AUG SECULARIZER OF PAGAN PAST Flashcards
Augustine rejects a sacred conception of the Roman Empire and instead perceived Rome as a historical representative of ‘Babylon’ …. similar 2?
the Donatists of the 4th century
Rome as Babylon embodies….
the ‘earthly city’ that experiences both the ‘profane’ and ‘sacred’
pagan past fails to be defined as sacred history due to the existence of the profane that existed alongside
the sacred
Through his theological interpretations of pagan history, Augustine explores the conflict between
sin and holiness
which penetrates the substance of all human groups, including the Christian present which can find only ‘temporal peace’ due to preoccupations with material needs and the self, rather than divinely and exclusively with God
Unlike the Donatists Augustine rejects the dichotomy of the
sacred and profane as distinct spheres each contained within the pagan or Christian milieu, represented in his Christian philosophies of the ‘earthly’ and ‘heavenly’ cities
In The City of God Augustine secularises BOTH the
the pagan past and Christian present, linking the two by their similar secular identities – that of their akin distractions from the ‘heavenly city’
Augustine proclaims that both the pagan past and Christian present are organised around loyalties with no ???????? relation to God
positive
thus narrates each by debunking their secular natures
HOW DOES Augustine assimilate the pagan past to the ‘New Babylon’, suspended in a limbo between the ‘righteous’ and ‘unjust’
Portrayed in his dwellings on the idolatry of pagan Rome and within his commentaries on the Roman lust for power and corrupted quest for human glory
How does the topic of the present thus come into play?
as he condemns the unchanged moral footing of the ‘earthly’ Christian Roman citizens, of whom ‘swarm to the dissipation of the theatres whilst the rest of the world mourns the fate of Rome’
(Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St Augustine, 1970)
Rome of the pagan past and present are representative of
civitas terrena
as well as the future of Rome which he argues could claim ‘no prophetic insight’
AUG NOT RELIG INDIFFERENT - agnostic attitude to history as he empties the idea of
Rome’s universally accepted religious significance – the Empire, like any ‘earthly’ society was neither ‘holy’ nor diabolical
He argues that its ultimate value is determined by the ultimate allegiances of its creators and members, of either piety or impiety… thus argues the existence of both…
neutralises the defining of the pagan past by either piety or impiety, and thus religion
main factors which deem the pagan past as disconnected from religion - central to Augustine’s perception of pagan Rome
moral corruption
Whilst Augustine recounts the Roman ‘love of glory, freedom, mastery and dominion’ he argues such values were
corrupted, and consequently bore corruption, by the moral wrongs of its patricians
the ‘good arts’ of the pagans were motivated
‘by deceitful intrigue’ rather than virtue
The distraction from virtuous motivation thus sets up the ‘objective of the earthly city’ – that of
‘temporal peace’
secularises the pagan past in this way, as a virtuous motivation towards the ‘heavenly city’ was
absent, as the pagan past placed no supreme value of God and his subordinates on earth
Empire organised around loyalties and motivations with no
positive relation to God
The pagan past pursued an ‘unnecessary’ ‘reliance on
human conjecture’ (XVIII), subsequently condemning their rejection of scripture as a mode to guide and motivate the success of the Roman Empire
In Book XVIII Augustine argues that the only clue to sacred history is within
the Bible, instructing ‘for there is nothing in them that can claim the support of firm scriptural authority’
how does he repudiates the application of any prophetic scheme to the pagan past, rejecting Eusebius’ glorification of Rome as an example of sacred history
secularises the natures of the creators and members of the pagan who do not abide by the sacred word and history of the Bible – thus their actions, despite the sacred presence available in scripture, are disconnected from God and thus religion
how does a argue: the severing of the bond between human law and natural law – an important factor in Augustine’s secularisation of the pagan past
Idolatry and the ‘vain’ pursuit of ‘wealth’ by pagan Rome
Markus (THE LATIN FATHERS) stresses the importance of the ‘rejection of natural law’ in pagan Rome, as they idolised
idolised false Gods and thus a governing by natural law, provided by the Christian ‘one and true God’, did not exist
The ancient Romans were members of ‘civitas terrena’- only of the ‘earthly, earthly’ – and thus their actions in history were not consciously led by
God, and not at least by a set of ‘natural laws’ governed by the ‘only true God’
idolatry quote
the ‘impudent, sacrilegious and ungodly argument’ of pagans ‘persuaded that the Roman empire was propagated and preserved by the worship of these gods’, rather than ‘to the all-powerful will of the most high God’
AUG belief of how Rome was established… which pagan Rome and present dissenters rejected
