St. Augustine

Augustine, Aurelius, blessed, bishop of Hippo, famous teacher of the church. The son of the pagan Patricius and the most pious Christian Monica, he is born. at Tagaste, in Numidia, November 13, 353 and d. in Ippon, North Africa, August 28, 430. From Monica he inherited his ardent, loving nature, and through her prayers he converted to Christianity. His early life was stormy. When he received his initial education in his homeland, his ambitious father, flattered by his successes, sent him, in his 16th year, to Carthage, where he studied for three years. There, Cicero’s “Hortensius,” now lost to us, awakened in him a love of truth, and he began to study the Bible, but soon abandoned it because he did not like its style. From this time until his conversion, he tirelessly tried to achieve the highest good, but failed, although he temporarily found satisfaction in various philosophical and religious schools. He was first attracted to Manichaeism, and from 373–383 he was one of the “hearers,” or catechumens, of that sect. But the immorality of the “elect,” who were considered saints by the Manichaeans, and the superficiality of the system he noticed, plunged him for some time into skepticism, from which, however, Neoplatonism saved him. Meanwhile, he taught rhetoric in Tagaste and in Carthage, where he published his first work in 380: “On the practical and beautiful,” and in Rome. As a teacher, he was not particularly successful, and he was unable to maintain proper order among his students or earn money; and, however, he so demonstrated his teaching abilities that Symmachus, the Roman prefect, found it possible to send him to Milan when he was asked to recommend someone as a teacher of rhetoric. There he met St. Ambrose, and under his influence converted to Christianity (in September 386), being 32 years old, and was baptized in Mediolan on the eve of Easter, April 25, 387. On the way home, Monica died in Ostia; and the grief caused to him by this is touchingly poured out in his “Confession.” Having distributed everything that was left to him from his mother, he, upon returning to Tagaste, indulged in an ascetic life; but in 391 he was elected priest to the church in Ippon-Regius, and in 395 he became an assistant to Bishop Valerius, and soon afterwards a bishop. If the first period of his life was marked by various adventures that testified to a vague search for truth, then in the last period of his life he appears to us as a great teacher of the church. From his diocese he waged a tireless struggle against various heresies. Manichaeans and Donatists, Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians fell under his blows; and the works he composed in the midst of these controversies gave him immortality, and gave the tone and direction to all subsequent theology of the Western Church. Two of his creations are especially remarkable: “Confession,” in which he, extremely humbly and frankly, with full recognition of all his sinful hobbies, reviews his life until the very time of his conversion; so this book at the same time represents both a source of deep religious edification and the most reliable autobiography - and “On the City of God,” in which he showed that the Church of Christ must survive the destruction of Rome, and thus gave consolation to those who, together with the blessed. Jerome, mournfully exclaimed: “Who will be saved when Rome falls”? The last years of Augustine's life were extremely troubled. He saw Vandals overrun North Africa, and he had to lead the desperate defense of Ippon. But God, in His mercy, took him to Himself before the city fell, and thus delivered him from the greatest sorrow. At the beginning of the 16th century, his remains were transferred from Ippon to Sardinia; at the beginning of the 18th century. Liutprand, King of Lombardy, buried them in the church of St. Peter's in Pavia, where they remained until October 12, 1841, when the Bishop of Pavia formally handed them over to the Bishop of Algiers, who transferred them to Ippon, located near the present Bona, and buried them there in a church dedicated to his memory, October 30, 1841. Blessed Augustine himself is the source of all our information about his sinful life before his conversion to Christianity. Being sixteen years old, he joined the company of dissolute youth ( Confessions, 2, 4, 9 years old, he was already the father of a son Adiodatus (God-given) by his concubine ( 4, 2, 2 they lived together, being faithful to each other; and Augustine says that his heart was “tormented, was wounded, and bled” when he had to send her back to Africa, because she was an obstacle to his entry into lawful marriage (Isp. 6, 15,25 14, 23 ages, and Augustine, finding this delay unbearable, took another concubine, and maintained this new relationship until thirty-three years, until the hand of the Lord Christ finally freed him from the temptations of the flesh, and the light of the Gospel illuminated his heart. It was deeply instructive for the Christian