Latin patristics. Latin patristics of the 4th - 5th centuries
Formation of medieval philosophy. Latin patristics Mayorov Gennady Grigorievich
Chapter Four. LATIN APOLOGETICS
In the pre-Nicene period, Christian philosophical and theological thought reached its highest development in the works of the Alexandrians Clement and Origen. After them, until Athanasius and the Cappadocians, that is, for about a century, not a single Christian thinker appeared in the Greek East worthy of being included, even with the usual reservations, in the history of philosophy. . This is easily explained by the fact that for most of the period, Christianity was in unfavorable conditions and had to be more concerned with its survival than with theoretical research. On the contrary, just this same period was the time of the magnificent flowering of philosophy and theology of paganism, which then went on the offensive, and was marked by such names as Plotinus, Porphyry and Iamblichus. Therefore, it is natural that for classical patristics of the 4th century. The closest sources of philosophical influence could be (and indeed were), on the one hand, the Alexandrians, on the other, the Neoplatonists. However, it should be noted that in the conditions of the ever greater divergence of East and West, these influences were exercised differently in the two parts of the empire: more directly in the East, more indirectly in the West. This applies especially to the influence of the Alexandrians: it is easy to see that the Cappadocians are directly dependent on Origen; but to prove that Augustine is dependent on Origen would be a more difficult matter. At the same time, Augustine borrowed from Ambrose exactly what he took from the Cappadocians, and these latter from Origen, T. e. method of symbolic exegesis. It can be said that through Origen the same method of exegesis was transmitted to both the Eastern and Western Middle Ages, remaining for centuries one of the elements of their similarity. The influences of Neoplatonism also belonged to the same elements of similarity. But already in the age of classical patristics, in addition to elements of similarity in the worldview of the Christian "fathers", Eastern and Western, there is a significant specificity. Where does it come from and what is its significance? We will try to answer this question in the following sections of the book. Now, turning to the analysis of Latin apologetics, let's say that its features just partly explain the originality of its direct successor - Western patristics І?-? centuries Special place and the special role of Latin apologetics in the history of Western Christian philosophy defined by the following features:
1. Latin apologetics did not reach that high level of philosophical speculation, which already in the III century. Greek apologetics arose in the person of Clement and Origen.
2. She was much more closely connected with the actual Roman, Latin, classical culture. And since this culture gave its most famous examples in the field of literary, artistic and legal, Latin-speaking apologists became the successors of this particular direction, and humanitarian and legal aspects prevail in their apologies.
3. She drew her few philosophical concepts mainly from the works of Latin, and not Greek authors, such as Cicero, Varro, Musonius Rufus, Seneca, Apuleius, in whose writings ethical problems prevailed. Hence the greater weight given to "practical" philosophizing as compared to speculative philosophizing, which is almost completely absent.
4. She hardly consulted Philo and did not have at her disposal philologically satisfactory and authoritatively approved Latin translations of the Bible, which deprived her of the opportunity to come to grips with exegesis, which Origen could easily do, having the text of the Septuagint and relying on the authority of Philo. This explains why the method of symbolic interpretation was not actually known to Latin-speaking Christians until the moment when Il Arius of Poitiers and Ambrose borrowed it from the Cappadocians.
5. The influence of the Latin apologists was limited mainly to the western part of the empire, and later to Western Europe, while the influence of the Greek-speaking apologists, especially Justin, Clement and Origen, directly or indirectly touched both parts of the Mediterranean world.
6. Latin apologetics, together with Latin patristics, made up the 4th-5th centuries. a continuous line of development corresponding to the peculiarities of the socio-political and cultural development of the Latin world of that era.
All these features of Latin apologetics force us to single out a special section for its study, which, within the framework of the general task of the book, correlates with the proper Latin origins of Western medieval philosophy.
Theological Apologetics The subject of Theological Apologetics is predominantly the basic Christian truths of faith and life. However, in contrast to Dogmatic and Moral theology, their consideration and justification is given not on the basis of the authority of the Holy
Historical-philosophical apologetics This section of apologetics covers a very wide range of problems of a historical and, mainly, philosophical nature. The historical aspect includes questions of the origin of religion and its types, the emergence of Christianity,
Natural-science apologetics The main task of this area of apologetics is to encourage a person to think about its First Cause on the basis of the observed and cognizable expediency of the structure of the world. In fact, the core idea
HISTORICAL APOLOGETICS The task of the historical aspect is to show that Christianity is really real. What is Christianity? Christianity is a religion that affirmed the reality of the historical events described in the Gospel. First of all, the reality of historical
IV. Apologetics In the second half of the second century, while the Gnostics were building their concepts, some Christian writers took a different path in their attitude to philosophy: they adhered to the point of view that it was the Christian gospel that was the true
Political Perspectives: Latin America Successors of St. Paul have always been our fathers, but the war has made us orphans, like a lost lamb crying in vain for its mother. Now a tender mother has found him and brought him back to the flock, and we have received shepherds,
§58. The Latin Patriarchy The advantages of the Roman Patriarch in comparison with the Patriarch of Constantinople were at the same time the leading causes of the emergence of the papacy, which we will now discuss in more detail. There is no doubt that the emergence of the papacy was the result of
§115. Latin Poetry The Latin hymns of the 4th-16th centuries have more significance than the Greek ones. They are fewer in number, but remarkable in their artless simplicity and truth, and in their richness, strength, and fullness of thought, in which they are more akin to the Protestant spirit. C objectively
Latin hymnography The West during this period put forward the more famous hymnographers Hilary of Pictavia (Poitiesque. † 367), Pope Damasus († 384), St. Ambrose of Milan († 397), blj. Augustine († 430), Prudentius (Aurelius Prudentius Clemens, genus 318), Sedulia (Coilius Sedulius, first half of the 5th century),
Latin hymnography of the 9th–14th centuries. They gave a lot to Latin hymnography, which came to life after unfavorable trends in the 6th-8th centuries. (see above, pp. 304, 334) in the person of Bede the Venerable († 735; his Liber hymnorum is lost) and after the Greek, which has now replaced the ancient classical
Apologists and apologetics The internal disputes and struggle with external opponents that distinguished Christianity of the 2nd century were preserved in the characteristic works of this period - “apologies” (from the Greek apologia - “intercession, justification”), the authors of which went down in history as “apologists”.
