Introduction
This article series teaches about how St. Augustine’s Christology (the study of Jesus Christ) influenced Martin Luther’s understanding of Jesus.
While Part 1 offered a brief overview of the lives of Augustine and Luther, this article examines the link between their understanding of Jesus by looking at the formative years of Augustine.
By considering Augustine’s early life, we’ll see how his intellectual and spiritual growth influenced his literary thought and contributed to the vast amount of Christological content in his wrings, many of which would later impact Luther’s studies of Jesus.
Augustine’s Early Life and Education
Aurelius Augustinus, popularly known as Saint Augustine of Hippo, was born in Tagaste, Numidia (modern day Algeria) in 354 AD.[1]
He was born to Roman parents, Patricius, who was religiously pagan, and Monica, who was a devout Christian. These types of religiously mixed marriages were common in the fourth century.[2]“Augustine’s ambitions were large: he wanted to pursue a career that would provide him wealth and notoriety as a professional lawyer.”
Tagaste was a poor, agricultural village with no prestige to speak of beyond its Roman loyalties. For Augustine’s family to belong to a Roman town, the only requirement was for them to be free and civilized; wealth was not a prerequisite.[3]
Despite having other siblings, a brother and a sister, Augustine’s family could only afford to have one child be fully educated. Augustine’s ambitions were large: he wanted to pursue a career that would provide him wealth and notoriety as a professional lawyer.
Therefore, his parents put all the money and effort they could manage into his education to provide for his lofty endeavors and the social prestige of the family.[4]“The goal of the ancient educational system was to produce master communicators.”
The educational system in the fourth century had one major goal, which was to teach rhetoric.
To accomplish this, the teachers would take popular texts, such as Homer, and have the students analyze, memorize, and inflect the text in speech perfectly. Therefore, the goal of the ancient educational system was to produce master communicators.
Augustine’s education was wrought by this same strategy. He not only excelled in his studies, but he pursued theater as a natural extension of his learning. History documents that he was someone who could both write and speak movingly.[5]
Rhetorical Teacher
Augustine went to school in Tagaste, then Madauros, and finally Carthage, the Great Roman city of North Africa, where he eventually began teaching rhetoric after graduation.[6]
During this time, after a period of sensual indiscretion and fraternal immorality, Augustine settled down with a woman whose name has been lost to history.“While his mother was Christian, and even though she constantly prayed for him and pointed him to the Gospel, Augustine was not ready to commit to making Jesus the Lord of his life.”
His anonymous concubine became pregnant soon after he accepted the teaching position in Carthage and gave birth to his son, Adeodatus.[7] He described this event in his autobiography Confessions,
In those years I had one (whom I knew not in what is called lawful wedlock, but whom my wayward passion, void of understanding, had discovered), yet one only, remaining faithful even to her; in whom I found out truly by my own experience what difference there is between the restraints of the marriage bonds, contracted for the sake of issue, and the compact of a lustful love, where children are born against the parents will, although, being born, they compel love.[8]
Augustine, from nineteen to twenty-eight years of age, taught rhetoric at Carthage.
“At the age of 28, restless and ambitious, Augustine left Africa in 383 to make his career in Rome.”[9]
“He taught there briefly before landing a plum appointment as imperial professor of rhetoric at Milan.”[10] Therefore, Augustine was ambitious without distinct direction.
While his mother was Christian, and even though she constantly prayed for him and pointed him to the Gospel, Augustine was not ready to commit to making Jesus the Lord of his life.“Augustine grew up around the stories presented in the Gospels about Jesus and he identified with Jesus in His suffering except Augustine chose to believe Jesus needed to be saved from His sinful flesh like the rest of humanity.”
Nor was he intent on moving into the system of law after becoming accustomed to teaching rhetoric.
The excitement of the pagan culture he had been surrounded with in his early life still had his focus. He attempted to follow astrological horoscopes and Manichaeism; a secret, illegal fraternal order for nine years.[11]
Manicheans believed in a spiritually dualistic universe; the Kingdom of Light versus the Kingdom of Darkness, equal in power and opposed to one another.
At first, this made logical sense to Augustine, as they taught people had two natures, light and dark.
Their understanding of life was like the Gnostic view of divine spirit and rebellious flesh made popular two centuries earlier except the Manichaeans determined Jesus as human and not spirit.
