Okay, let's unpack this. I want you to picture
a scene, and honestly, it feels less like history
and more like the opening shot of a disaster
movie. It is the spring of 430 AD. We are in
North Africa, specifically in the city of Hipporegis,
which is, what, modern -day Annaba in Algeria.
That's the one. And the situation is absolutely
dire. Dire is almost too soft a word for it.
It's an apocalypse. It really is. The city is
under siege. Right. The vandals are at the gates,
and we aren't talking about graffiti artists
here. No, not at all. We are talking about a
Germanic tribe that has migrated all the way
from Central Europe, down through Spain, across
the Strait of Gibraltar, and is now just tearing
through North Africa. They're burning, looting,
and destroying everything in their path. The
Roman Empire, I mean, the structure that held
the world together for centuries is collapsing
in real time. It's the end of an era. It really
is. And inside the city walls, amidst all the
panic and the starvation, we zoom in on the cathedral
library. And there is a 75 -year -old man lying
on his deathbed. And he knows the end is coming.
Not just for him personally, but, you know, potentially
for his entire civilization. Exactly. And his
reaction to this impending doom is... Well, it's
profound. He hasn't asked for a sword. He hasn't
asked to be evacuated. No. He has requested that
the penitential Psalms of David be copied out
on large sheets of paper and hung on the walls
of his room. So he can just stare at them. He
wants to stare at them and weep while he dies.
He's essentially excommunicated himself in his
final days, hasn't he? He's shut himself off
from his friends and advisors to stand in solidarity
with sinners. Which is such a heavy, symbolic
way to go out. And the man, of course, is Augustine.
Augustine of Hippo. The subject of today's deep
dive. And I think for a lot of people, when they
hear the name St. Augustine, they kind of zone
out. I think that's fair. They think of a stained
glass window or maybe a dusty theology book they
were forced to read in a Western civ class. But
the guy dying in that room while the barbarians
are literally banging on the gates, he is arguably
the architect of the Western mind. Without a
doubt. If you have ever wondered why we think
about time the way we do as a psychological experience,
or why we have this concept of a deep introspective
inner self, or how we understand the ethics of
war or memory or even human desire, if you pull
on those threads, they almost all lead back to
this one man in North Africa. So our mission
today is to figure out how a wild youth from
the provinces who spent his teenage years stealing
pears and hanging out with a rowdy crowd became
the Doctor of Grace. It's quite a transformation.
We're going to look at his massive dossier, his
biography, his letters, his theological treatises,
and we're going to try to understand the man
behind the halo. Because, spoiler alert, He was
a man who struggled violently with ambition,
with lust, and with the total collapse of the
world around him. And what's fascinating here
is that his life bridges two worlds. He lives
right at the hinge point. He is a man of the
ancient classical world, but he's the one who
lays the foundation for the Middle Ages. He's
Roman to his core. To his core. Yeah. But he
has to watch Rome die. So let's start at the
beginning. Before he was the bishop of Hippo,
he was just Aurelius Augustus, born in 354 A
.D. in Thagaste. Which is also in modern -day
Algeria, Thagaras, I believe. Right. And one
thing that really stood out to me in the research
is his identity. We often see these paintings
of him looking like a medieval European monk,
but that's not accurate, is it? No, it's really
not. Scholars generally agree that Augustine
and his family were Berbers, the indigenous people
of North Africa. Okay. But... And this is a key
nuance. They were heavily Romanized. What does
that look like in practice for a family in the
fourth century? It means they lived in a cultural
hybrid. They were African by blood, but Roman
by culture. They spoke Latin at home. It was
a matter of pride and dignity for them. A status
symbol. Absolutely. Augustine's family belonged
to the class of Venestior's honorable men. They
weren't super ripped senators, but they had local
status. They were Roman citizens. So culturally,
he's fully immersed in the Latin world. It's
almost like a colonial dynamic, isn't it? The
local elite adopting the manners and the language
of the empire. Very much so. In fact, Augustine
mentions later that he loved Latin literature,
Virgil Cicero, but he absolutely hated Greek.
