being banned as a heretic.

James O’Donnell
I think, and you’re right. But then over the 100 years after that folks who had banned polygynous, as a heretic did actually also back off of some of Augustine ideas, because a hard predestination gets you back to the god deciding who’s going to hell. And that doesn’t sound so good. So you have arguments through the Middle Ages.

John Perry
As I get it, I guess his view was something like this after Adam, we don’t really have the power in ourselves to write, we have to get God’s grace. Well, that sounds good. The bad news is we don’t have the power. The good news is though, that God will give us the grace if we ask but then there’s a bit of a problem because asking for God’s grace seems like a good thing. And we don’t have the power to do that. Right. Really? That’s what bug Palladius as I understand it.

James O’Donnell
Oh, I think so. Let me point to something that Agustin was seeing in his world that made it hard for him. Parents were coming to him with infant children and insisting he baptized them because they wanted those children to go to heaven. When he was a young clergyman. He didn’t understand how this could work, because baptism ought to be something you do when you’re mature and responsible and can accept this. He ends up by theorizing Original Sin as the explanation for why you need to be baptized when you’re a little child, that little children can misbehave. That’s the sign of sin in them. So they need baptism from the very first beginning and a lot of the trouble he gets himself in, is trying to build out the theory that explains this fact of infant baptism that he sees going on around him.

John Perry
Well, his views about the obnoxiousness of small children is I think one of his more insightful.

Ken Taylor
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk, we’re talking about the philosophy and life and influence of St. Augustine. We’d like you to join our conversation, and Jessica in Oakland is on the line. Welcome to Philosophy Talk, Jessica.

Jessica
Hi, thanks for taking my call. I have a personal comment that sort of leads into a historical question, which is, I was raised in the Midwest and then evangelical Christian environment. And I’d been on the west coast in the bay area for about 10 years. And the contrast between sort of the, in my experience, the sort of puritanical attitudes of the area that I grew up in versus the sort of freedom liberation kind of attitudes out here are very, very big contrast. And I appreciate being out on the west west coast, personally. And so my question about Agustin would be I guess I’m wondering what was going on in the church at the time? And did you say these fifth century? Yeah, yeah. It seems like, you know, if the church was weak and small that he was trying to sort of consolidate power, but now at the end, now, in my day, the church is very powerful. And so we’re sort of suffocating from the overbearing, it’s sort of like some a big tree that’s gotten unwieldy or something. And so we kind of want to escape from it. But maybe it was different in his time, I guess, is what I’m wondering. So if you could speak to that. I appreciate it. Thanks.

James O’Donnell
Sure. Things maybe. One is that even though the Empire was now on the side of the church, Agustin in his contemporaries hadn’t really absorbed that yet, they were still acting like they were the persecuted remnant, and hadn’t fully understood what it was like to have the whole power of the Roman Empire on their side. And that was a dangerous thing. Second thing to say is in his own time, Augustine was by no means the most puritanical of Christian writers, not by a longshot. And if you look at him in context, he’s the one who’s saying, Okay, I understand premarital sex is wrong, but that happens and you got to cope with it. I understand Adultery is wrong, but it happens and you got to cope with it. But because he’s the most influential figure from that period, whose works are still read to us today. It’s we get the spirit of his times, which is a more puritanical one coming through, and don’t see the way in which he was himself trying to find at least a what moderately less puritanical position to take than some other folks.

John Perry
Now, just on that point, it might be interesting to to learn a little more about the confessions, as I understand it, this was his attempt to kind of make people feel better that is, if this great Bishop had undergone all his sin, and temptation, then they shouldn’t feel so bad about themselves. And it’s a remarkable book because it’s really the first personal autobiography that delves into a person’s feelings and not just kind of a recitation of events in the history of literature, as I understand it. I mean, what about Augustine explains this, this book?

Ken Taylor
Along those lines, I read somewhere, I don’t know if this is right, that Augustine is the kind of inventor of Western interiority, that is good, of putting subjectivity really to the fore. I mean, people think of Descartes is having done that, but but centuries before Descartes was talking about this, I mean, Augustine was delving into his inward journeying and finding God by looking inward rather than outward. I mean, what do you think about all that, James?