Apologetics. The word comes from the Greek. root with the meaning "protect", "give an answer", "justify", "defend according to the law". the time of apology (apologia) is a formal legal defense (2 Tim 4:16). Apologetics as part of Christian theology is
Formation of medieval philosophy.
Latin patristics
Introduction. CONCEPT AND PROBLEM OF MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY
The division of history into ancient, medieval and modern has long been generally accepted. However, the application of this kind of periodization to the history of philosophy and the history of culture in general causes serious difficulties. First of all, the problem of its universal applicability in the spatial-geographical sense arises. Is it possible to speak, for example, of antiquity or the Middle Ages in relation to Indian, Chinese, Arabic or Russian philosophy and culture? Or does saying this mean being captured by a long-obsolete Eurocentrism? Another problem: if we limit the area of application of this periodization only to the cultural and ideological history of Western Europe, is it possible to determine with any accuracy the chronological framework of each of the periods? At what points should the history of ancient philosophy end and at what point should the history of medieval philosophy begin? Where does medieval philosophy stop and where does the new one begin? It is impossible to answer these questions without understanding what meaning we put into the concept of "medieval philosophy". Of course, it is not the chronology that will determine this meaning, but, on the contrary, the meaning we have established will determine the chronology.
Considering medieval philosophy simply as the philosophy of a certain time period - the Middle Ages - would require us to first clarify the very term "Middle Ages", which is a very difficult task and has not yet been fully resolved. The shortcoming of most modern studies of medieval philosophy is precisely that they either associate its beginning with some date political history(with the date of the fall of the Western Empire - 476; with the date of the coronation of Charlemagne - 800, etc.), or they completely omit the problem of its beginning, timing its occurrence with some of the philosophers, for example, Augustine, or making it actually a simple continuation of ancient philosophy.
More justified, in our opinion, is such an approach to medieval philosophy, when this term is associated primarily with a historically unique way of philosophizing characteristic of Europe and the Middle East of the era of feudalism, but which arose long before the establishment of classical feudalism and left the historical scene much earlier than European feudalism finally left it. The peculiarity of this method of philosophizing was its association with religious ideology, based on the principles of revelation and monotheism, i.e., on the principles that were common to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but essentially alien to the ancient religious and mythological worldview. This fundamental dependence on religious ideology did not mean for philosophy its complete dissolution always and everywhere in religious consciousness, but still, throughout the entire period, it determined both the specifics of philosophical problems and the choice of ways to resolve them.
Whatever the position of the medieval philosopher, it is always marked by a deep "concern" with religion and theology, whether it be the preoccupation with how to put philosophy at the service of religion, characteristic of the early Middle Ages, or the preoccupation with how, while maintaining loyalty to religion, to free philosophy from under theological tutelage inherent in the late Middle Ages. The historically conditioned cohabitation of philosophy and theology, sometimes quite peaceful sometimes turning into open confrontation (for example, in the case of Berengaria, Abelard or Seeger of Brabant), but always unequal and almost always vassal, gave the philosophical self-consciousness of the Middle Ages a unique flavor by which it is easy to identify and distinguish from the philosophical self-consciousness of antiquity or modern times. The theological idea performed the same regulatory function for the medieval philosopher, which the aesthetic-cosmological idea performed for the ancient philosopher, and the idea of scientific knowledge for the philosopher of modern times. From this it is clear what the chronological framework of medieval philosophy should be. Its history must begin at the moment when philosophy first consciously puts itself at the service of revealed religion and theology, and end when the alliance between philosophy and revealed theology can be considered largely broken. But the first serious attempts to use philosophy for the purposes of the religion of revelation belong to Philo of Alexandria and the Christian apologists, and the last blows to the philosophical-theological alliance were inflicted in the nominalist-sensualist school of Occam, where the theory of “two truths”, ideologically subversive for the Middle Ages, was finally established.
