Evil and Saint Augustine?

Question

I am doing a research on the idea of evil in Saint Augustine and how it influenced contemporary philosophy. Do you know of any sites, articles or books related to this topic? Thanks

Answer 1

*** g87 10/8 p. 6 Examining Evil From Augustine to Calvin ***

Examining Evil From Augustine to Calvin

IN HIS book The City of God, fifth-century theologian Augustine argued that man, not God, was responsible for the existence of evil. Wrote Augustine: “God, the author of natures, not of vices, created man upright; but man, being of his own will corrupted and justly condemned, begot corrupted and condemned children . . . And thus, from the bad use of free will, there originated the whole train of evil.”

The bad use of free will may explain much, or most, of the evil that has afflicted people. However, could a disaster, such as at San Ramón, be blamed on man’s free will? Are not many disastrous events caused by circumstances beyond the control of man? And even if man did willfully choose evil, why would a God of love allow evil to continue?

In the 16th century, French Protestant theologian John Calvin, like Augustine, believed that there are those “predestined [by God] to be children and heirs of the heavenly kingdom.” However, Calvin took matters a step further, arguing that God also predestined individuals to be “recipients of his wrath”—condemned to eternal damnation!

Calvin’s doctrine had frightening implications. If a man suffered any sort of misfortune, might that not indicate that he was among the damned? Furthermore, would not God be responsible for the actions of those he predestined? Calvin had thus unwittingly made God the Creator of sin! Calvin said that “man sins with the consent of a very prompt and inclined will.”—Instruction in Faith, by John Calvin.

However, the concepts of free will and predestination proved hopelessly incompatible. Calvin could only gloss over the embarrassing contradiction by claiming that “the crudity of our mind could not indeed bear such a great clarity, nor our smallness comprehend such a great wisdom” as predestination.

*** w84 12/1 How Christian Expectation Faded:
The Death Blow Is Struck

The church “father,” or “doctor,” that struck the death blow to Christian watchfulness was undoubtedly Augustine of Hippo (354-430 C.E.). In his famous work The City of God, Augustine stated: “The church now on earth is both the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of heaven.”

The New Bible Dictionary explains the effect this outlook had on Catholic theology, stating: “In Roman Catholic theology a distinctive feature is the identification of the kingdom of God and the Church in the earthly dispensation, an identification which is principally due to Augustine’s influence. Through the ecclesiastical hierarchy Christ is actualized as King of the kingdom of God. The area of the kingdom is coterminous [having the same boundaries] with the frontiers of the Church’s power and authority. The kingdom of heaven is extended by the mission and advance of the Church in the world.”

This removed all necessity to “keep on the watch” for the sign that would show that God’s Kingdom was near. Writing in The New Encyclopædia Britannica, Professor E. W. Benz confirms this, saying: “He [Augustine] de-emphasized the original imminent expectation by declaring that the Kingdom of God has already begun in this world with the institution of the church; the church is the historical representative of the Kingdom of God on Earth. The first resurrection, according to Augustine, occurs constantly within the church in the form of the sacrament of Baptism, through which the faithful are introduced into the Kingdom of God.”

Augustine was also the one who finalized Christendom’s abandoning the Scriptural hope of Jesus Christ’s Thousand Year Reign during which He will restore Paradise on earth. (Revelation 20:1-3, 6; 21:1-5) The Catholic Encyclopedia admits: “St. Augustine finally held to the conviction that there will be no millennium. . . . The sabbath of one thousand years after the six thousand years of history, is the whole of eternal life; or, in other words, the number one thousand is intended to express perfection.” The Britannica Macropædia (1977) adds: “For him [Augustine] the millennium had become a spiritual state into which the church collectively had entered at Pentecost. . . . No imminent supernatural intervention in history was expected.” Thus, for Catholics, the prayer “your kingdom come” became pointless.

Medieval Darkness

Augustine’s interpretation, we are told, “became standard doctrine in the middle ages.” Christian expectation, therefore, hit an all-time low. We read: “In medieval Christendom, the New Testament eschatology was given its place in a dogmatic system of which the philosophical foundations were at first Platonistic [from Greek philosopher Plato] and, later in the west, Aristotelian [from Greek philosopher Aristotle]. Traditional conceptions about the parousia, resurrection and the like were combined with Greek notions about the soul and its immortality. . . . Medieval Christianity . . . [left] little place for the eschatological passion. This passion, however, was not dead; it lived in certain heretical movements.”—Encyclopædia Britannica, 1970 edition.

The Roman Catholic Church speaks slightingly of such “heretical movements,” calling them “millennialist sects.” Its historians speak disparagingly of the “Year-1000 Scare.” But whose fault was it that many of the common people were afraid that the world would end in the year 1000? This “scare” was a direct result of Catholic “Saint” Augustine’s theology. He claimed that Satan was bound at the time of Christ’s first advent. Since Revelation 20:3, 7, 8 says that Satan would be bound for 1,000 years and then “released . . . to deceive all the nations” (The Jerusalem Bible), small wonder that some people in the tenth century were fearful of what might happen in the year 1000.

Naturally, the official Roman Catholic Church condemned this “scare,” as it did Cistercian Abbot Joachim of Flora, who foretold the end of the Christian era for the year 1260. Finally, in 1516, at the Fifth Lateran Council, Pope Leo X formally forbade any Catholic to predict when Antichrist and the Last Judgment are due to come. Violation of such a law brought the sanction of excommunication!