James O’Donnell
Well, it’s an overstatement. I wouldn’t say he absolutely invented it. But the confessions is the most luminous and compelling early example of people doing that. And he takes it further than others had. Yeah, it’s a book in which he says, Look, I’m a bishop. Now, I’m supposed to be this holy guy up in front of the church, you’re saving everybody else’s souls. And I’m not so sure about myself one of the most accessible lines and the confession is where he says it’s the one thing I really don’t know is what temptation I’m going to submit to next. And that’s a kind of becoming humility on the part of somebody in front of church where we’re more accustomed to see people who may be looked like they’re pretty confident about themselves and preaching it us.

Ken Taylor
I think that’s really good. And I think that’s why the confessions, it’s a really, really fun read. And we got more callers on the line—Alyssa in San Francisco. Welcome to Philosophy Talk, Alyssa.

Alyssa
Hi. I am of Algerian Berber descent myself. So I’m just kind of interested in more about his North African background how that did or did not influence his views.

James O’Donnell
Well, fascinating. Yeah. I mean, Roman North Africa was kind of the Nebraska of Kansas. It was the Greenbelt. It was prosperous. It was where, where much of the wealth of the Roman Empire came from, even though it also had some of that provincial Nebraskan kind of—

John Perry
Hey watch your step there, man, I’m from Nebraska.

Ken Taylor
You’re the St. Augustine of modern philosophy, John.

James O’Donnell
You’re not in Nebraska anymore. So he’s, he’s both of the Roman tradition, but also rooted his mother was undoubtedly of the Berber Berber ancestry, and there’s a mixture that continues So today I was privileged to attend a conference in Algeria about six years ago, the President of the country sponsored very kind of risky thing to do to have a conference on a Christian saint in a country with an Islamic insurgency going on. But they’re there. They’re working at recovering a sense of what that ancient Africa was and how the various streams come together. In a figure like him.

Ken Taylor
That’s interesting. I remind our listeners, you’re listening to Philosophy Talk, we’re discussing St. Augustine with James O’Donnell from Georgetown University.

John Perry
You’ve heard the outlines of Augustine’s answer to the problem of evil. Are you convinced? Do you think an Orthodox Christian has an answer to this problem?

Ken Taylor
Good, evil, Original Sin, Just War—when Philosophy Talk continues.

The Wailers
And they broke the fruit of life and everyone of us is living in sin.

John Perry
So are the shenanigans of Adam and Eve the basis for evil in the world ever since? How do you see the world as a battleground of good and evil like the mannequins or just as the neutral effect of a big bang? That didn’t give a damn either way? Hi, I’m John Perry. This is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Ken Taylor
…except your intelligence. I’m Ken Taylor. We’re discussing the theories of St. Augustine with our guest, James O’Donnell from Georgetown University.

John Perry
James, let’s go back to November 1969. You’re there. I don’t know where some colleagues somewhere reading, reading in the library. The works of St. Augustine and its contemporary relevance really hits you. I know he had some interesting ideas about when warfare could be justified what what worries ideas of contemporary relevance?

James O’Donnell
Well, can I confess a small frustration Sure, seems to me that every time an American president wants to send forces into harm’s way, Time Magazine has to have an article about whether wars are just or not. And when they do that, they have to put a picture of Agustin in the margin little Renaissance engraving or little by the Celli something like that. So he’s the patron saint of just war. Um, he’s actually a much more sophisticated figure than that what I was reading in 1969 came back to me vividly, in fact, after 911, because 911, for us was a lot like for 10. For the Romans 410 was a time when the Visigoths came and sacked the city of Rome for three days, first time Rome as a physical place have been attacked in 800 years, people were shocked all over the world. Augustus reaction was not the standard, the barbarians are coming, the barbarians are coming. Instead, he stood back and said, so maybe there’s a larger story going on here. Maybe there’s a more complicated story of the development of humankind. Sure, he talks about just war, but he does so always in a restrictive kind of way.

Ken Taylor
Okay, let’s take that. Let’s take that restriction. And when you tell us about his views about just for that, we’ll try to keep that in mind that is not a kind of carte blanche Time Magazine kind of thing. But tell us do tell us a bit about about his views about war. And when it’s justified in a place of this all in the long arc of human history.