So, in accordance with this approach, the history of medieval philosophy should begin with the I-II centuries. and end the XIV-XV centuries. Only in this case can one avoid the artificial separation of such directly interconnected phenomena of ideological history as patristics and scholasticism, and also correctly interpret the anti-dogmatic and anti-clerical pointedness of the philosophy of the Renaissance. This kind of approach to the history of medieval thought is realized in the works of E. Gilson, M. de Wolfe, M. Grabman and some others. At the same time, we will not find in these works the necessary socio-historical substantiation of the peculiarities of medieval thinking. The interdependence of philosophy and theology is treated here as a kind of historical reality that needs more phenomenological than deterministic analysis; the beginning and end of this interdependence are seen as events in the inner life of culture in isolation from the socio-economic context. Of course, cultural and ideological history has a certain independence, which allows us to apply a special periodization to it (antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, Modern times), in contrast to the socio-economic periodization corresponding to social formations. However, the facts of cultural-ideological history have a striking isomorphism in relation to the events of socio-economic history and become fully understandable only in connection with the latter. It is no coincidence that the emergence of a method of philosophizing characteristic of the Middle Ages in the first centuries of the new era coincides with the beginning of the crisis of the slave-owning mode of production and the emergence of proto-feudal relations in Greco-Roman society. Nor is it accidental that medieval forms of philosophizing begin to become obsolete precisely when a new, bourgeois system replaces feudalism in the most developed regions of Europe. Undoubtedly, medieval philosophy is at its core the philosophy of feudal society, it is an ideologically transformed reflection of the existence of "feudal" man. But to the extent that feudal society had its prerequisites and its “anticipations” in the socio-economic and ideological realities of the late slave-owning society, to the same extent medieval philosophy began its history in the bosom of late antique culture as an abstract-theoretical reflection of these realities, and often as a reflection leading, catching in barely noticeable glimpses of a new era its midday radiance. Paradoxically, medieval philosophy began much earlier than ancient philosophy ended, the history of which, by the time its successor appeared, not only cannot be considered finished, but, on the contrary, should be recognized as standing before the opening of one of its most brilliant pages, before the birth in the 3rd century. Neoplatonism, which existed in its ancient form until the 6th century. Of course, this late antique philosophy also reflected socio-historical innovations, being transformed under their influence, but reflected them in its own way, as if inadequately and retrospectively at while the emerging medieval philosophy did this adequately and promising. Centuries-old parallel existence of two ways of philosophizing did not mean their independent existence. The monistic mysticism of Plotinus, the theosophical hieratism of Iamblichus and the scholasticism of Proclus could not have arisen without the influence of that new spiritual and philosophical culture that the monotheistic-revelationalist ideology introduced into the ancient world, which later turned out to be the own ideology of the Middle Ages. It is even more obvious that no monotheistic-revelationist theorizing, whether of the Jewish type of the Philonic type or of the Christian of the patristic or scholastic type, could have come into being without a comprehensive assimilation of ancient philosophical culture.
In the person of Tertullian (c. 160 - after 220), the West received its theoretician even earlier than the East: “Like Origen among the Greeks, so Tertullianau of the Latins, of course, must be considered the first among all ours,” wrote a monastic theologian of the beginning of the 5th century. Vincent of Lerins ("Instruction" 18).
Tertullian received a good education, including, probably, a legal one. According to some reports, he was a priest, but then joined the sect of religious fanatics - "Montanists". Among the three dozen surviving treatises of Tertullian, the most important are: "Apologetic", "On the testimony of the soul", "On the soul", "On prescription against heretics", "On the flesh of Christ", "Against Hermogenes", "Against Praxeus", "Against Marcion ".
In contrast to the Alexandrians, Tertullian represented a radical "antignostic" direction of patristics, which preferred to single out a purely religious "pole" in Christianity. Although in spirit Tertullian is close to the apologists and the system-creative pathos of Origen is not inherent in him, he did a lot for the formation of dogmatics. With full right, he can be considered the "father" of Latin theological vocabulary. He was also the first to speak of the predominant authority of the See of Rome.
Being an opponent of philosophy, Tertullian avoids philosophical terms in his writings, so it is easy to read him in this regard. Tertullian's general position was that philosophy is absolutely alien to Christianity. Nevertheless, considering many Stoic propositions obvious, Tertullian drew them into his teaching, in which there are also Cynic and Socratic propositions. It turns out that he both condemned the Greek philosophers and used their concepts.
Tertullian's main thesis is that humanity, by inventing philosophy, has perverted everything too much. A person should live more simply, without resorting to excessive sophistication in the form of various philosophical systems. He must turn to the state of nature through Christian faith, asceticism and self-knowledge.
Faith in Jesus Christ already contains all the truth in its entirety, it does not need any proof and any philosophy. Faith by teaching convinces, not by convincing it teaches. No persuasion is needed. Philosophers have no firm basis in their teachings. Only the Gospel, only the Good News, can be such a basis. And after preaching the gospel to Christians, there is no need for any research.
In interpreting Holy Scripture, Tertullian avoided all allegorism, understanding Scripture only literally. Any allegorical interpretation arises when a person believes that he, so to speak, is somewhat smarter than the Author of Holy Scripture. If the Lord wanted to say something, then He said it. A man in his pride comes up with all sorts of allegorical interpretations that only lead Christians away from the truth.
If something in the Bible is not clear, if something seems contrary to common sense or contrary to other provisions of Holy Scripture, then this means that the truth hidden in the Bible surpasses our understanding. This once again proves the inspiration of the truth given to us in Scripture. This is the highest truth, in which you can only believe, and not subject it to any doubts and interpretations. And one must believe the more, the less it is trivial and the more paradoxical.
From this follows the well-known Tertullian thesis: "I believe, because it is absurd." This phrase does not belong to Tertullian himself, but he has many expressions in which adherence to this thesis is visible, for example: “After the burial, Christ rose again, and this is certain, for it is impossible.” Gospel events do not fit into the framework of any human understanding.
How can the truths taught in the gospel be deduced? What human mind can imagine that a virgin gives birth to the Son of God, who is both Man and God? He is not known to anyone, He is not a king, as the Old Testament Israel wanted. He is persecuted, put to a shameful death, dies, then rises again, but His disciples do not recognize Him. Therefore Tertullian declares that he believes, for his belief is absurd. The absurdity of Christianity is the highest measure of its truth, the highest evidence of its Divine origin.
But Tertullian does not deny all reason, but the excessive intellectualism that was inherent in the ancient Greeks. Tertullian calls to see the truth in the depths of the soul. To do this, you need to simplify the soul, deprive it of philosophizing. In such a soul, where there is nothing superficial, nothing alien, there is no philosophy, and true knowledge of God is found, since the soul is Christian by nature.
On the other hand, in On the Evidences of the Soul, Tertullian states that the soul was not born a Christian. These phrases seem to contradict each other. However, Tertullian means that every soul has in its depths the ability to know God, to become a Christian. But people are not born Christians, it is not given as something ready-made. Man must discover his true nature in the depths of his soul. This is the task of every person. It would be too easy if the soul were both by nature and by birth a Christian.