That part made me laugh. He said he never mastered
Greek because his teacher beat the students.
Exactly. He called the teacher brutal. It's such
a human detail. Here is one of the greatest intellects
in history, a man who wrote millions of words,
and he admits he rebelled against learning Greek
because he associated the language with physical
pain. He basically said, you can't force me to
learn. He says curiosity is a better teacher
than compulsion. It's a great line. So we have
this Roman African upbringing. And we have to
talk about his parents because talk about a mixed
marriage. This household sounds intense. It was
a very complex dynamic. His mother, Monica or
Monica, which is actually a Berber name, was
a devout Christian. And when I say devout, I
mean intense. Right. She was a dominant figure
in his life, hovering over him, praying for him,
constantly worrying about his soul. And the dad.
Patricius. His father, Patricius, was a pagan,
a man of the old world. He didn't convert to
Christianity until he was on his deathbed. So
he wasn't concerned with Augustine's soul. Not
really. He was much more concerned with Augustine's
worldly success, his rhetoric career, his social
standing. So Augustine grows up in this house
where the old gods and the new faith are sort
of living side by side. But Monica is definitely
the driving spiritual force. So he's smart. He's
obviously gifted. He's sent off to school in
Medoras at age 11. But then, at age 16, he has
to come home. Right, the money runs out. His
father's ambitions were bigger than his wallet.
He has to spend a year in Thagast while his father
scrounges up enough cash to send him to Carthage.
This is his gap year. And like many 16 -year
-olds with too much time and no supervision,
he gets into trouble. He does. This brings us
to the famous pear incident. The pear incident,
yeah. I have to be honest, when I first read
about this in his autobiography, The Confessions,
I thought, really? You stole some fruit. It seems
so minor. He acts like he committed some heinous
crime. He treats it with incredible gravity.
But he spends chapters analyzing this one moment.
Why? Why is this so important to him? It does
seem trivial on the surface. But if we connect
this to the bigger picture of his philosophy,
it's actually the key to understanding his entire
view of the human condition. It's a breakthrough
moment for him looking back. So set the scene
for us. He's 16. He's hanging out with a group
of friends, what he calls a gang of wreckers,
what we might call a bad crowd. Right. And there
is a pear tree in a neighbor's garden. It's not
even a particularly good pear tree. In the middle
of the night, they decide to jump the fence,
shake the tree, and steal huge loads of pears.
Okay, standard teenage vandalism. But here is
the twist. This is the part that haunts him for
the rest of his life. Augustine wasn't hungry.
He says explicitly that he had better pears at
home in his own cellar. And they didn't even
eat them? No, they took a few bites and threw
the rest to the pigs. So it wasn't theft for
survival. It wasn't even theft for profit or
pleasure. No. And that is what floors him when
he thinks about it later. He asks himself again
and again, why did I do it? And he realizes he
did it just to do it. For the thrill? For the
thrill of doing something wrong. He writes that
he had a perverse desire to break the rules.
He loved the sin itself, not the object he gained
from it. He loved the destruction. It's the rebel
without a cause thing. What are you rebelling
against? What have you got? Precisely. But for
Augustine, this reveals a terrifying truth about
human nature. He realizes that sin isn't always
about needing something or wanting a good thing
in the wrong way. Sometimes it can be a rejection
of the higher good, God's law. For a lesser good.
And the lesser good here was what? Impressing
his friends. That was a huge part of it. The
companionship of sinners, he calls it. He realizes
he never would have done it alone. He says his
shame would not have let him. But with his friends,
they could all laugh about it together. It was
the shared transgression that was the real high.
That peer pressure element is so relatable. He
basically admits he wanted to impress his friends.
Oh, completely. He talks about living a hedonistic
lifestyle during this gap year. He associated
with these young men who bragged about their
sexual exploits. The wreckers. Yes. And Augustine,
being insecure and wanting to fit in, admits
that he would sometimes lie about having sexual
experiences just so he wouldn't seem innocent
or lame. He faked a reputation for being a player.
