CITY OF GOD PART I.

(This is a three-part entry, posted on my blog today and during the next two days. (See also my entry Saint Augustine And Christian Fundamentalism in the Religion Section. It was posted on my blog on October 11^th, 2011.)

This is my entry on St. Augustine the Blessed (354-430), and the first question that arises is why this title? In my small but helpful library of today, I have a nice leather-bound edition of St. Augustine’s best-known work Confessions, which pleasantly ends with Book X, and I imagine that a large majority of the relatively few people who keep this book in their library today are convinced that this is all there is to St. Augustine, and his Confessions, in so far as his literary output is concerned. But the fact remains that he was a prolific writer with many more titles to his name, and as for his Confessions, what I and most other people have at home is the most familiar, but also the least significant and philosophically inconsequential portion of that work and of all his other writings, as it deals predominantly with biography, while the “missing” Books XI-XIII, and Book XI most particularly, are all devoted to philosophy. For this reason, my Confessions file in the Sources &Comments:-Augustine Folder contains only these missing Books, and none of the first ten. And finally, concerning the title of this entry, it is not that I value De Civitatis Dei above all other Augustinian works, but its title is truly symbolic of all Augustinian philosophy, which firmly puts the City of God above the City of Man.

In an earlier entry I used the word philosopher in relation to Apostle Paul, but in the same breath I observed that he cannot be treated as a philosopher, because all his writings have been sacred texts and, as such, are off limits to a normal philosophical discussion, which means that they can only be treated in the context of Christian faith, but not in any other way. For this reason, the title of the first Christian philosopher goes to the earliest Church Father who has demonstrated not only a theological acumen, but a philosophical one as well, and in this capacity, the first incontestable name that comes up is that of the Blessed Augustine. (I am purposely using the Russian appellation of him, which, in this case, is equivalent of Saint.) Being a Saint is not a reason for anybody’s exclusion from consideration, as long as his texts are not sacred texts, and thus exempt from critical analysis. (On the other hand, it is easy to see why the preceding Church Fathers from St. Justin Martyr to St. Ambrose, even though sometimes referred to as philosophers, are rather apologists of early Christianity, but do not qualify as philosophers the way Saint Augustine does.) Ironically, even the Christian Church herself, although completely forthcoming in granting his person Sainthood, has held his numerous writings under a certain cloud, as rather suspect of possible whiffs of unintentional heresy, which is however virtually impossible to pinpoint. This attitude obviously demonstrates that Saint Augustine is a bona fide philosopher, as the existing doubt about the essence of his theories is exactly what distinguishes genuine philosophy from homily and apologetics.

Leaving aside Augustine’s biography, I have a great respect for him as a virtually independent thinker at a time when independent thinking was not counted among persons’ admirable virtues. In my Religion section entry Saint Augustine And Christian Fundamentalism I noted two aspects of Augustine’s thinking that were extremely brave, controversial, and so modern that they might be easily mistaken for a vile, secularist, anti-Christian subversion in most Evangelical churches of today’s America. While referring the reader to the cited entry, I will only say that one of these points ridicules literal interpretations of the Bible, and the other suggests that non-Christian thinking need not necessarily be stupid or Satanic. (Having said these positive things about him, I must say here, and I will elaborate on it later in this entry, that St. Augustine to me is by no means a sympathetic figure, and I consider some of his most definitive views nothing short of reprehensible.)

(To be continued tomorrow…)