The path to faith, according to Tertullian, runs not only through Revelation, not only through Holy Scripture, but also through self-knowledge. Tertullian argues that the inventions of the philosophers are inferior to the evidence of the soul, since the soul is older than any word. That is why, according to Tertullian, Jesus Christ chose simple fishermen, and not philosophers, as His apostles, i.e. people who do not have superfluous knowledge, but only a pure soul.
The departure from the purity of the soul to its philosophizing gives rise to all heresies, therefore, as Tertullian says, if the wisdom of this world is madness, then madness is wisdom, i.e. true philosophy is the rejection of all wisdom, of all philosophy. The main cause of all heresies is philosophy.
Therefore, trying to preserve the unity of the Church (and at that time the heresies of Gnosticism, Montanism, etc., were already emerging), Tertullian tried to wound philosophy, believing that it was she who was guilty of the appearance of heresies. The treatise "To the Gentiles" is devoted to this. He argues that Aristotle gave a tool to heretics, and Socrates is a tool of the devil in order to lead people to destruction.
"What do Athens and Jerusalem have in common? Do the Academy and the Church? Do philosophy and Christianity?" Tertullian asks rhetorically. In the XX century. the famous Russian philosopher Lev Shestov will repeat the same phrases. He will repeat Tertullian's position on the superiority of faith over philosophy. But Tertullian uses the Socratic method of self-knowledge, the Cynic principle of simplifying life, and many stoic positions.
Tertullian argues that there is some single cognitive ability, feelings and reason - manifestations of this ability. One soul manifests itself both in thoughts and in feelings. Both feelings and reason are by their nature infallible and give us the truth in its fullness, in its entirety. A person who incorrectly uses these feelings and reason makes a mistake in the future.
Then Tertullian joined the heresy of the Montanists, apparently because they, being mystically inclined, asserted the priority of their inner world over Revelation. Montanists have come to the conclusion that the revelation that was given to Montanus is in a sense superior to the revelations that were given to the apostles, as the revelations given to Jesus Christ are superior to the revelations given to Moses.
In his understanding of the soul and, above all, of God, Tertullian based himself on the Stoic principles. True, there are differences. He believed that God is incomprehensible, although His properties are visible from His creations, i.e. from nature. Since nature is one, then God is One, since it is created, then God is Good. But following the Stoics, Tertullian repeats that God is a kind of material spirit. In general, there is nothing intangible in the world. Materiality has only different shades, different degrees.
The materiality of the soul is different from the materiality of things, and the materiality of God surpasses the materiality of the soul. There is nothing incorporeal. God Himself is the Body (treatise "On the Soul"). The soul is also corporeal, for otherwise it could not lead the body. The soul is the thinnest body, poured in our material body, in the whole person. As evidence, Tertullian cites the fact that a person at birth inherits the material properties of his parents, that a child resembles his parents not only in appearance, but also in some character traits, i.e. soul.
Tertullian also draws some arguments from the Bible, citing the well-known parable of the rich man and Lazarus, where it is said that the soul of Lazarus enjoys coolness, while the soul of the rich man is tormented by thirst. Torment and pleasure cannot be experienced by those who are not endowed with a bodily nature. However, following the Stoics, Tertullian argues that, on the one hand, the fate of man is completely determined by Divine Providence (God foresaw everything - even the persecution of Christians), but does not deny human freedom, otherwise the law would not be needed.
Man is free and can choose between good and evil. Being not entirely good, not having a perfect divine nature, a person often chooses not quite what he needs. The task of human life is to choose between good and evil in favor of good. A person must become virtuous, i.e. that which is in the nature of his soul.
Aurelius Augustine
Aurelius Augustine (354-430) was born in Tagaste (North Africa), received a good rhetorical education and was greatly influenced by a Christian mother. Augustine was an impressionable and subtle nature, but at the same time impulsive and energetic. At first, he chose a rhetorical field for himself and thought about a career as a lawyer. In his youth, he had to endure a fascination with Manichaeism (a dualistic doctrine reminiscent of Gnosticism). Over time, however, internal changes and external circumstances led Augustine to Christianity.
In the mid-80s of the IV century. he listened to the sermons of Ambrose, not without whose influence he soon became a Christian. In Mediolanum and Rome, Augustine became acquainted with some of the writings of the Neoplatonists, translated by Marius Victorina. In 386-388 years. his first philosophical works appeared - "Against the Academicians", "On Order", etc. - still very rational and imbued with respect for ancient wisdom. Returning to Africa, Augustine took the priesthood, and from 395 to the end of his life he was bishop of the seaside city of Hippo.
Far from strict systematism (unlike Origen, Gregory of Nyssa and even Maria Victorina), Augustine, nevertheless, subordinated all his constructions to one general idea - the idea of personality, taken in an absolute and concrete empirical dimension. The main intuition of his writings is the ascent of an enlightened person to God, a "new" person in relation to the Creator and the world.
Faith and Reason. In Monologues, Augustine says: "I desire to know God and the soul." - "And nothing more"? Augustine asks and answers: “Absolutely nothing. In these words, the key to his whole philosophy. In fact, any philosophy, especially religious, can be reduced to these two words. What is the soul (and, accordingly, what is a person) and how we can know God, how the soul can know God, come to God and receive salvation, who is God, how He created the world, etc. From these two problems, in fact, all questions arise - epistemological, ontological, axiological, ethical etc.