That's incredible. He did. He was terrified of
being seen as pure. It really highlights how
deep that desire for social excellence was. He
preferred to be thought of as a sinner than to
be mocked for being virtuous. So he's 17 now.
His father finally gets the money together with
the help of a wealthy patron named Romadianus.
Right. And he goes to the big city, Carthage.
Carthage was the metropolis of Roman Africa.
It was the New York City or London of its day
for that region. A place of high learning, but
also a place of chaos and pleasure. Augustine
calls it a cauldron of illicit loves. A cauldron.
That's a great phrase. Isn't it? And this is
where he meets a very significant person. We
don't know her name, do we? We don't. She is
lost to history, which is a tragedy in itself.
But she wasn't just a fling. This is a massive
misconception about Augustine's wild years. People
think he was just sleeping around every night.
Exactly. But actually, he enters into a relationship
with this woman that lasts for over 15 years.
That's a common law marriage by modern standards?
Essentially. In Roman law, it was concubinage.
Because she was likely of a lower social class,
or perhaps a freedwoman, he couldn't legally
marry her without damaging his career prospects.
Right, he's a rising star. And a Roman elite
marrying a lower class woman was social suicide.
But emotionally, he was faithful to her. It was
a monogamous relationship. And they had a son
together. A deodatus. A deodatus. Gift from God.
That's what the name means. And by all accounts,
Augustine loved this boy furiously. He describes
him as extremely intelligent, almost frighteningly
so. So while Augustine later laments his lust,
we have to recognize this was a committed monogamous
family unit for a decade and a half. While he's
in Carthage, living this domestic life, but also
studying rhetoric to become a lawyer, he has
his first intellectual awakening. And surprisingly,
it's not the Bible. No, the Bible was actually
a barrier for him at this point. You have to
remember, Augustine is a rhetoric snob. Literary
snob. Completely. He loves the high, polished,
complex Latin of Cicero and Virgil. The Latin
translations of the Bible available in North
Africa at the time were, well, they were rough.
They were clunky. They were street Latin. Like
trying to read Shakespeare and then picking up
a... Poorly translated instruction manual. That
is a perfect analogy. And the content Old Testament
patriarchs behaving badly, strange genealogies.
It seemed crude to him, immoral even. He couldn't
get past the style to see the substance. What
did he read that changed things? He reads a dialogue
by Cicero called the Hortensius. It's lost now.
We only know about it because Augustine talks
about it so much. But reading it sparks this
intense thirst for truth. It ignites a love for
wisdom in him. He decides he doesn't want to
just be a clever lawyer. He wants to be a philosopher.
So if the Bible is out, where does a young, ambitious
philosopher in training turn? He turns to the
Manichaeans. This is a group I feel like we really
need to explain because they sound less like
a church and more like a sci -fi cult. It does
sound a bit like that from our perspective. Manichaeism
was a major world religion at the time. It was
a dualistic religion founded by a prophet named
Mani in Persia. And the core belief was what?
They believed the universe was a cosmic battleground
between two equal and eternal forces. Light,
which was the good, spiritual world, and dark,
which was evil, chaotic matter. And why did that
appeal to Augustine so much? Two main reasons,
I think. First, it solved the problem of evil.
The classic question, if God is all good and
all powerful, why is there evil? Why do bad things
happen? Exactly. The Manichaeans said, well...
God isn't in charge of everything. There's this
dark force matter that opposes him. Evil happens
when the darkness traps particles of light. That
got God off the hook. It's a clean answer. No
messy paradoxes. It is. And the second reason
was that they claimed to be scientific. They
ridiculed Christians for believing in blind faith.
The Manichaeans said, we don't demand faith.