world that the greatest teacher of the Western Church was at first a slave of sin; because after his conversion he was able to instruct and strengthen his brethren, as one who had learned by long and bitter experience that he who sins against God does wrong to his own soul. But, judging him, we must remember that at that time he was still a pagan, and, judging by the pagan level of morality, relatively innocent. After his conversion, he not only renounced all illicit relations, but devoted himself entirely to a single life, for the sake of the kingdom of God, and never broke his vow. Blessed Augustine is one of the teachers of the universal Church. He is equally revered by all Christian confessions, and especially by the confessions of the Western Church, where Roman Catholicism competes in this respect with Protestantism. He was at the same time the greatest preacher, who quickly composed his sermons; and if many of his creations were written with a deliberate purpose, then still more of them appeared as the result of instant inspiration, and as the expression of a present need. Although he was not a scholar like Blessed Jerome, because he knew little Greek and no knowledge of Hebrew, he had a deeper spiritual understanding of the Holy Scriptures than any of the Western teachers of the church. For all his shortcomings, he deservedly enjoys the respect of the Christian world. Rarely has anyone come out in defense of the truth with greater determination and fearlessness; Rarely has anyone been distinguished by a more sublime spirit. The mother's joy at her son's conversion to Christianity resonated throughout the Christian world when it became known that Augustine had dedicated his brilliant mind and wonderful abilities to the service of Christ. To understand Augustine means to understand the entire previous history of philosophy and theology, and at the same time the reasons for the subsequent successes of Christianity in the West. Thus, it is an expression of the dividing line between the church in the period of persecution and the church in the time of victory. He ended the first period, and began a new period in its development. In the field of theology, St. Augustine completed an entire era: he ended the debate about the Trinity and Christology and, by raising questions of anthropology, opened new paths for theological thought. Let us briefly outline the main features of his theology, which, it should be noted, has always been more critical than theoretical in nature. Having established a firm and definite doctrine about the Holy Trinity and about Christ, Blessed. Augustine dealt especially much with anthropological questions, that is, with questions about man’s relationship to God. This includes primarily questions about sin and grace. In the doctrine of sin, Bl. Augustine, trying to eliminate both Manichaean and Pelagian one-sidedness, especially insisted on the weakness caused to man by sin, and, as far as possible, limited human freedom. Evil, according to him, is deprivation, denial and weakening of any spiritual power, especially will; good is positive and is the fruit of God's activity. He allows only such freedom of choice as is absolutely necessary in order to reject the accusation from God as the cause of evil. During the Fall, man made a bad choice, and the consequences became hereditary. And, however, a person has the opportunity to achieve salvation, since his nature in itself is not criminal, but only corrupted; the mind has fallen into ignorantia, and the will into infirmitas. In Adam the human race had some pre-existence; and thus when he fell, the whole human race fell. Sin is a constant inclination in man, essentially evil, tending toward alienation from God. This teaching is opposite to the Pelagian idea of ​​balance - the ability to take one direction or another. Every individual person is also involved in the sin that weighs on the entire race. Punishment and guilt are therefore hereditary. But a person can be freed from these consequences of sin with the help of grace. Contrary to the Pelagians, who put forward the possibility of salvation through man’s own efforts, the blj. Augustine insisted on the absolute necessity of grace as a saving power. Grace, according to his teaching, is absolutely necessary: ​​a) for the very beginning of the saving process, i.e. to arouse saving faith and good activity in a person and b) to continue and finally complete the work of salvation, that is, to continue and consolidate faith and good activity in a person. Grace acts irresistibly, although it does not deprive a person of freedom of self-determination. The interaction of grace and freedom consists of the process of salvation, the goal of which is the destruction in man of sin, guilt for sin and punishment for it. The main conditions for the feasibility of this process: faith and good deeds, as a result of the grace-filled healing of the mind and will of fallen man. But at the heart of this process lies divine