James O’Donnell
At various places in his writings, you can pull together basic arguments about war to be fought in defense of property war, that’s not offensive, or that has a just cause war that God has in some way or another indicated he approves of, but in fact, it was on that day in 1969, that I read his words, and I quote them often to this day, that Augustine says the just man regrets the necessity of fighting even a just war. And it’s relatively uncommon to find defenders of the justice of one war or another, who managed to make that regret as much a part of what they say as that justification.

Ken Taylor
Right, they take it with glee that they find the justification.

James O’Donnell
You know, they do. But he’s got a Bible problem. Again, remember what I said a few minutes ago. He’s got Joshua fighting the battle of Jericho. He’s got a war in the Bible, and God has definitely approved of it, no question about it. So when he evolves a theory of just war, it’s not because he wants to think one up or because he thinks wars are just he’s trying to explain how wars can be just because he’s got plain flat out biblical proof that they are. The theory he builds that way isn’t necessarily one he means to be taken out and taught in war colleges on all sides of the ocean. As a way of planning forward to next strategies.

Ken Taylor
We’ve got a caller on the line who wants to ask us about wart and killing. Millie in Berkeley, welcome to philosophy.

Millie
Well, thank you. I think a lot of what I hoped to hear has been said, in in large measure. I always find it entertaining, rather horrifying, that sex seems to be the center of morality for so many people. And in a way, that’s what we can glean from the rough details of Augustine’s autobiography. How does he see war killing violence as a personal problem for individuals at all comparable to the personal problems of sex. Or does he?

Ken Taylor
Thanks, Millie.. Good question. James. What do you think?

James O’Donnell
Well, that’s funny, insensitive in a way. Earlier, Christian writers in the Roman Empire had been adamantly pacifist. They were the ones who said that no one who was a Christian could become a soldier. And no soldier could become a Christian without ceasing to be a soldier. But that’s from the days when Christianity was a persecuted and unofficial religion of the Roman Empire. Augustine is more tolerant Augustine is more open minded, you could say. But Augustine is also a member of a state sponsored church, depending on the support of the state, right? So there’s a point late in his life, when in fact, is the general in charge of the Roman province, who’s supposed who’s thinking about leaving the Army and becoming a monk. And Augustine makes a long journey to go to see this guy to say, we need you defending the borders, it’s okay. You don’t have to become a monk. That wouldn’t have happened 200 years earlier.

Ken Taylor
This is the guy is Augustine at all ambivalence about the marriage of political power with religious power. I mean, is there any ambivalence? I mean, the so we got this big, huge, powerful state apparatus, Rome joined to Christendom. I mean, does he see any problem about abuse and all that?

James O’Donnell
You know, the scholars get in arguments about that one to this day. He did use state power for his own benefit. There came a point which the state itself turned on one of his allies, there was a government official who had been a big supporter of his who got on the wrong side of a coup and was put to death. And he was a good personal friend of Augustine. And there is an argument made that Augustine for some years after that, was kind of disillusioned and pulled back from, from the Reliance he’d had on the state before. But no matter how hard you tried to defend him, you have to admit that when push came to shove, he was willing to accept state sponsorship for his religion, because he was so sure it was right. And because he hadn’t really fully understood the impact of accepting that that state authority and sponsorship.

John Perry
Now within the church. Agustine was a great heresy fighter, he fought the Manichaean heresy the Arian heresy, the Palladian heresy, the Dinantian heresy, as I remember correctly, and in some of those cases, I mean, like the area Hey, we’re at work, where people put to death for being heretics. Am I right about that? And if so, how did Agustin feel about that?

James O’Donnell
There was death penalty for heresy under the Christian Roman Empire. I think it can be argued pretty fairly, that Augustine was never directly responsible for sending anybody off to be condemned. But used at least the terror of the possibility to get his way more than more than many moderns are comfortable with, with watching him do so.

Ken Taylor
So the City of God, I It’s been a while since I read the City of God partially as an undergraduate in the Great Books program at Notre Dame. So my memory of it is vague, you know, but the City of God, there was in the city of God, there was the city of God and the city of man, and how the city of God would come into realization through the elect. And not just, and even people who look like they were part of the city of God, you couldn’t really tell who belonged now, doesn’t mixing up? You know, I mean, Rome, Roman authority with religious authority. Doesn’t that like just muck that whole thing up? I mean, was Rome really supposed to be an instrument for bringing about the city of God with its imperial conquest and all that stuff?