We offer knowledge. We have reason. So what did
that knowledge consist of? They had these elaborate
astronomical and astrological explanations for
the world eclipses, the phases of the moon, the
stars. It was all tied into their mythology about
the battle between light and dark. And a Dustin,
who wanted to be the smart guy who understood
the mechanics of the universe, loved that. He
spent 10 years with them. 10 years as an auditor,
a low -level follower, he was deep in it. He
even converted some of his friends. But eventually...
the cracks start to show he do and this is where
his powerful intellect saves him he starts actually
studying the science he reads genuine greek astronomers
men like hipparchus and eratosthenes who had
calculated the movements of the stars with mathematics
and he realizes their math works it works perfectly
and he sees that the mannequin books are full
of nonsense that contradicts the real science
they were just making it up they were faking
it they were augustine calls it swindling He
starts asking hard questions to his local Manichean
leaders. Why doesn't your cosmology match the
math? Why are your predictions for eclipses wrong?
And what do they say? They tell him, wait for
Faustus. Faustus of Milove is our great bishop.
He's coming to town. He will explain everything.
The great Oz is coming. The great Oz. And Augustine
waits with bated breath for years. He builds
this man up in his mind as this fountain of all
knowledge. And when Faust finally shows up. He's
a total disappointment. He's charming. He's a
great speaker. He's very polite. But Augustine
realizes almost immediately that the man is ignorant.
He has no real answers. He just repeats the same
old myths. He's all style, no substance. Precisely.
And that bursts the bubble. Augustine realizes
a crucial lesson. Eloquence does not equal truth.
You can say something beautifully and still be
completely wrong. That is a lesson that is painfully
relevant today. Just because someone sounds good
on a podcast or a TED talk doesn't mean they
know physics. Exactly. So Augustine is disillusioned.
He's 29 years old. He's a teacher now, a professor
of rhetoric. But he's frustrated. In Carthage,
the students are unruly. They're basically rioting
in the classrooms, disrupting lectures. Sounds
like a nightmare. A total nightmare. So he packs
up and moves to Rome. Hoping for better students.
And he finds them. The Roman students are polite.
They sit quietly. They take notes. But they have
a different trick. They attend the whole term.
And then on the day the fees are due, they all
transfer to a different teacher. They just vanish.
The ancient version of the Dynadash? That is
brutal. It is. Augustine is broke. He gets sick
with a fever and he is completely cynical. But
then he gets his big break. Milan. The imperial
court in Milan, which was the de facto capital
of the Western Roman Empire at the time, needs
a professor of rhetoric. This is the big leagues.
This is the top job. Augustine applies. He gives
a test speech and he wins the position. He heads
north. This is the pinnacle, right? This is like
becoming the White House press secretary or the
chief speechwriter for the president. It is the
path to political power. He is 30 years old and
he is the official voice of the empire. He is
in the inner circle. And this is where everything
changes. Because in Milan, he meets Ambrose.
Bishop Ambrose. Now, Augustine goes to hear Ambrose
speak, but not because he's interested in Jesus.
No, not at all. He goes as a professional critic.
He's a rhetoric professor. And Ambrose has a
reputation as a great orator. Augustine wants
to see if the man is any good. He's analyzing
his style, his diction, his delivery. He's not
even listening to the words at first. But the
content starts to seep in. It does, because Ambrose
was an intellectual heavyweight. He was fluent
in Greek. He'd read the Neoplatonist philosophers
like Plotinus. And he interpreted the Old Testament
allegorically. What does that mean exactly? It
means all those stories Augustine thought were
crude and literal. You know, God walking in the
garden, patriarchs with multiple wives. Ambrose
explained them as metaphors for the soul's journey
or for deeper biological truths. So he made Christianity
intellectually respectable for Augustine. He
did. Suddenly, Christianity didn't look so stupid
to Augustine. It looked profound. It looked intellectually
robust. Ambrose becomes this father figure he
never really had. But just as his mind is opening
up, his personal life completely crashes. This
is the tragic part of the story. His mother...
Monica, has followed him to Milan. She is relentless.
And she is determined to see her son successful
and saved. And in her mind, that means a respectable
marriage. Right. So she arranges a marriage for
him to a 10 -year -old heiress from a noble Christian
family. 10 years old. It was legal at the time,
though she would have to wait two years to be
of marriageable age, which was 12. It's shocking
to us. But to make this match, Augustine has
to clear the decks. He has to get rid of his
partner, the mother of his son, the woman he's
been with for 15 years. And he does it. He does.