predestination. Although Blessed Augustine attached great importance to predestination as an act of divine wisdom, he did not attach unconditional importance to this predestination to the exclusion of all self-activity of human freedom. At this point the teaching of the blessed one. Augustine was subject to various misinterpretations, especially from the Reformed. But in reality, he expresses only such a doctrine of predestination, which does not go beyond the boundaries of Orthodox theology, which is quite clear from a comparison of his teaching with the teaching of the “Epistle of the Eastern Patriarchs”. Based on this comparison, Professor L. Pisarev, in his dissertation on St. Augustine, directly says that “Augustine’s teaching can be accepted as an example of true Orthodox Christian teaching” (p. 356). Concluding his study, the same scholarly researcher defines the meaning of blzh. Augustine as a theologian: “Developing his teaching mainly in contrast to the errors of the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians, St. Augustine first of all rendered a service to Christianity in the sense that with his teaching he fundamentally undermined the basic principles of the worldview of his opponents. He proved that Pelagianism, in particular, concealed in its basic provisions a heresy that was in complete contradiction with the main points of Christian teaching. Along with this purely negative service, he also provided a positive service for Christian Science with his teaching. He undoubtedly took a step forward in revealing Christian anthropological teachings. The fact is that before him only the main points of this teaching were outlined. It was expressed by the fathers of previous times only in the form of fragmentary judgments without any, at least visible, relation to the general system of Christian doctrine. As for the blzh. Augustine, he was the first in the history of Christian theology to engage in a more detailed elucidation of anthropological teaching and presented the entire group of anthropological views of Christianity in the form of a coherent and coherent worldview. From this it is clear why it is precisely in the anthropological teachings of the famous Bishop of Ipponia that the loud glory and fame that is usually associated with his name lies primarily. “In the name of the blessed one. Augustine,” says Ritter, “first of all, everyone imagines his disputes with the Pelagians, during which he revealed the doctrine of the relationship of divine grace to human freedom.” It should be noted that the merits of Blessed Augustine in this regard can be compared with the merits of the great fathers and teachers of the Eastern Church, such as: St. Athanasius of Alexandria, St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian, St. Gregory of Nyssa. Just as these latter were representatives of the theological and philosophical disclosure of the true Christian teachings of the Eastern Church during its struggle against various heretical false teachings, so were the blessed ones. Augustine was the pillar and stronghold of the Western Church during its struggle against the false teachings of the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians. Just as the former, in the fight against heresies, created the theological part of Christian dogma, so the latter, in the fight against the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians, created the anthropological part of this dogma.” Blessed Augustine did not limit himself only to the fight against heresies and schisms. He understood that the main enemy of Christianity is paganism, on the soil of which the tares of heresies and schisms grow, and therefore decided to deal a decisive blow to it, which he did in his famous essay “On the City of God” - De Civitate Dei. This work is one of the greatest apologetic creations of the ancient church, and above it is the blessed one. Augustine worked for 14 years - from 413 to 426. The reason for its composition was the defeat of Rome by Alaric in 410 and the task of the blessed. Augustine wanted to refute the complaints of the pagans that all the disasters that the Roman Empire had to experience at that time were due to the Christians, because of their anger the gods who created the greatness of Rome took away their protection from it. The situation was truly terrible. The collapse of the universal power of Rome caused extraordinary confusion among the peoples, since with the decline of Rome the entire ancient world fell and a new world was born through unimaginable torment, which had not yet promised anything definite and only aroused vague fears and weak hopes. It was necessary to somehow understand the turmoil of such an era, and Blessed Augustine gave a great experience in clarifying the destinies of the historical life of mankind in this creation, giving a calming explanation of the historical upheavals that had been experienced and setting out general principles for understanding the ways of God’s economy in history. From this