Protestant Rationalizing

Theoretically, the 16th-century Reformation, with its supposed return to the Bible, should have witnessed a resurgence of Christian expectation. And it did for a time. But in this respect, as in many others, the Reformation did not fulfill its promises. It did not mark a return to true Biblical Christianity. The Protestant churches born of the Reformation quickly lost their Christian watchfulness and came to terms with the present world.

We read: “The Reformation churches, however, soon became institutional territorial [national] churches, which in turn repressed the end-time expectation, and thus doctrine of the ‘last things’ became an appendix to dogmatics.” “In the religious liberalism that emerged, especially among Protestants and Jews, toward the end of the 18th and through the 19th century, eschatology could find no place. It was regarded as part of the crude, primitive, outworn trappings of traditional religion which could no longer be accepted in an age of enlightenment. In most cases, eschatological ideas were abandoned altogether, and a simple post-mortem immortality of the soul was held forth as man’s end. Other theologians reinterpreted the Kingdom of God expectation in ethical, quasi-mystical or social terms.”—Encyclopædia Britannica.

Thus, instead of helping Christians to “keep on the watch” for Christ’s presence and the coming of God’s Kingdom, Protestant theologians have rationalized away true Christian expectation. For many of them, “the kingdom of God . . . came to be increasingly conceived in an individualistic sense; it is the sovereignty of grace and peace in the hearts of men.” For others, “the coming of the kingdom consists in the forward march of social righteousness and communal development.”—The New Bible Dictionary (Protestant).

Catholic Expectations

In theory, at least, Catholics should be spiritually on the watch for Christ’s presence. In spite of Augustine’s theology that put an end to Kingdom expectation and the millennial hope for Catholics, the Roman Church’s dogma still includes the Christian duty to keep on the watch for Christ’s return. For instance, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith sent to Catholic bishops throughout the world a letter, approved by Pope John Paul II and dated May 17, 1979, that stated: “In accordance with Scripture, the Church awaits ‘the glorious manifestation of Our Lord Jesus Christ.’”

Such is the Catholic Church’s teaching in theory. But, in practice, how often does the average Catholic hear his priest preach about the need to keep on the watch for Christ’s presence and the coming of God’s Kingdom? Interestingly, the very purpose of the above-quoted letter from the Roman Curia was to “strengthen the faith of Christians on points that have been questioned.” But why has Christ’s return been questioned by so-called Christians? Could the answer be suggested in the following quotations from The New Encyclopædia Britannica? “The church has long neglected teachings about the entire area of the last things.” “Since the Reformation, the Roman Church has been virtually immune to eschatological movements.”

Christian Watchfulness Is Not Dead

Christian expectation faded within Christendom’s churches because they abandoned the clear truths of the Bible and chose to follow Greek philosophy and “Saint” Augustine’s theology. The following articles will show that God’s true servants have always lived in expectation of Christ’s presence, and that there exists today a people who have proved their Christian watchfulness over the years and who have rediscovered a wonderful hope that can be yours. Please read on, and then ask one of Jehovah’s Witnesses to help you “keep on the watch” for the fulfillment of that Bible hope.

[Blurb on page 5]

“It is futile to . . . deny the state of expectation of the end that is manifest in most of the New Testament texts”

--Augustine held that the church on earth is the Kingdom of Christ

--Pope Leo X forbade any Catholic to predict when the Last Judgment would come

AUGUSTINE DECIDES THAT “THERE WILL BE NO MILLENNIUM”

But the man who gave the coup de grace to the millennial hope for Catholics and even Protestants was doubtless “Saint” Augustine, described by The Encyclopædia Britannica as “the greatest thinker of Christian antiquity” and “the crucible in which the religion of the New Testament was most completely fused with the Platonic tradition of Greek philosophy.” Augustine came out energetically against the original hope of paradise restored on earth during the 1,000-year reign of Christ. To quote The Catholic Encyclopedia: “St. Augustine finally held to the conviction that there will be no millennium. . . . the great Doctor . . . gives us an allegorical explanation of Chap. 20 of the Apocalypse. The first resurrection, of which this chapter treats, he tells us, refers to the spiritual rebirth in baptism; the sabbath of one thousand years after the six thousand years of history, is the whole of eternal life . . . This explanation of the illustrious Doctor was adopted by succeeding Western theologians, and millenarianism in its earlier shape no longer received support.”

Not only have Catholics thus been robbed of the original, Scriptural millennial hope, but so have Protestants. The 1977 Britannica Macropædia reveals: “Augustine’s allegorical millennialism became the official doctrine of the church, and apocalypticism [expectation of the ultimate destruction of evil and triumph of good] went underground. . . . The Protestant Reformers of the Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anglican traditions were not apocalypticists but remained firmly attached to the views of Augustine.”

Catholic and Protestant theologians mistakenly apply to all the righteous the heavenly hope held out in the Bible to a limited number of Christians called to rule with Christ as kings, priests and judges. (Rev. 20:4-6; Luke 22:28-30) These theologians offer their “faithful” a vague hope of “eternal felicity” in heaven. God’s purpose to have his will “done in earth, as it is in heaven” is totally absent from their expectations. (Matt. 6:10, Authorized Version) Yet the Bible offers the wonderful hope of eternal life, not only in heaven for a chosen few but also on earth for countless others. This twofold hope, closely related to Christ’s 1,000-year reign or millennium, will be discussed more fully in the two following articles.

--Tertullian believed that the kingdom of promise would be established and last for 1,000 years
--Origen shared Plato’s belief in an immortal soul, denying the 1,000-year reign over earth
--Augustine fused Greek philosophy with Bible teachings and held that there will be no millennium"

--If you want more info and his many connections, you can obtain more on the official web page of Jehovah's Witnesses as referenced below