He sends her back to Africa. And his description
of this in the confessions is just heartbreaking.
He writes that his heart, which clung to her,
was racked, wounded, and bleeding. It wasn't
a cold decision. It tore him apart. It destroyed
him. But he did it for ambition and for his mother.
And she, his partner, went back to Africa, vowing
never to be with another man. And the irony is
he can't even wait the two years for the child
bride. No. He's so used to sexual intimacy that
he takes another concubine to fill the gap. It's
a moment of total moral chaos for him. He must
have been disgusted with himself. Completely.
He realizes he is a slave to his own desires.
He's ambitious, he's heartbroken, and he's disgusted
with himself. This is when he prays that famous,
agonizingly honest prayer. Grant me chastity
and continence, but not with you. It's such a
human prayer. I want to be good. I really do.
Let me have a little more fun first, or maybe
more charitably. I don't think I have the strength
to do it yet. It's the ultimate procrastination
of the soul, but the crisis reaches a breaking
point. It's August, 386 A .D. Yes. Augustine
is in a garden in Milan. He's with his friend,
Olympias, and he is... He's just torn in two.
He's crying, asking, how long, oh Lord, why not
now? Why not make an end to my ugly sins right
now? He describes it as a battle between two
wills inside himself, one old and carnal, one
new and spiritual, and the old one is winning.
And then the voice? He hears a child's voice
coming from a nearby house. He says it was like
a chanting, a sing -song voice. Tell -a -late,
tell -a -late, tell -a -late. Take up and read,
take up and read. Right. He stops. He thinks,
is this a game? But he's never heard a game where
kids say that. He takes it as a divine command,
a direct message. Sort of like opening a book
at random for guidance. Exactly. It was a practice
called sortes biblique. He rushes back to the
bench where he left a book of St. Paul's letters.
He snatches it up, opens it at random, and his
eyes fall on Romans 13 .13 .14. Which says, What?
Not in rioting and brunkenness, not in chambering
and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but
put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision
for the flesh to gratify its desires. It hits
him like a lightning bolt. It does. It addresses
his specific struggle, lust, ambition, the flesh
so directly. He says a light of confidence flooded
his heart and all the darkness of doubt vanished.
It was instant. Just like that. The struggle
was over. The struggle was over. He walks away
from it all. The career, the heiress, the ambition.
He resigns his professorship. He does, citing
a lung ailment. He is baptized by Ambrose the
following Easter, along with his son Adiodatus.
They decide to go back to Africa to live a quiet
monastic life of study and prayer. But the tragedy
isn't over. No. The universe is not done with
him. While they are waiting for the ship at the
port of Ostia, his mother Monica falls ill and
dies. After everything she did to get him to
this point, she doesn't get to see him live out
his new life. It's incredibly poignant. They
share a beautiful final conversation about heaven,
and then she's gone. And then shortly after they
return to Africa, his brilliant son Adiodatus
dies as well. He's left alone. He's lost his
partner, his mother, and his son in the space
of about two years. It is... A lot of loss. I
can't even imagine. And it shapes him. He sells
his inheritance, gives the money to the poor,
and turns his family home into a monastery. He
just wants to pray and read, but the local church
in Hippo needs a priest. And they have other
plans for him. They do. The bishop is old, and
he needs help. One day, Augustine is just in
the church, and the congregation basically grabs
him, presents him to the bishop, and they ordain
him against his will. He was weeping. Against
his will seems to be a theme in church history.
It happens a lot. A few years later, he becomes
the bishop of Hippo. And this is where Augustine,
the theologian, the one who shapes the next millennium,
really emerges. He spends the rest of his life
fighting battles, intellectual battles. Let's
talk about the big one. The battle over grace,
because this is where he earns the title Doctor
of Grace. And his opponent is a guy named Pelagius.