side, the creation “On the City of God” has a philosophical and historical character, so it is not without reason that the bl. Augustine is called the "father of the philosophy of history." The main idea of ​​creation is that the whole world is one great kingdom, the ruler of which is God, who arranges everything according to His great grace and wisdom; but this kingdom, due to human sinfulness, split into two completely different cities - the earthly city and the heavenly city, of which in the first the desire for earth and flesh prevails, and in the second - for heaven and spirituality. There is a constant struggle between these cities, which explains various historical vicissitudes, and at times the earthly city takes precedence over the heavenly city. But this is only a temporary triumph, which will end with the complete victory of the heavenly city, and then the complete kingdom of God will be established on earth. – This creation is generally replete with deep philosophical and historical thoughts, which make the study of it very fruitful not only for the theologian, but also for any historian. - Blessed memory Augustine in the West on August 28, in the East and here on June 15 (according to Philar. and Serg.). His name is not, however, either in the Prologue or in the Cht.-Min. (Makar. and Dm. Rost.), nor in general in the ancient Slavic-Russian monthly books (not in the Synod. M. 1891). In the Greek verse synaxarions it is shown under June 15, under this date it is also listed in the Synaxarist of Nicodemus (1819), with the following inscription: “Μνήμη σου ἐν Ἀγίοις Πατρος ἡμῶν “Ἀυγουστίνου, Επισκόπου Ἱππώνος”, a verse (couple) is given to him and a note briefly outlines his life. From Synax. Nicodemus, the Reverends Philaret and Sergius brought the name of Blessed. Augustine in his Months, without any instructions regarding the celebration of his memory in the East. – The works of Blessed Augustine can be divided into a) autobiographical, which includes “Confessions”, “Corrections”, and “Letters”; b) polemical: treatises against the Manichaeans, Donatists, Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians; c) dogmatic: “Enchiridion”, and other theological treatises; d) exegetical: “Commentary” on a significant part of the Bible; f) practical: sermons and moral treatises. The best edition of Augustine's works is the Benedictine, Paris, 1679–1700, in 11 volumes. folio, reprinted by Gaume, Paris, 1836–39, in volume 11, and by Minem, Paris, 1841, volume 10; 2nd ed., 1863, 11 volume. The most important of his works were translated into Russian at the Kyiv Theological Academy (in eight parts, 1879–1895). “Confession” is the autobiography of the blessed one. Augustine until his return to Africa (388), and his “Corrections” (427) survey his entire literary life. His student, Possidius, c. 432, wrote the first Vita Sancti Augustini published by the Benedictines (Vol. X, Appendix, pp. 257–280), together with his own biography (Vol. XI, pp. 1–492, in Minh Vol. I, pp. 66–578). A detailed biography of the blessed one. Augustine, see op. Farrar, “The Life and Works of the Fathers and Teachers of the Church,” trans. A. P. Lopukhina. Regarding the theology of St. Augustine, see the detailed study by A. Dorner: Augustinus, sein theologisches System und seine religions-philosophische Anschauung, Berlin, 1873. On the philosophy of Augustine, see Nourrison: La philosophie de saint Augustin, 2d ed. Paris, 1866, 2 vols.; Prof. Erneste Naville: St. Augustin, Geneva, 1872; J. Storz: Die Philosophie des heiligen Augustinus, Freiburg im Br., 1882. – In Russian literature, the most famous works are: Arch. Sergius. “Teaching of the Blessed. Augustine in connection with the circumstances of his life." (Readings in the Society of Lovely Spiritual Enlightenment, 1887, p. 431). M. Krasin. The creation of the blessed Augustine “De civitate Dei, as an apology for Christianity in the fight against paganism”, doctoral thesis. dissertation Rodnikov N. prof. Kaz. spirit. acad. “Teaching of the Blessed. Augustine on the relationship between church and state in comparison with the teachings of the fathers, teachers and writers of the church of the first four centuries and the medieval, that is, critical theologians of the Western Church.” Kazan, 1897 Prince Trubetskoy, “The religious and moral ideal of Western Christianity in the 5th century. Part I. Worldview of the Blessed. Augustine. Moscow. 1892. Skvortsov, “Blzh. Augustine as a psychologist” (Proceedings of the Kiev spiritual academician. 1870. No. 4–6). D. Gusev, prof. “Anthropological views of the blessed. Augustine in connection with the teaching of Pelagianism" (Orthodox Interlocutor, 1874. No. 7, pp. 271–334). L. Pisarev, “The Teaching of St. Augustine about man in his relation to God.” Kazan. 1894. A.P. Lopukhin, The Ways of God's Providence in the History of Mankind. An experience of philosophical and historical substantiation of the views of St. Augustine and Bossuet. Ed. 2nd. St. Petersburg 1898.