Naturally, in any religious philosophy there is an antithesis of two methods: faith and reason. That which in a more general form can be expressed as a contradiction between the religious and philosophical methods of cognition. Augustine introduces the position that faith and knowledge, while differing, are not mutually exclusive. Faith is one of the types of knowledge, one of the types of reason. Faith is opposed only to comprehending, rational thinking. But faith is also thinking. Not all thinking is faith, but all faith is thinking, writes Augustine.
As proof, he cites the fact that only a thinking being, man, has religion. Therefore, only those who can think have faith. So in any knowledge, faith and understanding always replace each other. They do not negate each other, but simply are in their places. In any knowledge, first of all, there is faith: the student believes his teacher, the child believes his parents, the scientist believes his predecessors, believes the books he reads - if everyone questions everything and starts all over again, then there will be no knowledge at all.
Therefore, faith is before understanding, but below it, because then a person begins to understand what he believed in. He moves to a new level thanks to his knowledge, his mental abilities: he begins to understand what he previously believed. That is, in time, faith is primary, but in fact, reason is primary.
The idea of the priority of reason in Augustine is not accidental. In "The City of God" we even see a certain hymn to reason. Augustine writes that every person strives for truth, for knowledge, and it is painful for a person to lose the ability to be reasonable, as evidenced by the fact that any person would prefer to be sane and distressed than rejoicing and crazy (cf. Pushkin: “ God forbid I go crazy, it's better to have a staff and a bag ...”). Sometimes Augustine speaks rather condescendingly about people who cannot comprehend the truth by reason, saying that faith is enough for the majority.
If they are lazy and incapable of science, let them believe, writes Augustine. But in general, if we consider faith in the context of knowledge, then faith is wider than understanding. Not everything can be understood, but everything can be believed. What I understand, I believe, but not everything I believe in, I understand; you can only believe, but not understand. But if I understand, then I already believe in it. Faith is broader than understanding. In this regard, Augustine divides all areas of human knowledge into three types:
Areas that are only accessible human faith(story)
Areas where faith equals understanding (evidence-based sciences - logic and mathematics)
An area where understanding is only possible through faith (religion)
Therefore, there is a fairly close relationship between faith and understanding. In this aspect, Blessed Augustine quotes the prophet Isaiah: "Unless you believe, you will not understand." From this follows that Augustinian maxim, which was dominant in all the Middle Ages: I believe in order to understand. Thus, faith and reason are not merely in harmony; they are, as it were, branches of one root, one human ability - the ability to know.
Faith is not anti-rational, but super-rational. It does not contradict reason, but is its highest level. Although the relationship between faith and reason is more complex: in some aspects he puts reason in a higher place, and in others it is the other way around. Augustine sometimes refers to faith as the mind of God. Man cannot understand everything, he can only believe; Divine reason is faith; deep faith and reason are identical.
Augustine has a different attitude to the product of the human mind, to the sciences: there are useful sciences and harmful sciences - sciences that should be developed, and sciences that should be abandoned. It is worth developing those sciences that help to understand Holy Scripture: the theory of signs, the doctrine of language, natural sciences that help to understand Holy History (mineralogy, zoology, geography, mathematics - it will help to understand the mystery of numbers set forth in Holy Scripture), music, medicine, history.
All these are sciences of Divine origin, therefore people need them. The same sciences that are invented by people are harmful and should be abandoned: astrology, magic, all kinds of theatrical performances.
Refutation of skepticism. Self-knowledge as the starting point of philosophizing Augustine in his conception of truth proceeds from the phrase spoken by the Savior: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life." Therefore, Augustine is sure that the problem of the existence of truth and its cognition is the main, key one for Christian philosophy. If truth does not exist, as skeptics claim, then neither does God. And if the truth is unknowable, then God is unknowable and all paths to salvation are closed to us.
Therefore, for Augustine, the refutation of skeptics is extremely important, it is important to prove that truth both exists and is knowable. Augustine devotes his first treatise Against the Academicians to this problem, in which he sets out his arguments against skepticism. Skepticism is Augustine's worst enemy; he undermines the foundations of morality, proving that everything is true or everything is false, and a person only chooses what he likes. Skepticism undermines the foundations of religion, proving that there is a God or that there is no God, as anyone pleases.
However, the skeptic contradicts himself, says Augustine. For if the Academicians point out that it is impossible to know the truth and that only what is truly like can be known, then Augustine replies that there is a contradiction in this phrase: how can we know what is true without knowing the truth? It's like saying that the son is like the father, but at the same time not knowing the father.
Augustine points out that the phrase "knowledge of the truth is impossible" is self-contradictory, because the person expressing such an opinion claims that this phrase is true. Hence, he thereby asserts that there is truth. If we say that this phrase is false, then, therefore, knowledge of the truth is possible, and the truth, again, exists. In both cases, it follows from this postulate of the skeptics that there is truth. Another argument is put forward by Augustine: the skeptics themselves always argue, prove, i.e. believe in the truth of evidence - logical rules and laws.
In particular, Augustine speaks of the law of the excluded middle and the law of contradiction. No matter how hard people try, they cannot come up with anything new: a thing either exists or it does not exist. And this law will always be true, no matter how they argue with it. Everything is either true or false—the phrase itself is true. Skeptics cannot argue with the truths of mathematics either: 2х2=4; 3x3=9. This is the absolute undeniable truth.
In his argument against the skeptics, Augustine also resorts to an Epicurean argument: he says that the skeptics wrongly accuse the senses of not giving us the truth. This is not so, because the senses only inform us about the outside world. Feelings cannot be wrong; it is not the senses that err, but the mind that judges them.
Augustine says of the skeptics' argument (an oar immersed in water appears to be broken, but in air it is straight; what is it really like?) that it is quite true: the senses correctly paint the picture, since an oar immersed in water appears to be broken. . It would be surprising if feelings showed the opposite picture. We must draw appropriate conclusions from this refraction, Augustine notes.