Pelagius, a fascinating character. In many ways,
Pelagius is the opposite of Augustine. He was
a British monk, an ascetic, very disciplined,
very moral. And his view was what? His view was
essentially optimistic about human nature. He
believed humans have total free will. We were
born innocent, just like Adam before the fall.
Seeing is just a bad habit that we pick up from
society. So if you try hard enough. If you try
hard enough, you can stop sinning and be perfect.
You don't need God's special help to be good.
You just need willpower. God gave you the rules.
Now it's up to you. That sounds very modern.
Like a self -help guru. You can do it. Unleash
your best self. It is very appealing. It's the
religion of the strong, the disciplined. But
Augustine looks at his own life, the pear theft,
the addiction to lust, the give me chastity but
not yet. And he says, no, that is not how it
works. That is a fantasy. Augustine argues that
we are fundamentally broken. Yes. He develops
the doctrine of original sin. He argues that
human nature was fundamentally wounded by the
fall of Adam. It's not just that we do bad things.
It's that our very nature is flawed. We have
an inherited defect. He talks about concupiscence.
That's a great Scrabble word. What does it mean?
It essentially means uncontrollable desire. It's
often linked to sexual desire because that's
where we most obviously lose rational control.
But for him, it's brawner. It's the fundamental
self -centered drive that pulls us away from
God and towards ourselves. And because of this,
our will isn't really free. That's his point.
Our will is damaged. It's in bondage to sin.
We are not free to choose the good on our own
because we are naturally curved in on ourselves.
We will always choose the self -serving thing.
So if we are enslaved, How do we get out? That's
the key. We can't get ourselves out. We need
grace. Augustine argues that we are a massa damnata.
A massive perdition. A condemned lump. That's
Jura. It's bleak. But his point is that the only
reason anyone is saved is because God, out of
sheer mercy and for his own mysterious reasons,
reaches down and saves them. It's a gift. It's
grace. And this leads to the scary doctrine.
Predestination. It does. It's the logical conclusion.
If we can't choose God, then God must choose
us. Augustine argues that God, before time, selects
the elect to be saved. And it's not because they
are better people. It's a mysterious unilateral
decision by God. That is a tough pill to swallow.
It seems so unfair. It is. But for Augustine,
it was actually a relief. It meant his salvation
didn't depend on his own shaky willpower. It
depended entirely on the sovereign power of God.
It was a source of humility and security for
him. So we have the internal battle for the soul.
But then the external world starts falling apart.
410 AD. The Visigoths sack Rome. This was a 9
-11 moment for the ancient world, but magnified
a thousand times. Yeah? For 800 years, Rome had
been the eternal city. It was invincible. And
now barbarians were looting the capital. It sent
shockwaves across the entire empire. And the
pagans started pointing fingers, right? Immediately.
They said, look, we abandoned the old gods who
made Rome great. We started worshiping this Christian
god. And now look what happened. Jupiter is angry.
And Christians were freaking out, too. They were
terrified. They thought, if Rome falls, does
the church fall? Is this the end of the world?
The fate of the church and the empire seemed
completely intertwined. The Civitate Dei. It
is a massive work. It took him 13 years to write.
And his argument is brilliant. He says, stop
panicking. He posits that there have always been
two cities, invisible, intermingled throughout
history, the earthly city and the city of God.
What's the difference? The earthly city is based
on the love of self, to the point of contempt
for God. It's driven by pride, lust for domination.
Empires like Rome, Babylon, Egypt, they all belong
to the city. And because they are built on human
pride, they are jesting to crumble. They all
die eventually. And the city of God. The city
of God is ruled by the love of God, to the point
of contempt for self. It is humble and it is
eternal. Augustine says that Christians are citizens
of the city of God who are just passing. through
the earthly city. We are resident aliens. So
if Rome falls... It doesn't ultimately matter.
It's just another building in the earthly city
burning down. The city of God endures forever.
That is such a powerful shift in perspective.
It basically detaches the fate of Christianity
from the fate of any political power. Precisely.
It allowed the church to survive the Dark Ages.