James O’Donnell
Well, on his worst days, Agustine will say that the Roman Empire was made great under the Emperor Caesar Augustus, so as to provide the largest possible political context for the message of Jesus to spread. He’ll say that No, no question about it. He doesn’t really see the Roman Empire, creating a global church as expanding the people of God. And that’s really one of his more simple, simple, sizeable kinds of positions. There are plenty of people around in his world, who thought they could tell you who was going to hell and who was going to heaven for sure, and attended to be their friends who were going to heaven. Augustine, again, that line, he’s not sure what temptation he’s gonna give into next, looks out in his congregation. And thanks a bunch of these folks are probably going to have a bunch of these folks are probably going to hell, I don’t know which ones. I’m here to help them all. Right. And that’s at least a little bit, you know, sympathetic position.

Ken Taylor
So the one sort of thing that bugs me a little bit is going back to the heresy. I mean, God Augustine started out as a heretic I guess, by later and he reasons he reasoned his way away from that, you know, through free thought and reflection, why would heretics be put to death? And why would he condemn the putting to death of heretics whenever he had applied that to himself? You know, I mean, why would he at all countenance it? Why wouldn’t he say that’s not the way to deal with heresy, the way to deal with heresy is to let free thinking people be argued to the truth, the way I was.

John Perry
Well he hadn’t read Mill.

James O’Donnell
Well as was matter of fact, he hadn’t gotten to Mill yet. And he lived in a world in which find the position he took, again, was the moderate one, the reasonable one, the never actually putting anybody to death, but just scaring the daylights out of him kind of position. And what it was a world full of capital punishment and violence, and you can almost try to justify him when you point to that. Is he on a trajectory and Christian thought, towards a more tolerant and more inclusive kind of position? I think he is. Is he there yet? No, he’s not quite there yet.

Ken Taylor
We’ve got time for one last question about ancient Rome—Bob and Berkeley. Welcome to Philosophy Talk, Bob.

Bob
Hi. You speak to St. Ambrose and Augustine regarding the statement, when in Rome, live as the Romans and diplomacy, that kind of thing.

Ken Taylor
Okay. Thanks, James. It’ll be your last you and then you were well, anything you want for your last comment.

James O’Donnell
There’s like a there’s a complicated answer to that one. But to Ambrose was the teacher who baptized Agustin and was someone who persuaded him to recognize that local custom local variation, local diversity means something and to distinguish what’s custom from what’s essential. And again, on his good days, Augustine is somebody who tried to get past a lot of the controversies and quarrels of his time to focus on what was essential. He was so sure, he had a good and a true and a right and a redemptive message that he went barreling forward. And he did lots of interesting, persuasive, and I think good things. But he also did so without realizing what would happen when people came along a century even later, and had to deal with the legacy of St. Augustine. Last thing Augustine ever thought anybody be talking about is the legacy of St. Augustine.

Ken Taylor
James, thank you for joining us. It’s been a really fascinating conversation. And we’ll have to have you back on Philosophy Talk sometime in the future as well.

James O’Donnell
Thank you.

Ken Taylor
Our guest has been James O’Donnell, Provost at Georgetown University, author of “Augustine, Sinner & Saint: A New Biography.” So John, what did you learn today? I thought that was really fascinating.

John Perry
Oh, I learned a lot today. And I matter of fact, I was just reminded of something that by by email, we didn’t get a chance to read, namely, Marcus Aurelius is meditations was a piece of interiority. Well, before Augustine. Yeah. Yeah. So much for your Notre Dame.

Ken Taylor
And like I said, I did I’ve read that somewhere. And I thought, can that really be true that it does get invented interior, he certainly elevated interiority and searching for God by searching inward. We didn’t talk about this doctrine of illumination that he has, in his view about how you actually find God is you can’t by looking at the sensible world. You look at the self, you do this Cartesian coach Ito like thing. And somehow you got illuminate your inner voice and chose himself to you through the inward journey?