For skeptics, our senses were a boundary beyond which we cannot go. For Augustine, on the contrary: feelings are what connects a person with the world. Here is the difference between Augustine and Plotinus, for whom all knowledge consists only of the knowledge of one's own thinking "I". Plotinus absolutely did not trust his senses, since the senses give knowledge about the material world, and the material world is a world of shadows, a world of evil, which is not worth paying attention to.
But Augustine nevertheless followed precisely Plotinus's method of self-knowledge, because, after all, Augustine puts forward one more argument against skeptics: if a person doubts, then he thinks, he exists - and this is the truth. You can’t doubt your own doubt – this is the most obvious truth.
Theory of knowledge. Sense cognition. Augustine also makes the transition to the knowledge of God on the basis that, following Plotinus and other ancient philosophers, he shares the thesis that like is known by like. Therefore, if God is non-material, if He is above any material variability, then it is possible to know Him only on the basis of our non-material essence.
You can know God only by looking into your own soul. Augustine wrote that our soul contains images of the whole world, our soul is the image of God, therefore, by knowing our soul, we can know both God and the world. Of course, in our soul there are only images of the world, therefore perfect knowledge is impossible, a person cannot fully know either God or the world. Such perfect knowledge is available only to God.
Augustine starts from the Plotinian provisions of the theory of knowledge, according to which the soul, on the one hand, is an active agent in cognition, and not passive, and on the other hand, the soul cannot be affected by anything lower. For Plotinus, a logical sequence is possible here, since he does not recognize the material world and is completely immersed in the depths of his inner world.
Augustine faces a difficult task: it is important for him to combine these Plotinian considerations about the form-forming ability of the soul and about the soul’s unaffectedness by anything external, inferior to the proposition that the material world exists and that the senses give us a true picture of this world.
All feelings, according to Augustine, are active, not passive in the field of knowledge. The senses give information to the mind; they are that by which the soul becomes aware of what the body experiences. Through the senses, the soul becomes aware of what the body is experiencing and can influence the body. How the soul is connected with the body, the material with the intangible, Augustine does not describe, he says that this is beyond our understanding, that this is a mystery.
For example, Augustine writes: it is obvious to everyone that a knife stuck in the body and giving rise to a wound and the pain from this wound are completely different things. One is a material element (knife), and the other is pain, which gives rise to a completely non-material sensation in the soul. Nevertheless, Augustine offers some mechanism that can clarify, help understand how the senses participate in cognition.
Feelings are active, and not passively perceive the effects of external bodies (because the lower, i.e., matter, cannot affect the higher, the soul), and Augustine considers visual cognition as an example. Vision is possible due to the fact that in the upper part of the head, in the forehead, there is some luminous matter. It penetrates into our eyes, and through the eyes we, as it were, radiate this light from ourselves, we feel the object with these rays. In this way, we get information about it, so that, according to Augustine, vision is some kind of touch.
Thus, an object that has a form participates in cognition; this form is “felt” by visual rays, with their help it penetrates into the sense organs, where a certain material physiological image of the shape of an object is born. Further, this physiological image enters the soul, where it is no longer a material, but a spiritual image of an object that exists in the memory after we have seen this object.
We can forget this subject, or we can call it into our memory thanks to the ability to imagine. This is already the fourth image, which is in the ability of the imaginer, in his contemplation. Therefore, according to Augustine, there are four types of images: 1 and 2 - bodily (material), 3 and 4 - incorporeal forms that exist in memory and imagination.
Speaking about the mechanism of cognition, Augustine describes it in the language of Aristotelian terms. Any cognition consists of three elements: in a person there is a cognitive ability (this is the material cause of cognition), there is a real object (the formal cause of cognition) and a will that directs our ability to cognize precisely this cognizable object (the effective cause of cognition).
However, Augustine still focuses on rational, rational cognition and points out that in addition to sensual cognition, which is changeable in nature, there is also intelligible cognition. In addition to the sensible world, which is changeable in itself, there is also an intelligible world - an unchanging, eternal world. This is proved, in particular, by the fact that (as Augustine already pointed out in a dispute with skeptics), for example, the truths of mathematics are always truths.
These truths (because it is always true, eternal and unchanging) are not deducible from sensory perception. Similarly, many moral laws, in particular the laws of justice, are not deducible from sensory perception. Therefore, the intelligible exists, as Augustine argues, apparently in a dispute with the opponents of this view, and it always exists, and not sometimes - which is what distinguishes it from the world of the senses. Since the intelligible world always exists, and not sometimes, it exists to a greater extent than the sensible world.
Augustine has an intermediary between the sensible world and the intelligible, eternal world - the human mind. Reason is this intermediary by virtue of its cognitive ability. On the one hand, our mind can be directed to the sensible world, and on the other hand, to the intelligible world. He can cognize both worlds, but the peculiarity of his position is that the mind is higher than the sensory world, but lower than the intelligible.
Augustine shares Plotinus's concept of the non-affectability of the higher by the lower. Therefore, when cognizing the material world does not affect the mind, likewise, when the mind cognizes the eternal, intelligible, Divine world, our mind does not affect the Divine world; our mind can only contemplate the eternal truths that are in the Divine mind, but it can neither create nor influence them.
Unlike sensory cognition, with intelligible cognition, the mind sees the truths contained in the Divine mind directly, immediately, as if in some intellectual vision, while it sees sensible objects indirectly through sensory images. This direct vision is allowed to the mind because it is like the mind of the Divine.
The intelligible world Augustine, following Plotinus, understands as the world of truth, the world of true and true being, however, there is also some departure from Plotinus's concept, since Augustine does not share the idea of subordination expressed by Plotinus, and believes that the intelligible Divine world is both the world of ideas and the world of truth, and the world of being. That is, Augustine combines the provisions of the Plotinian Mind and the Plotinian One into one intelligible substance. This substance Augustine often calls the Word, or Logos (the "Word" of the Gospel of John).