When the empire collapsed, the church stood because
Augustine had given them the intellectual framework
to say, we are something different. Our citizenship
is in heaven. But speaking of the earthly city...
Augustine also had to deal with the messy reality
of politics and war. He's the father of just
war theory, isn't he? He is. Personally, Augustine
was a pacifist. He hated violence. But he recognized
that in a fallen world, sometimes force is necessary
to prevent a greater evil or to restore peace.
So he laid out some ground rules. Yes. He argued
a war must be defensive. It can't be for glory
or conquest. It must be authorized by a legitimate
authority, not just some rogue general. And its
goal must always be a just and lasting peace.
You fight reluctantly to restore order. That
sounds reasonable. But then we get to the Donatist
controversy and things get... This is the part
of Augustine's legacy that makes modern people,
myself included, very uncomfortable. So who are
the Donatists? The Donatists were a rival Christian
sect in North Africa. They were rigorists. They
believed that if a priest or bishop had been
a traitor during the Roman persecutions, you
know, handed over Bibles to be burned, his sacraments
were invalid. So if a bad priest baptized you,
it didn't count. You weren't really baptized.
Right. It made the grace of the sacrament dependent
on the moral purity of the minister. Augustine
argued against this. He said the validity comes
from Christ, not the priest's purity. Christ
is the one acting. But the Donatists weren't
just arguing. They were violent. Extremely. They
had bands of enforcers called circumcellians
who would roam the countryside, beating Catholic
priests with clubs, throwing acid in their eyes,
committing terrorism. It was essentially a religious
civil war. And for years, Augustine tried dialogue.
He tried to win them over. He did. He debated
them. He wrote letters. He pleaded with them.
But it didn't work. The violence continued. And
eventually he changed his mind. He looked at
a parable in Luke 14 where the master of the
feast sends his servant out and says, And Augustine
used this to justify state coercion. He used
the government to crush the Domitists. He advocated
for fines, flogging, and banishment. He didn't
want them executed. He actually argued against
the death penalty for them. But he believed that
fear could break the habit of heresy. He thought
that if you force them back into the church,
they would eventually be exposed to the truth
and be grateful. A loving correction, he called
it. Yes. But it set a dangerous precedent. Later
in history, during the Inquisition, persecutors
would quote Augustine to justify burning heretics
at the stake. It's a heavy, dark shadow on his
legacy. Let's pivot to something a little more
abstract, his mind. Augustine thought about things
that nobody else was really touching, like time.
Oh, book 11 of the Confessions. It is a philosophical
tour de force. It's breathtaking. Augustine asks
a simple question. What was God doing before
he created the world? The classic answer is preparing
hell for people who ask deep questions. Augustine
actually mentions that joke. He says he won't
give that glib answer. His real answer is mind
bending. He says there was no before. God created
time itself along with the universe. Time is
a feature of the created world. God is outside
of time in an eternal present. So asking what
God was doing before time is like asking what's
north of the North Pole. The category doesn't
apply. That is basically modern physics. Space
-time. It's astonishingly modern. And then he
analyzes our experience of time. He says the
past doesn't exist anymore. It's just memory.
The future doesn't exist yet. It's just expectation.
The only thing that is real is the present. Right,
which is a razor -thin moment of attention. He
concludes that time is a distension of the mind.
