It was in this age of ruin and distress that St. Augustine lived and worked. To the materialist, nothing could be more futile than the spectacle of Augustine busying himself with the reunion of the African Church and the refutation of the Pelagians, while civilisation was falling to pieces about his ears. It would seem like the activity of an ant which works on while its nest is being destroyed. But St. Augustine saw things otherwise. To him the ruin of civilisation and the destruction of the Empire were not very important things. He looked beyond the aimless and bloody chaos of history to the world of eternal realities from which the world of sense derives all the significance which it possesses. His thoughts were fixed, not on the fate of the city of Rome or the city of Hippo, nor on the struggle of Roman and barbarian, but on those other cities which have their foundations in heaven and in hell, and on the warfare between ‘the world-rulers of the dark aeon’ and the princes of light. And, in fact, though the age of St. Augustine ended in ruin and though the Church of Africa, in the service of which he spent his life, was destined to be blotted out as completely as if it had never been, he was justified in his faith. The spirit of Augustine continued to live and bear fruit long after Christian Africa had ceased to exist. It entered into the tradition of the Western Church and moulded the thought of Western Christendom so that our very civilisation bears that imprint of his genius. However far we have travelled since the fifth century and however much we have learnt from other teachers, the work of St. Augustine remains an inalienable part of our spiritual heritage. —Enquiries into Religion and Culture by Christopher Dawson (Catholic University of America Press, 2009)
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This quotation was originally published here in March 2016.
The featured image is “Sacking of Rome” (between 1833 and 1836) by Karl Bryullov (1799–1852) and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. It has been brightened for clarity.
Christopher Dawson, a powerful apologist and champion of the Christian state.
It may not be an overstatement to say our times mirror Augustine’s. Whether true or not, Dawson gives us reason to hope by reminding us of Augustine and his vision of the world. Is there an Augustine among us today? I don’t know … and it doesn’t really matter. His example repeated many times over among a broader and more widespread Christianity remains a Lighthouse for refugees from our times. But the upheavals we are going through in both the secular and spiritual worlds still stuns and hurts. They invite despair. Well, we should not and must not … and we will not. Victory is sweetest after intense battle … it’s just our turn to see to it..
We might recall that emeritus Pope Benedict wrote his doctoral dissertation on St. Augustine. In 2007, during his “pastoral” visit to Pavia (where the saint’s tomb is found), Benedict recalled Augustine’s “three conversions.” “He always believed—sometimes rather vaguely, sometimes more clearly—that God exists and takes care of us.”
The FIRST conversion is the interior road “toward the ‘yes’ of faith and baptism,” that “the Word was made flesh. And in this way, he touches us and we touch him.”
The SECOND conversion was when “he founded a small monastery and by popular demand was ordained a priest by force [and now] he had to translate his [contemplative] knowledge into the thought and language of the simple folk of [Hippo] [….] we were given the gift of something more precious: the Gospel translated into the language of daily life.”
And the THIRD conversion took place when he discovered that “only one is truly perfect and that the words of the Sermon on the mount are completely realized only in one person: in Jesus Christ himself [….] Augustine saw the final step of humility—the humility of recognizing that the merciful goodness of a God who forgives was necessary for himself and the whole pilgrim Church.”
What would it mean to the Church today, if we went more coherently with the contemplative “Augustinian Option”? Not so much room here for a post-Vatican II, amnesiac, horizontal, and even accommodationist “project-church.” As in the German “synodal wayward” which now is contaminating any broader “walking together” synodality within Augustine’s “whole pilgrim Church.”
Thank you for propagating Bishop Augustine’s Christian view on history which is in great need to our age that indeed is in worldly decline since we have attempted to go beyond Christendom.
With your kind permission please let me remind of the biblical account of history from creation through redemption to parousia as it has been taught to me recently by nuns here in Denmark.
Biblical history proceeds through seven great covenants each of which is followed by worldly decline through unbelief but also is renewed and enlarged in greater depth by the Lord God.
First covenant with Adam who was together with Heva the first human beings endowed with all aristotelian souls namely physical like in the mineral kingdom as well as vegetative like in the fungi-plant-invertebrates realm with cyclic time as well as motional-emotional like in the higher animal realm as well as rational like in the City of God and who thus completed natural history on the so called tertiary-quarternian boundary perhaps in south east Africa and who came to be instituted in the Garden of Delights which in my humble opinion was what is Ngorongoro. And the covenant mediator was Adam and its role was housekeeper to tend all creation and its form was marriage and its sign was the shabbat.
Follows original sin and pleistocaenum which is palaeolithicum or golden age with ten great tribes from Adam to Noah but many extinctions of less great tribes who sinned in all manners.
The second covenant was with Noah and the modern human being descends from his family on the palaeolithicum-neolithicum boundary and through the former there were ice ages and warm ages with great floods and extinctions but the covenant role is father and its form is family and its sign is the rainbow since only with the modern human being came natural philosophy.
Follows holocaenum or neolithicum which was silver age with proliferation of gentile tribes in cities where languages specialized and broke away from other languages of many other cities.
The third covenant was with Abraham and its role was enlarged to tribal chief and its form was enlarged to tribe and its sign was circumcision and all male of his many offspring entered and for example Job came to be his descendant but mainly it was only through Jacob that the Lord God came to be conserved and further praised.
Follows bronze age with great civilizations and still the monotheists can claim circumcision but who otherwise apart from Job went far astray.
The fourth covenant was with Moses and its role was judge and its form was rule of law and its sign was passover and follows common iron age but it was also him who invented the Hebrew alphabet to give us ten moral commandments.
But there followed also decline among the people who did not belive in love for God and love for neighbour because many went astray.
The fifth covenant was with David and its role was king and its form was nation and its sign was throne and then follows written poetry and with Solomon philosophy and mathematics.
But Israel apart from seven thousand souls went astray despite many prophets who did well and came the Babylonian exile so anew God acted.
The sixth covenant was with Ezra and its role was rabbi which is attainable to every Jew and its form was Jewish diaspora and its sign was Pentateuchon and then came Babylonian and Persian and Greek and Roman empires but by the time of Our Lord most Jews understood null.
The seventh and new and aeternal covenant was with Jesus and its role is aeternal high king and priest and its form is the Church and its sign is the Holy Mass with celebration of Eucharistia.
Even then Christians go astray and seek to go beyond their covenant of Baptism because we still live in the new testament and as indeed Bishop Augustine warned the very Christian Romans we live and breathe in the Lord Jesus who is personal God and only then comes peace but people seek to go beyond and to still build peace by ideological and political means as especially with the modern false enlightenment and the great French, American and Russian revolutions but this modernist ideology claims that we live on top of the Holy Bible as if Jesus is some kind of great ideological human being to build our worldly politics and all that on or even to be discarded all together but Jesus is Lord.
In brief only when Christians live inside the new testament can we escape from world history as the latter must be invited into the Holy Church in order to make friendship with the personal God and only from within comes biblical peace so as far as the world goes civilizations do crash.