24.
authoritative one. Augustine’s cautious approach to language seems to have set the tone within Western Christendom for an open-ended inquiry into nature.
Augustine’s natural philosophy, though lacking sys tematization, has three recurrent and enduring features:
(1) a high view of mathematics; (2) the belief in a hierarchically ordered universe; and (3) his theory of rationes seminales (seedlike principles). Because Augustine’s natural philosophy was Platonic, he stressed the importance of mathematics in understanding nature. Mathematical truths were not generalizations of empirical experience like counting objects, or mental constructs (as in intuitionism), but truths of reason whose existence was independent of human knowledge. They could be known only through rational “seeing,”
a process by which humans could know God’s mind in part. Augustine believed that the triune God created the world in accordance with these mathematical principles because of the inherent perfection of mathematical forms and because of the declaration of Scripture: “You have formed all things in measure (mensura), number (numerus), and weight (pondus)” (Wisdom 11:20). The world was made in six days, for example, because six is a perfect number whose aliquot parts (1, 2, 3) were reflections of the Trinity.
Second, Augustine endorsed the Neoplatonic belief in an ontological continuum with graded levels of being, the apex of which was God. Both Platonic and Aristotelian natural philosophy posited a plenum and, consequently, denied the existence of a vacuum. Augustine took the filling motif of the Creation account in Genesis as evidence of the agreement of the Hebrew Scriptures with Neoplatonism. As the Creator filled the heavens and Earth with creatures, so he also filled the universe with divine presence so that all physical beings were sustained by that presence.
A third concept central to Augustine’s thought was that of rationes seminales (sometimes called rationes causales), perhaps best translated as “root explanations” or “root causes,” a notion that had wide-ranging consequences for his view of nature and God’s relation to it. Augustine argued that God created everything simultaneously at the first moment of Creation, an implication he saw in the opening words of Genesis that was supported by Ecclesiasticus 18:1 (“He who lives for ever created the whole universe” [Revised Standard Version]). The subsequent days of Creation were merely an unfolding of the original seeds placed in the visible world by God. These seeds (semina) function as God’s agents for the growth of natural creatures, and, methodologically speaking, they explain how species that appear only after the original Creation can still be said to be created by God. God’s instantaneous creation of all things in seminal form implies that he is both the original cause of the universe, with no demiurge (intermediate divine craftsman) or contender, and that he providentially guides the developmental growth of nature.
In theology, the Augustinian tradition has remained unbroken since the fifth century. Augustine’s ideas continued to be the predominant theological influence in the West until the incorporation of Aristotelian philosophy in the works of Albertus Magnus (1193–1280) and Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–74) in the thirteenth century. Even then, Thomistic theologians of the late Middle Ages relied heavily on Augustine’s biblical exegesis, while they jettisoned his Neoplatonism. The Catholic doctrines that Augustine helped formulate, such as the Trinity, sacramental objectivity, and predestination, were also embraced by those who disagreed with the philosophical underpinnings he espoused. And even the strictest followers of Augustine also considerably modified his approach to philosophy. Thus, the prominent theologian Bonaventure (c. 1217–
74) sought to demonstrate rational grounds for belief in the Trinity, an exercise that Augustine himself would have thought pointless. He also modified Augustine’s doctrine of rationes seminales by speaking of Creation as according to rationes exemplares (rational models), which existed in the Word, the second person of the Trinity. Like virtually all medieval theologians, however, Bonaventure also viewed the created order in Augustinian terms, as a reflection of the nature of God.
During the early-modern era, Augustine’s influence was enormous, in both theology and natural philosophy. The revival of Platonism in the Renaissance naturally made Christian thinkers like Marsilio
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Ficino (1433–99) look to the greatest of the church Fathers, who was also an exponent of Plato’s (c. 427–
347 B.C.) worldview, since Augustine could strengthen their reform of philosophy with unassailable authority. Similarly, Augustinian themes reverberate through the work of Johannes Kepler (1571– 1630), who stressed mathematical harmonies of the universe as reflections of the divine light. Roman Catholics and Protestants alike claimed Augustine as their father in faith in order to justify their competing theological positions. Martin Luther (1483–1546), himself an Augustinian monk, believed that he had rediscovered the central message of the Christian faith in Augustine’s writings. The Calvinists also drew on his anti-Pelagian writings to argue for their own interpretation of grace and predestination. On the Catholic side, the polemic of Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621) against John Calvin (1509–64) argued vigorously that Augustine’s views did not in any way support distinctively Protestant doctrines.
Some Catholic philosophers also employed Augustinian notions in their work. Both Augustine’s high view of mathematics and his doctrine of interior illumination found their way into the thought of Blaise Pascal (1623– 62), in both his philosophy of mathematics and his famous Pensées. The Meditations of René Descartes (1596–1650) can be viewed as modeled on the Confessions, and his “Cogito ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I am”) has discernible affinities with Augustine’s principle of interiority. In astronomy, the debates over the meaning of scriptural texts regarding the motion of the earth often invoked Augustine’s handling of texts as a precedent for accommodation, the notion that the Bible employed phenomenal language in speaking of nature and was not intended to give a theoretical account of the heavens.
Augustine’s influence continued in Christian theology into the twentieth century, but his developmentalism also became a focal point of discussion in the wake of Roman Catholic attempts to come to grips with Darwinian evolution in the nineteenth century. Some interpreted his rationes seminales as an ancient precursor of, and justification for, the theological compatibility of evolution and the Christian doctrine of Creation; others saw evolution as inherently naturalistic and, therefore, incompatible with Augustine’s doctrine. In both cases, however, Augustine’s approach to Christian doctrine and natural philosophy has remained a source of inspiration for the reconciliation of theology and natural science, especially his attempt to incorporate non-Christian philosophy into a Christian worldview and his openness to divergent interpretations of the Bible.
See also Plato and Platonism; Theodicy; Thomas Aquinas and Thomism
BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources
Augustine. The Trinity. Trans. by Stephen McKenna. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1963.
——. On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis: An Unfinished Book. Trans. by Roland J.Teske. Washington, D.C.:
Catholic University of America Press, 1980.
——. Two Books on Genesis Against the Manichees. Trans. by Roland J.Teske. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1980.
——. The Literal Meaning of Genesis. Trans. by John Hammond Taylor. Ancient Christian Writers. Nos. 41–42. New York: Newman, 1982.
——. Confessions. Trans. by Henry Chadwick. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
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Bubacz, Bruce. St. Augustine’s Theory of Knowledge: A Contemporary Analysis. New York: Mellen, 1981.
Bonnardière, Anne-Marie de la. Saint Augustin et la Bible. Paris: Éditions Beuchesne, 1986.
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Brown, Peter. Augustine of Hippo. London: Faber, 1967.
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