the Roman realm established by God, from Whom all power comes, and by Whose providence all things are ruled’
pagan Rome ‘sacrificed victims not to God
but to demons’ thus clearly exemplifying the dismissal, or mere absence, of a religious presence within the pagan past
The ‘accomplishments of so many wondrous things: things which were doubtless praiseworthy and glorious in the estimation of men’ were of the ? nature/quality
‘earthly’
in pursuit of ‘temporal peace’, ‘glory’ and ‘power’
The Romans ‘established temples of the gods’, specifically ‘those of Virtue and Honour’ – yet Augustine condemns the pagans
‘for they took the gifts of God to be gods themselves’
The success of Rome was clouded by its
‘ungodly impudence’, and Augustine attributes this to the ‘impious’ (XII:XXV) nature that penetrated the minds of the pagan past
great ‘secularizer’ of the pagan past as he rejects Eusebius’ prescribed messianic nature of the
Roman Emperors, of whom were leaders of the pagan past, as they were as they were neither motivated by the ‘sacred word’, nor in pursuit reconciling the ‘heavenly city’
The Romans, as described in Book V:XII could not ‘practice arts to good effect’ due to the secular pursuit of
‘wealth’ which ‘corrupted their morals and led them to plunder their miserable citizens to lavish bounty on vile actors’
Thus, pagan Rome represented a purely ‘historical, empirical society’ without God as the
divine guide
In Book V:XII he describes an irreligiosity…?
‘treachery and deceit’, which gives his historical work a religious perspective
tho…considered as entirely separate from the pagan history he writes about, and thus the pagan past remains disconnected from religion
‘dominion’ crave not religiously charged QUOTE
‘the patricians treated the common people as if they were slaves; they scourged them as the kings had done, drove them from their fields, and, excluding all others, exercised sole power’
the Romans were driven by
by ‘the wicked’ who ‘had no virtue even though they longed to have honour’
what caused the the ‘commonwealth impoverished’
‘imperfect’= pagan lack of moral virtue
They ‘sought dominion over others’ and failed to ‘not give themselves up to pleasure and to the enervation of the mind and body by coveting and amassing riches’
BROWN Q
‘dislocated human consciousness’ of the minds of the pagan past
BROWN APPLIED
visible at least regarding doctrina christiana – the pagans ‘sought dominion over others’ without divine instruction, and thus the pagans existed dislocated and disconnected from a religious base of life
mastery q, BOOK V XIX
‘he who despises glory yet is avid for mastery surpasses event he beasts in the vices of cruelty and luxury’
– pagan ‘mastery’, a sacrilegious term alone, was motivated by cruelty and luxury rather than by divine instruction.
notion of 2 cities founded on secularisation of pagan past as he (2XQ)
divides humanity between the pagans, ‘the crowd of the impious who bear the image of the earthly man’, and ‘the succession of men dedicated to one true God’
In Book XVIII A likens Rome herself
is like a second Babylon’, ‘lost of its religious significance – as no longer God’s chosen instrument for the salvation of men’ as portrayed by his conceptions of the ‘earthly city’
earthly cities - Q - disconnected from religious value system
Augustine references the ‘two kingdoms of Assyria and Rome’, which ‘have won a renown greatly surpassing that of all others’ – ‘the city of this world’
‘greatness’ defined by its objective historical success, which is also secular as it does not involve any religious affiliation
pagan Rome possesses a greatness with ‘all other kingdoms and kings are like appendages to those empires
secular ‘greatness’ quote
‘of the society whose goal is earthly advantage or desire’ – and thus pagan Rome possesses a value only in the ‘light of the earthly city’ (V:XIX)
Augustine’s ‘Christian present’ was defined by a ordered hierarchy of an ‘earthly’ society, which had only started to
to ‘reflect a higher, intelligible order’
even religious orders, uses Africa as e.g. - secular as no religious imp / connection -
‘which does not live by faith, desires an earthly peace, and establishes an ordered concord of civic obedience and rule in order to secure a kind of co-operation of men’s wills for the sake of attaining the things which belong to this mortal life’ (XVII)
The pagans of the present and past, as argued by Augustine, fail to advance closer to ‘the heavenly city’ due to the issues of
worldly distractions – the concern is only ‘of attaining the things which belong to this mortal life’
the pagan past can be seen as a source for Christian
education and spiritual instruction, which suggests that the Christian present was still to some extent defined by a secular identification - or threat
Markus decline of Christianity Q
‘elation of Christianity declined from 405’, as the old conflicts between the pagan Romans against Christians had been renewed
Augustine uses the City of God as a corrective to the Christian
matter of human honour’, which accounted for the existence of the secular threat of the Christian present.