It's a psychological experience. It's something
that happens inside us. That is trippy. And he
applies this rigorous thinking to science and
scripture, too. He does. He wrote a whole book
on the literal interpretation of Genesis. And
it's fascinating. He warned Christians against
talking nonsense about science. What was his
warning? He basically said, if you talk about
astronomy or biology and claim it's from the
Bible, but you're clearly wrong and any educated
pagan knows you're wrong, they will laugh at
you. And then they won't believe you when you
talk about the resurrection of the dead. Don't
make the faith look foolish. Exactly. And he
himself did not. believe the world was created
in six literal 24 -hour days he didn't no he
thought god created everything instantaneously
in a set of seminal reasons like seeds he thought
the six -day narrative in genesis was a literary
framework a way to categorize creation to help
our limited human minds understand it okay we
need to talk about his views on society because
some of them are well they're complicated Let's
start with sex. Augustine has a reputation for
being the guy who made Christianity terrified
of sex. And there is some truth to that, but
it's nuanced. What's the nuance? He believed
that sex itself was good in principle. God invented
it for procreation. It was part of the original
design. But he argued that after the fall, sex
is always accompanied by libido, shameful lust,
concupiscence. The thing he struggled with his
whole life. Exactly. Even in marriage, he thought
that because you lose rational control during
the act, there is something slightly off about
it now. It's a sign of our fallenness. He went
so far as to believe that original sin is actually
transmitted from generation to generation through
sexual intercourse. Yikes. So that definitely
colored Western theology for a long, long time.
It did. But then we also have to look at his
view on women. On one hand, he held the typical
view of the time that women were physically subject
to men just as the body is subject to the mind.
But spiritually, he was a radical egalitarian
for his time. He believed women had the same
rational mind and the same capacity for God as
men. He had deep intellectual friendships with
many women, starting with his mother. He saw
them as equals in the soul. And slavery. This
is another tough one. He didn't call for the
abolition of slavery. He saw it like war as a
tragic result of sin. God didn't intend for man
to rule over man, but he didn't try to overturn
the system. So what did he advise? He urged masters
to treat their slaves with love as family. And
he famously wrote a letter to the emperor urging
him to ban the slave trade of children because
desperate parents were selling them. He saw the
suffering, even if he accepted the institution
as a fact of a fallen world. And finally, his
view on the Jewish people. This was really influential.
It was. This is the witness theory. In a time
when many Christians thought Jews should be forcibly
converted or worse, Augustine argued that they
must be protected. Why? He said the Jewish people
are witnesses to the truth of the prophecies
about Jesus. Their existence and their preservation
of the Old Testament scriptures proves the antiquity
of the Bible, so they should be allowed to survive
and practice their faith. Survive but not thrive
is a phrase sometimes associated with this. That
phrase itself isn't in his writings, though it's
often used to summarize the later effect of his
policy. He didn't want them holding positions
of authority over Christians, but he argued passionately
against violence toward them. It provided a theological
safety net for Jews in Europe for centuries,
although a very precarious one. So we come back
to the end. The Siege of Hippo. 430 AD The vandals
are burning the countryside. Augustine is dying
inside the city walls. And he spends his final
days revising his own works. He writes a book
called Retractation. Reconsideration. Exactly.
He goes through his entire life's work, book
by book, and points out where he thinks he was
wrong or where he would say things differently
now. He reviews his own books and admits his
mistakes. How many intellectuals do that? It's
an incredible act of intellectual humility. It's
a final confession, really. He dies on August
28th, 430. And shortly after, the vandals breach
the walls. They burn the city to the ground.
Total destruction. Almost total. But, and this
is almost miraculous, they leave the cathedral
and Augustine's library untouched. The man dies,
but the mind survives. And that mind shapes the
next thousand years. Martin Luther was an Augustinian
monk. The entire Reformation was basically a
giant fight over Augustine's ideas on grace and
free will. And Descartes. Descartes' famous,
I think, therefore I am. Augustine said something
almost identical. Si faller, some. If I am deceived,
I am. Centuries earlier, as an argument against
skeptics. The line of influence is just immense.
He really is the architect. He is. So what does
this all mean for us? Here is a provocative thought
to leave you with. Go for it. Before Augustine.
Autobiographies were about what you did. I fought
this war. I built this city. They were resumes.
Augustine, in The Confessions, wrote about what
he felt, what he thought, his inner turmoil.
He invented the inner self, that introspective
voice in your head that narrates your life that
asks, who am I really? Why did I do that? That's
true. When you look in the mirror and analyze
your own motives or struggle with your own contradictions,
you are asking an Augustinian question. We are
all, in a way, living in the house that Augustine
built. In many, many ways, we are. That's it
for this deep dive. Thanks for listening. Thank
you.