Yesterday I finished blogging about Marcus Aurelius' Meditations and in the afternoon, I began reading Augustine's The City of God. I read Confessions in college, and it had a powerful impact on me. I've never read the larger work and the copy I own (and have owned since college), in a two volume set of Augustine's writings, is actually abridged, though it still runs close to 700 pages. This is going to take some time.
And immediately upon beginning Book One the tone, of course, is different from everything I've read so far since I began reading back through the philosophical canon in late autumn 2011. Back then I commented how refreshing the ancient Greeks were and the modernity of concerns continued with the Latin authors. Now we begin a noticeable shift.
The first few chapters are spent complaining and attacking. Sigh. Pagans are denouncing Christians for the collapse of Rome, yet those very pagans took refuge in Christian churches where they were protected as the Germanic hordes were somehow awed into not attacking the churches, which is unlike every other marauder in the past and even contrary to Roman tradition, which did not respect holy sites.
In chapter IX (these are very short chapters) there was finally something of interest. But first, the close of chapter VIII contained an influence of the Stoic. Augustine writes that during affliction pagans detest and blashpeme God, while Christians pray and praise. I'd rather rebel like the pagans then practice the resignation and acceptance of these Christians. But, maybe this isn't Stoic acceptance? Could it be some weird masochistic pleasure derived from the pain and suffering? Even if that isn't Augustine's teaching, it is where this line of thought is headed. It is a sort of Bizarro Epicureanism.
But the Stoicism is clearly rejected in chapter IX. While suffering from the evils and violence of this world, the godly "do not judge themselves so completely removed from all faults as to be too good to suffer for these temporal ills. For every man, however laudably he lives, yet yields in some points to the lust of the flesh." Marcus Aurelius believed it was possible to live free of lust and desire, which Augustine clearly rejects (I agree with the saint over the emperor). Marcus would have said that you must endure the troubles of this world, but that you can choose not to suffer from them. I don't think I agree, but that worldview is in some ways more encouraging than Augustine's, for Marcus only encourages acceptance and resignation, whereas Augustine, again, seems to encourage some sort of masochism.
A couple of other points arise in chapter IX. He encourages celibacy by describing those "who are not entangled in the meshes of married life" as living "at a higher level." This obnoxious idea continues to plague the world in the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. One of Martin Luther's great advances was that everyone can live the good and righteous life -- there is nothing special about celibacy. In fact, we know now that it, instead, has shrouded centuries of abuse. Rather than being a higher state, institutionalized, it is riddled with corruption.
Should I take this advice to pastors? "For watchmen or overseers of the people are appointed in churches, that they may unsparingly rebuke sin." I think not. Again, this idea led to great corruption and many of the evils that still haunt us. Sigh.
The chapter ends with a brief reference to Job:
Then, lastly, there is another reason why the good are afflicted with temporal calamities--the reason which Job's case exemplifies: that the human spirit may be proved, and that it may be manifested with what fortitude of pious trust, and with how unmercenary a love, it cleaves to God.
Pure hogwash. We studied the biblical book of Job last autumn, and you'll remember that this is not the point of the biblical book, though it does seem to be the point of the ancient folktale which appears in other sources and which the biblical book uses in order to subvert.
Gerald Janzen, who was a Professor at the Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, interprets the Book of Job as rejecting the conventional view that there is a strict moral governance of the world. In this view, good people receive blessings and bad people are cursed, and everything seems to follow this strict law. Janzen believes, instead, that there is a felicity to the world, a freedom and a grace to it.
When God speaks from the whirlwind he cannot vindicate Job in the way that Job wants to be vindicated because the world does not work that way. Instead, God’s speaking to Job honors Job’s integrity and his humanity. Humans are not presented as one creature among many, but as those whom God enters into conversation with. The questions God poses, then, become challenges “to take up the divine image through engagement” with the world. God is inviting us to explore the cosmos and pursue the answers to these questions. God is inviting us to be responsible agents, not passive recipients, of this world. For Janzen, the Book of Job is the creation of a new humanity.
Biblical Job encourages our integrity and humanity. Augustine would make us worms.
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