Despite the fact that our mind is similar to the intelligible world and, because of this, it can directly contemplate it in intellectual vision, there is also a difference between our mind and the intelligible world. Unlike the Divine world, which is unchanging and eternal, our mind is changeable. This we can see in the act of self-knowledge. The soul is changeable, therefore the soul and the Logos are of the same nature, but they are not one and the same. This is another difference between Augustine and Plotinus, according to which all three hypostases exist both in the world and in us. Therefore, the intelligible world exists separately from the soul, exists in God as His mind.
The truths contained in the Divine mind are not created by the human mind, but are only contemplated by it directly. Just as the objectivity of the material world is proved, in particular, by the fact that the same object is seen by a different number of people, so the truth and objectivity of the intelligible world is proved by the fact that completely different people can see the same truth.
But here a problem arises before Augustine: if our mind and the Divine mind are not one and the same, then how can we know the truths contained in the Divine mind? Augustine believed that since God is immaterial, eternal and unchanging, He does not have a spatial extension, for only the material is spatial. Therefore, God is everywhere wholly. He is wholly in our mind. Thus, in our mind is the whole intelligible world, the whole Divine mind.
Therefore, the soul of any person has in itself the whole truth in its entirety. However, not every soul sees this. The soul of every person has in itself the entire Divine world, but not every soul notices this in itself. This is the "inner man" of which St. Paul. Augustine believes that the Divine true world is in man's memory. Augustine proves this by the fact that at a given moment a person does not necessarily think everything he knows.
The fact that a mathematician does not think about music at some point does not mean that he does not know music - he is simply now occupying his thinking with another subject. Therefore, he can remember, pull out of memory other truths known to him, and maybe later discover the unknown for himself. All truth is contained in man's memory. Therefore, knowledge, according to Augustine, is the actualization of potential knowledge with the help of thinking. All knowledge, all truth in potential form is already contained in the memory of man.
A person with the help of his thinking can actualize this potential truth, i.e. turn it into real knowledge. Therefore, it is clear that Augustine interprets memory quite broadly - not just as the fact that a person remembers something, but can forget something, but as everything inherent in the soul: both acts of will, and acts of morality, and acts of one's own knowledge, etc. d.
In early treatises, Augustine sometimes allowed himself to agree with the Platonic theory of the pre-existence of the soul. However, he immediately stipulated that he did not yet have a definite opinion on this issue. Subsequently, Augustine began to say that the soul has no pre-existence in the past, but, nevertheless, he shared the Platonic opinion about innate ideas. Unlike Plato, he explained this not by the fact that the soul saw these ideas in its past life, but by the fact that these truths are innate in any person, that God with all the truths is contained in each person, entirely.
Man knows because truth exists, because this truth exists in man, and this truth illuminates man with its own light. Augustine spoke with approval of Plotinus's metaphor (our soul is like the moon, shining with light reflected from the sun; only our soul knows the truths contained in the mind). With amendments to terms, Augustine recognizes this metaphor. He also believes that our soul is illumined by Divine light in the same way that the Moon is illumined by the Sun.
This concept is called Illuminism. The soul is illumined by the light of truth, whereby it receives the ability to know this truth and to think in general, because the ability to think means the ability to partake of the truth. Light comes from Wisdom, i.e. from the Logos, and this light illuminates our soul, gives it the ability to know.
Ontology. In addition to the fact that the Divine intelligible world is truth, this same world, according to Augustine, is being. This world does not have any non-existence in itself, it is eternal, does not change, is not destroyed, and is always similar only to itself. Everything that changes is involved in being, but is not fully being. Augustine also shares the well-known ancient concept, coming from Parmenides, according to which being is unchanging, and that which changes contains non-being.
The material world and the soul are changeable, therefore, they are involved in non-existence. In this Augustine sees some proof that our world was created by God out of non-existence. But non-existence has not disappeared, it has remained in some way in our world. Therefore, in our world, not everything is true, absolute truth exists only in the field of the Divine mind. Therefore, for Augustine, being and being truth are one and the same.
In God, everything is real, everything exists - the past, the present, and the future. In the material world, there is both the real and the possible. The source of possibility, according to Augustine, is matter. Here he also recalls ancient philosophy, in particular, Aristotle.
Since being always exists, therefore, it is non-material and non-spatial, since it is indivisible. And such being is, according to Augustine, only God. He is present everywhere and is subject not to feeling, but only to the mind. God is absolute form and absolute good. Here we also see some departure from the philosophy of Plotinus, because, according to Plotinus, God (if we understand Plotinus's One by God) exists above truth and above being. Augustine states that God is truth, and being, and good.
Here, however, we may encounter a difficulty which arises from the application of Parmenides' logic to this problem. If we assume that the world is being, and God is being, and God creates the world from nothing, then it turns out that either nothing exists (which is paradoxical), or that God must create the world from Himself (which contradicts Holy Scripture). Therefore, we remember that Plotinus outlined such a method of solution, which in the future will be used by the great Cappadocians, and Dionysius the Areopagite, and other Church Fathers, who will assert that God is higher than being.
Augustine asserts something else: God is being. For him, there is no contradiction between the creation of the world from non-existence and the existence of non-existence. It does not arise due to the fact that non-existence remains in our world. It remains the source of impermanence, the temporality of this world, the lies that exist in this world.
