St. Augustine of Hippo
The Classical Doctors of the Church and Perfection
Sadly, I leave the great and sweet St. Bernard behind and move to the Doctors of the Church in the Classical Period. St. Augustine will be the focus for a few days. May I state that he has most likely been one of the greatest influences on modern spirituality for many reasons. I cannot do him justice on this blog, what will merely highlight some ideas
By the way, before I dig in, there are now over 200 postings on perfection. I may put these into a book form, if I can find someone interested in helping me get it published. I have copious notes.
At this time, on this day in history, we should all return to Augustine's City of God. If any book of the Classical Period would give us perspective on the events of today, it is Augustine's critique of Rome and his understanding of the two cities.
To see him in the line of those who teach us how to be perfect, I shall start with this. We must acknowledge that our wills are free in order to pursue perfection. Reason and faith go together. From Book Five
Now, against the sacrilegious and impious darings of reason, we assert both that God knows all things before they come to pass, and that we do by our free will whatsoever we know and feel to be done by us only because we will it. But that all things come to pass by fate, we do not say; nay we affirm that nothing comes to pass by fate; for we demonstrate that the name of fate, as it is wont to be used by those who speak of fate, meaning thereby the position of the stars at the time of each one's conception or birth, is an unmeaning word, for astrology itself is a delusion.
This next section is hard for many people who cannot understand that God knows all things and yet, within that Divine Knowledge and Plan, we have free will. For an adult Catholic, that is over the age of 18 or so, this means taking responsibility for our journey to holiness.
But an order of causes in which the highest efficiency is attributed to the will of God, we neither deny nor do we designate it by the name of fate, unless, perhaps, we may understand fate to mean that which is spoken, deriving it from fari, to speak; for we cannot deny that it is written in the sacred Scriptures,
God has spoken once; these two things have I heard, that power belongs unto God. Also unto You, O God, belongs mercy: for You will render unto every man according to his works.Now the expression,
Once has He spoken,is to be understood as meaning
immovably,that is, unchangeably has He spoken, inasmuch as He knows unchangeably all things which shall be, and all things which He will do. We might, then, use the word fate in the sense it bears when derived from fari, to speak, had it not already come to be understood in another sense, into which I am unwilling that the hearts of men should unconsciously slide. But it does not follow that, though there is for God a certain order of all causes, there must therefore be nothing depending on the free exercise of our own wills, for our wills themselves are included in that order of causes which is certain to God, and is embraced by His foreknowledge, for human wills are also causes of human actions; and He who foreknew all the causes of things would certainly among those causes not have been ignorant of our wills.
Of course, God is knowledgeable of our wills, our decisions. But He has allowed us choices, which are all included in His Will. As we have seen in the past few weeks, many people have made good and bad choices in their lives. Yet, all is in the Will of God. All.
For even that very concession which Cicero himself makes is enough to refute him in this argument. For what does it help him to say that nothing takes place without a cause, but that every cause is not fatal, there being a fortuitous cause, a natural cause, and a voluntary cause? It is sufficient that he confesses that whatever happens must be preceded by a cause. For we say that those causes which are called fortuitous are not a mere name for the absence of causes, but are only latent, and we attribute them either to the will of the true God, or to that of spirits of some kind or other. And as to natural causes, we by no means separate them from the will of Him who is the author and framer of all nature. But now as to voluntary causes. They are referable either to God, or to angels, or to men, or to animals of whatever description, if indeed those instinctive movements of animals devoid of reason, by which, in accordance with their own nature, they seek or shun various things, are to be called wills.
Silly modern philosophers and anthropologists no longer make distinctions between human actions and animal actions. Instinctive behaviour is very far from acts of the will. We are in charge, unless we have fallen into years of habitual sin.
And when I speak of the wills of angels, I mean either the wills of good angels, whom we call the angels of God, or of the wicked angels, whom we call the angels of the devil, or demons. Also by the wills of men I mean the wills either of the good or of the wicked. And from this we conclude that there are no efficient causes of all things which come to pass unless voluntary causes, that is, such as belong to that nature which is the spirit of life. For the air or wind is called spirit, but, inasmuch as it is a body, it is not the spirit of life. The spirit of life, therefore, which quickens all things, and is the creator of every body, and of every created spirit, is God Himself, the uncreated spirit. In His supreme will resides the power which acts on the wills of all created spirits, helping the good, judging the evil, controlling all, granting power to some, not granting it to others. For, as He is the creator of all natures, so also is He the bestower of all powers, not of all wills; for wicked wills are not from Him, being contrary to nature, which is from Him.
This is comforting, or should be. If we have given ourselves to Christ, then our wills slowly but surely become conformed to his.
Then, the Holy Spirit is in charge and the flowering of the virtues occurs.
As to bodies, they are more subject to wills: some to our wills, by which I mean the wills of all living mortal creatures, but more to the wills of men than of beasts. But all of them are most of all subject to the will of God, to whom all wills also are subject, since they have no power except what He has bestowed upon them. The cause of things, therefore, which makes but is made, is God; but all other causes both make and are made. Such are all created spirits, and especially the rational. Material causes, therefore, which may rather be said to be made than to make, are not to be reckoned among efficient causes, because they can only do what the wills of spirits do by them. How, then, does an order of causes which is certain to the foreknowledge of God necessitate that there should be nothing which is dependent on our wills, when our wills themselves have a very important place in the order of causes? Cicero, then, contends with those who call this order of causes fatal, or rather designate this order itself by the name of fate; to which we have an abhorrence, especially on account of the word, which men have become accustomed to understand as meaning what is not true. But, whereas he denies that the order of all causes is most certain, and perfectly clear to the prescience of God, we detest his opinion more than the Stoics do. For he either denies that God exists,— which, indeed, in an assumed personage, he has labored to do, in his book De Natura Deorum,— or if he confesses that He exists, but denies that He is prescient of future things, what is that but just
the fool saying in his heart there is no God?
How sad it is that we know so many people who deny that there is a God of History, One Who has entered into the lives of men and woman and does so constantly.
The atheists and agnostics act as if there was a separation between God and them, God and human activity. The Star Wars generation believes in Fate, rather than in free will.
We must not lose the fact that we are responsible for our own lives.
We must decide to follow the path of perfection, given to us in our baptismal graces.
For one who is not prescient of all future things is not God. Wherefore our wills also have just so much power as God willed and foreknew that they should have; and therefore whatever power they have, they have it within most certain limits; and whatever they are to do, they are most assuredly to do, for He whose foreknowledge is infallible foreknew that they would have the power to do it, and would do it. Wherefore, if I should choose to apply the name of fate to anything at all, I should rather say that fate belongs to the weaker of two parties, will to the stronger, who has the other in his power, than that the freedom of our will is excluded by that order of causes, which, by an unusual application of the word peculiar to themselves, the Stoics call Fate.
To be continued.....