Heroes and Reformers of History … No.7

AUGUSTINE: “LOVE GOD AND DO WHAT YOU PLEASE”

There was one quotation from Augustine that always caught the attention of my students in ethics courses in high school and college: Love God and do what you please. And it is certain to rile a class at church.

But one taking Augustine’s side always wins out, for the old fourth century theologian only needed to point out that if one really loves God his heart will be set upon what pleases God. That makes for good Christian ethics, to be pleased to do what pleases God.

The quotation, however, does more than to provoke ethical questions. It captures the essence of the theology of the church’s most influential thinker between Paul in the first century and St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth. Born in 354, Augustine’s thought dominated the medieval church, and his influence upon Christian theology through the centuries, including our own time, has been substantial. And that theology is captured in that one magnificent phrase, the love of God.

His emphasis on the love of God points to another of his famous lines: “You made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in you.” Much of his life was a search for certainty. He had a passion to know God with certainty, and he agonized over his doubts. Certainty finally came, but in an unexpected way. Even though he was recognized as a philosopher, it was not through philosophy that he found his answer. It was not even through theological system building, though he could do that too. His answer came in a simple prayer to God, “Help me to believe so that I can understand.” In our intellectual western world we have come up with the reverse of that, supposing that we have to understand in order to believe.

Like Paul before him, Augustine was smitten with the reality of sin in his life. His “sense of sin” is at the heart of his theology, and to him the essence of sin was self-will, pride, and carnality. He wrote about a person’s utter helplessness before God and his diseased will. These were the ideas that led to his own conversion, which is one of the most dramatic in the history of the church.

He was 32 at the time, and he described himself in his Confessions as “a miserable young man” who was “sick and tormented” over the sins of his youth, which he dared to name, including lying and deceiving his teachers. He told of how he would steal his neighbor’s pears, not to eat out of any need but to cast to the swine. Such stealing was all the more delightful to him because it was forbidden. This passion to rebel against authority revealed to him the nature of sin. He also saw himself as intellectually arrogant in his youth for supposing that he could fathom the mysteries of the universe.

While in this state of anxiety and distress over his “ugly sins,” weeping all the while with the most bitter sorrow, he heard the voice of a child repeatedly saying, “Take it and read, take it and read.” It was as if it were children at play, but he could remember no child’s game of that nature. He decided it was the voice of God, telling him to open up the Scriptures and take heed to the first passage his eyes fell upon. This he did and his eyes fell upon Rom. 13:13-14, which, translated from his Latin text, reads:

No orgies or drunkenness. no immortality or indecency. no fighting or jealousy. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ; and stop giving attention to your sinful nature. to satisfy its desires.

While at this time he had long been a believer, he did not find peace until in his heart he “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” and renounced sin in his life. It was not until then that he was baptized. From that moment on he no longer had any doubts. He soon rose in clerical ranks to be appointed bishop of Hippo in northern Africa, a post he held for 44 years. It was during his long years as a bishop that he formed his theology, centered both in the love of God and what he called “infinite grace.” One of his achievements was to fuse together Greek philosophy and Christian thought. He did this by making God dominate rather than Jesus. While always faithful to the deity of Christ, he worshiped Christ by glorifying God, and it is God who was the object of his search and of his praise. In this respect he was like the apostle Paul who was so God-centered in his teaching that even when he praised Christ if was in reference to God, such as “Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift” (2 Cor. 9:15) and “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (Eph. 1:3).

It is here that the church owes a great debt to Augustine —his obsession with the glory and majesty of God, his sovereignty, his role as creator, and his unfathomable love. We would all do well to read his Confessions. which is readily available in most any public library, and be exposed to such as, “Thou hast stricken my heart with Thy word, and I loved Thee. And also the heaven and earth, and all that is therein, behold, on every side, they say that I should love Thee.”

Above all else, however, was Augustine’s ceaseless search for a deeper and deeper fellowship with God. He was overwhelmed with the idea that the great God of heaven, the creator of all things, could come into him. He would cry out to God, “Is there anything in me that can contain Thee?” If the heavens and the earth, which God had made, could not contain him, how could man?, he would ask in his insatiable search.

Few have praised God as did Augustine in such lines as these: “always working, yet never at rest; gathering, yet needing nothing; sustaining, pervading, and protecting; creating, nourishing, and developing; seeking and yet possessing all things.” Too few of us are so close to God to look to him as “my life, my holy joy” as did Augustine.

How tragic it is that so many in the modem church appear to give little thought of God, and the idea of searching for him, to follow him more nearly and to love him more dearly, seems never to concern them. The church has been influenced by the pagan world around it in that it lives as if there is no God. We all know that one can be “a good church member” without giving any serious thought to what it means to follow God.

It was out of his passion to know God that Augustine dealt with many weighty issues that have long disturbed believers, such as the problem of evil. Augustine decided that evil has no substantial reality, but is only the absence of good. Evil is always within God’s control. He does not bring evil upon man (Man brings it upon himself, usually!) but he can and does use evil for man’s betterment and his own glory. The will of God, which is always good, is sometimes realized through the evil will of man. In permitting evil God is in some way reflecting his own goodness.

He set forth his practical theology, a kind of “How to live” treatise, in his The City of God. Life is like two cities dwelling side by side and even intermingled. One is the City of God and the other the City of Man. People are free to choose which city they will live in. Those who choose to follow carnality and accumulate material things are citizens of the City of Man; those who choose spiritual values are citizens in the City of God. These cities coexist, perhaps peacefully, and it is not always evident who lives in which city. But God knows, and in time it will be evident. This is Augustine’s way of teaching that while we are “in the world,” and perhaps greatly involved in its ongoing affairs, we are not “of the world.”

As intellectual as he was, Augustine insisted that it is a serious error to reI y upon reason alone in search of answers. Reason must be sanctified and aided by the Spirit of God, and the Christian must live by faith. He saw faith, hope, and love as the true virtues of the Christian, which stood as opposites to the rationalistic virtues of the Greeks, such as prudence, temperance, and fortitude, which Augustine saw as prideful vices. The mark of true religion to Augustine was the prevalence of the true virtues.

Augustine has a special word for those who have to suffer apparent injustices and for no fault of their own. The old bishop observed that there is no way to look at a person’s life and determine whether he is blessed or not. In this “mingled web of human affairs” God’s judgment is present even if it cannot be discerned. We must accept without complaint that good people may suffer earthly misfortunes while the wicked enjoy life. There is another world in which the scales will be balanced. The righteous will be blessed and the wicked will be punished.

Among Augustine’s contribution for our day is his capacity to cause people to think, a mark of all great teachers. People seldom responded to him neutrally. Either they vigorously opposed him or enthusiastically supported him. Some would say he was neurotic about sin and guilt, but in our day when it is sometimes asked, “Whatever happened to sin?,” we need to hear him. Ifwe can’t explain world wars, death camps, AIDS, Hiroshima, and all the other gross evils that devastate us, Augustine can. The human race is depraved. It is amazing that while he is seen as a “Catholic” father, it was to him that the Protestant reformers turned when they rebelled against Catholicism. That is because he understood grace. And because of his influence upon Calvin the Western world is left with the view that “It can’t be good if it doesn’t hurt,” which has just enough truth to it to be of value.

Any old hero of the church who formed his thinking around the belief that God made us for himself, and that “Our hearts find no peace until they rest in you” should be alive and well in our day. —the Editor