Augustine grew up around the stories presented in the Gospels about Jesus and he identified with Jesus in His suffering except Augustine chose to believe Jesus needed to be saved from His sinful flesh like the rest of humanity.[12]
His Jesus was not the Son of God incarnate, but the human Jesus who modeled the necessary putting away of evil flesh.“How can good be good if it cannot overcome evil?”
After nine years of following Manicheism, Augustine discovered the inadequacy of the view. He discovered the religious system made the Kingdom of Light out to be the Kingdom of Apathy.
After all, if the god of light was supposed to be fighting the god of darkness, why was he not doing so actively? The writings of Mani illustrate good as passive and ignorant of the struggle.
If this was so, as Augustine reasoned, then how can good be good if it cannot overcome evil?[13]
Commitment to Christ and the Church
After moving away from Manicheanism due to the inconsistencies he found within it, Augustine briefly flirted with Neoplatonism.
Plotinus stated, “…all beings are good and that there are incorporeal realities.”[14]
Still, Augustine searched for answers, but nothing presented to him satisfied his hunger for truth. Ferguson states,
As much out of professional curiosity as anything, he went to hear the city’s most famous public speaker, bishop Ambrose, preach. From him, Augustine heard a much more intellectually respectable interpretation of the Scriptures than he had learned growing up in North Africa.[15]
Augustine, through Ambrose and other Christian intellectuals, began to understand the Christian worldview as the certain reality.
While he changed his thinking quickly, his moral attitude towards Christ took longer because of his penchant for sexual indiscretions.[16]
In 386 AD, Augustine made radical changes to his life when he read, by prompting of songs being sung by children next door, Romans 13:13-14,
13) Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying.
14) But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.Romans 13:13-14 (KJV)
“Augustine, through Ambrose and other Christian intellectuals, began to understand the Christian worldview as the certain reality.”This experience led Augustine to be baptized by Ambrose in Milan, let go of his bride-to-be, retire from teaching, and start a monastery in Tagaste, his hometown.
He was then ordained as a preacher in 391 in the city of Hippo where he intellectually challenged at least three different popular heresies.
Augustine was specially equipped for the task due to his oratory skills, reasoning skills, expertise in Latin, and familiarity with the heresies.[17]
Conclusion
In Part 2 of our series about about how St. Augustine’s Christology (the study of Jesus Christ) influenced Martin Luther’s understanding of Jesus, we considered Augustine’s early years which would set the stage for his later theology and written works about Jesus Christ.
In Part 3 we’ll learn more about Augustine’s literary contributions to the field of Christology and how they impacted Martin Luther.
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Image Credit
Portret van Martin Luther, Cornelis Koning (?-1671), c. 1608 – c. 1671. RP-P-1908-1644. Heilige Augustinus met brandend hart doorboord met pijl, Schelte Adamsz. Bolswert, after Peter Paul Rubens, 1596 – 1678. RP-P-1886-A-11212. The Rijksmuseum
Sources
[1] “St. Augustine,” Encyclopedia Britannica (Encyclopedia Britannica, inc.), accessed November 8, 2022, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Augustine.
[2] “Saint Augustine,” The Augustinians, accessed November 8, 2022, https://www.augustinian.org/saint-augustine.
[3] Peter Brown. Augustine of Hippo: A Biography. (Berkley, CA: University of California Press, Berkely, CA, 2000), 9.
[4] “St. Augustine,” Encyclopedia Britannica (Encyclopedia Britannica, inc.), accessed November 8, 2022, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Augustine.
[5] Brown. Augustine of Hippo. (2000), 25-27.
[6] Rebecca Denova, “Augustine of Hippo,” World History Encyclopedia (https://www.worldhistory.org#organization, November 7, 2022), https://www.worldhistory.org/Augustine_of_Hippo/.
[7] Brown, Augustine of Hippo. (2000), 27-28.
[8] Augustine. Confessions. IV, ii.
[9] Christian Tornau, “Saint Augustine,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Stanford University, September 25, 2019), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/augustine/.
[10] “St. Augustine,” Encyclopedia Britannica (Encyclopedia Britannica, inc.), accessed November 8, 2022, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Augustine.
[11] Brown. Augustine of Hippo. (2000), 35.
[12] Brown. Augustine of Hippo. (2000), 42.
[13] Brown. Augustine of Hippo. (2000), 42-43
[14] Everett Ferguson, Christian History from Christ to the Pre-Reformation, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005), 270.
[15] Ferguson, Christian History, (2005), 270.
[16] Brown. Augustine of Hippo. (2000), 96-98.
[17] Ferguson, Christian History, (2005), 268-270.