christian corrective Q
instructing ‘Let this consideration, then, be useful to us in subduing pride’
Pagan Rome was defined not by a love of ‘charity’, ‘which seeketh not its own’… instead …
the ‘perverse love’, ‘which isolates the mind swollen with pride from the blessed society of others’.
conflict between the prospects of ‘damnation’ and ‘salvation’…. which was steered 2?
increasingly distant connection to the ‘heavenly city’ observed in the pagan past was reflected in the Christian present, and both steered towards ‘damnation’
Markus reflects on the ‘age of decay and disaster’ , brought about by the Q
‘Empire’s betrayal of religious tradition’
‘earthly city’ which cannot access ‘salvation’ without an unity with the ‘heavenly city’ – thus the pagan past becomes a prototype for the secular present
gr8ness of Rome associated with?
as he associates the ‘greatness’ of Rome and the failings of the present with an ‘earthly glory’ that cannot bring ‘salvation’
Momigliano on sacred presence - agrees that past could be secularised as christianity emerged after
clear sighted determination of the Christians, who ‘emerged victorious to reassert with enhanced authority the unmistakable pattern of divine intervention in history’
Beginning with two traditional sources, the Hebrew scriptures and Greco Roman historiography, Christian authors, from the writers of the Gospels through Augustine in the 4th century CE, fashioned a new method of historical writing emphasising
time as the space in which God did his redemptive work.
developed a chronological approach that supported the basic premise that
1) central aspect of the Christian historical worldview: the events of the past gather their significance to the extent they reveal the salvific purposes of God and the establishment of his kingdom here on Earth
2 )history as divided into various world ages, each building on the other until their culmination in the age of Christ
Augustine added a transcendent theme of great influence to the early Christian histories from the 3rd through 5th centuries
history as the struggle between good (the City ofGod) and evil (the City of Earth). This dynamic view of historyas a process in which those dedicated to God would eventually triumph over those dedicated to themselves became adominant motif of Western historical writing. For these men, and for the medieval writers to follow, history possessed three dominant ages (with many sub-periods interspersed, depending on the writer) through which this process unfolded. Jesus represented the beginning of the current age, the age of the HolySpirit, the last and most advanced age in the history of humanity, which would end with the eschaton, the last days.
Augustine saw political institutions as a barrier against the most unbridled forms of human passion but the frailty of human nature inevitably
dragged the secular institutions of the world into rapacious conflicts.
The course of history, then, when considered apart from divine grace, was marked by the cyclical
rise and fall of monuments to the mistaken quest for power and domination.
what is the fundamental principle of the fundamental principles of the City of God.
cyclical rise and fall of monuments to the mistaken quest for power and domination. Tempering this pessimistic view of human affairs was Augustine’s vision of the role of grace and love
Moving against the destructive forces of fallen mankind, the unifying force of love, given to the world through the sacrifice and grace of Christ, MADE POSSIBLE THE
progressive creation of the City of God.
THE CHURCH formed the visible sacramental manifestation of this order, but was itself subject to the degrading activity of the secular city.
The dominant pattern of time was cyclical (bounded by the distant linearity of the end times ) and the significance of worldly events could be understood only within the context of
Christian doctrine.