John Perry
Well, we, you know, we talked about a lot of important stuff. And there’s, of course, a whole lot of stuff. And I guess, and we didn’t talk about the area and heresy and the Trinity and so forth. But let me end on a relatively trivial note, poor poor St. Augustine becoming the patron saint of just wars. St. Nicholas, you know, St. Nicholas was really a wonderful bishop in, in ancient or not so ancient Turkey, who did wonderful things, and now he’s the patron saint of Coca Cola. So, I mean, we just were if you’re gonna be a saint, you have to be careful what the Coca Cola company or Time Magazine is going to do with you. And can I really want you to keep that in mind.

Ken Taylor
So the message is, you know, if you’re going to become a saint, you’d never know who’s going to appropriate your say to it for their causes after you’re after you’re dead and gone. So be careful, right? Be careful, be careful. But you know, this conversation continues. It already has begun on our blog, the blog dot Philosophy Talk dot org, where our motto is Cogito ergo bloggo, because John, you’ve already started blogging, right?

John Perry
I have blogged on St. Augustine and explained why I think all the heresies he disapproved of were more plausible than his own position. Every single one of them you think oh, maybe not the nasty inherits that was an interesting one. You know, it was a there was a big worry about whether the people who were priests really were priests, because they might have been made priest by somebody who’s made a priest by somebody who had capitulated under Roman torture in the old days.

Ken Taylor
But anyway, go read John’s blog.

John Perry
But anyway, I digress. For the final word we’re going to turn to that most confessional of commentators, Ian Shoales, the Sixty-Second Theologian.

Ian Shoales
In Shoales… Before his final conversion to Catholicism, St. Augustine was if not a follower of Manichaeism, then at least what we might call a fellow traveler. The founder of Manichaeism was called “Mani,” which appears to have been more a term of respect than a name, meaning “Light King,” or “the Illustrious.” Mani did the usual stuff saviors do, preached, healed the sick, got disciples, got killed…. Manichaeism took as its central tenet that this world and all it contains are evil. All is either light or darkness, and the bodies of human beings are prisons, keeping the light from shining. Such dualism was common at the time. Augustine himself wrote of one fanatic, not a Manichaeist, who would only wash his face with his own saliva, because water was of the world, and therefore evil. I don’t know where the guy thought his spit came from, but never mind. Manichaeism was a rival to Christianity in Christianity’s early days. It set itself against Christianity, because Christianity was full of mysteries, and Manichaeism did not believe in mysteries. It confidently explained the origin, composition, and future of the universe. So what about the universe? Well, it seems that the sun and the moon were created as receptacles of the light to be freed from the darkness, the moon collecting light during the first half-month, and pouring that light into the sun during the second half of the month. When the sun and moon have liberated enough light, a fire will burst out on earth which will burn for over a thousand years, driving The King of Darkness and his minions into a pit. So there you go, your universe, explained. All’s well that ends well. It is not known for certain what first attracted Augustine to Manichaeism, but it was astronomy that turned him against it. He had read philosophers, who could actually predict eclipses with accuracy, unlike the Manichaeans. Also, Manichaeists were believers in astrology. Having observed that two men born at the same time in the same place do not turn into the same person, Augustine rejected astrology. Further, Augustine came to believe that evil was not natural, but anti-natural. It is a product, not of nature, but of individual choice. Again, astrology is contrary to Christianity, because it denies that freedom of choice. If the stars control behavior, then human beings are not responsible for their own sins. In his Confessions, Augustine wrote of his gradual conversion: “I still thought that it is not we who sin but some other nature that sins within us…. I preferred to excuse myself and blame this unknown thing which was in me but was not part of me. The truth, of course, was that …My sin was all the more incurable because I did not think myself a sinner.” Henceforth, he devoted much of his time refuting Manichaeism, anathematizing its adherents, and pretty much singlehandedly demolishing it as a competitor to Catholicism. All thanks to St. Augustine, and his brilliant conception of original sin. Yes, it wasn’t Satan that gave birth to evil. It was all that darn Eve. I gotta go.

Ken Taylor
Ian Shoales, the only man who can solve a philosophical problem in 60 seconds.

John Perry
Philosophy Talk is a presentation of Ben Manilla Productions and the trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University, copyright 2008.

Ken Taylor
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John Perry
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Ken Taylor
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John Perry
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Ken Taylor
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John Perry
The conversation continues on our website, philosophytalk.org. I’m John Perry.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. Thank you for listening.

John Perry
And thank you for thinking.