Augustine himself pointed out that to recognize the fact that God is being, he was forced by a well-known phrase from the book of Exodus, which says that God is Existing. Augustine combines Plotinian characteristics of Mind (intelligibility, being, eternity, truth, beauty) and characteristics of the One (simplicity, goodness and uniqueness) and changes the emphasis. For Plotinus, the main problem was the interaction of the unity of the One and the plurality of our world; Augustine's main emphasis is on the relation of eternity in God and time in the world.
Thus, being exists only with God, everything else has a partial participation in being. Being, i.e. God is pure form; the world is a combination of form and matter. Material objects change in time and space, true being does not change at all. But there are also spiritual objects that change only in time (our soul).
Since the soul is changeable, it also participates to some extent in non-existence, therefore it is also created from non-existence. This is what unites our soul with the material world, and what distinguishes it is that its change occurs only in time, and not in time and space, as with material objects.
Our soul is immortal, but not eternal. Augustine distinguishes between these terms, since only the changeless is eternal. Matter, according to Augustine (unlike the Platonists), is not nothing, but is higher than non-existence; Augustine calls matter everything that changes. Consequently, there is matter not only sensible, but also intelligible. If there is intelligible matter, then it also has some intelligible form. In particular, our soul, according to Augustine, is a formed spiritual matter.
Augustine uses the concept of "matter" rather in the Plotinian sense than in our ordinary understanding. For Plotinus, the soul is matter for the mind, the mind is matter for the one, i.e. matter is everything that can take on some form, and form, as we remember, also cannot be perceived only as a material spatial category. Form is everything through which the cognizability of objects is realized.
Augustine also understands the terms "matter" and "form" in approximately the same way. Therefore, when Augustine says that our soul has matter and form, in no case should it be taken in a sensual way.
The doctrine of time. Our world and our soul change in time. The problem of time for Augustine is one of the main ones; he devotes almost the entire 11th book of the Confessions to it. He begins by asking the question: "Are not those who ask us what God did before He created the heavens and the earth, out of date?" And he tries to logically prove the point of view of the supporters of the theory, according to which if God did nothing before he created heaven and earth, then He cannot be called God in absolute measure, for He was inactive; and if He did something, then why didn't He do it?
To this Augustine responds as follows. First, those who reason themselves reason in time, so they cannot rise above time and understand God, who exists in eternity. On the other hand, while creating the world, God simultaneously creates time. Therefore, to ask what was before God created the world is unfair, incorrect, because there was no "before" - time is created along with the world.
So Augustine answers this question boldly: God did nothing. But Augustine does not stop there and asks the question: what is time? This question is not empty and not accidental, because if you try to understand the variability of the world, the world and the soul (and the soul, as we remember, Augustine is primarily interested in), then it is necessary to know the time in which the soul and the world exist.
The question of the existence of time is itself unusual. After all, the existence of something is always spoken of as existence in time, most often in the present. Augustine reiterates that it is generally agreed that there are three parts to time: past, present, and future. Here a paradox arises: the past no longer exists, the future does not yet exist, so only the present can be known. But where is the real one?
First, Augustine writes that the present for us can be a year in which there is both a past and a future. Then you can narrow this concept down to a month, a day, an hour, a minute, and, in the end, we come to a certain point. But as soon as we try to grasp this point, the present is no longer there - it has become the past. We are trying to understand the future, but we also cannot grasp it in any way, it is either in the future or in the past.
Existence is spoken of only in relation to the present, so the existence of time can also be spoken of only in this aspect. Both the past and the future exist only as what we currently imagine - or remember, or foresee. Therefore, Augustine argues: it can be said that only the present exists, and one can speak of the past and the future only as the present of the past and the present of the future. Everything exists in the present: the past exists in memory, and the future in anticipation.
We define this premonition based on the present. As about the coming sunrise, we judge the dawn that has appeared. We see the dawn and know that soon the sun will come. In the same way, we judge the future by the fact that there is a present. Therefore, it is more correct to speak not about the past, present and future, but about the present of the past, the present of the present and the present of the future.
And they exist only in our soul: the present of the past exists in memory, the present of the present in direct contemplation, the present of the future in expectation. Augustine comes to the conclusion: time exists only in our soul, i.e. it exists subjectively.
Usually this concept in the history of philosophy is associated with the name of Immanuel Kant. But, according to Augustine, the objective world exists in time, so he tends to the point of view that time exists both in our soul and objectively, but time is a property not of the material, sensible world, but of the soul. In the "Confession" Augustine answers the question of time: time is a certain length. And to the question: "The length of what?" - he answers: "The extension of the spirit."
But what is time? Where does it come from? Some philosophers say that time is movement—in particular, the movement of the stars. Augustine does not agree with this position, because movement is conceived in time, and not vice versa - time in movement. Therefore, with the help of time, we can measure the revolutions of stars, but not vice versa. We know that the very movement of stars can be either fast or slow, and for this there must be a criterion.
Therefore, movement is not time, but movement exists in time. And what exactly is time? This remains a mystery to Augustine. The only thing he says about time is that it is a certain extension of the spirit. Augustine ends his discourse on time with the phrase: "In you, my soul, I measure time."
Cosmology. Along with time, God creates the material world. The material world for Augustine is not non-existence, not, as Plotinus said, "a painted corpse", hinting at the etymology of the word "cosmos" ("beauty"). Augustine also does not share the ancient concept of the world as existing in cyclic time - the concept shared by the Stoic philosophers, according to which the world constantly arises and constantly burns out.
The world exists once, it exists not in cyclic time, but in linear time, otherwise the sacrifice of Jesus Christ would have been in vain, and in each new world that replaces each other, its own sacrifice of the Savior would have been required, which is absurd. Therefore, the world moves in linear time, the world exists in reality, it is the creation of God - a good creation, a creation out of nothing, and not an emanation, and therefore not a product of God's nature.
Creation is not the result of God's nature, but of His grace. God may or may not create; it is an act of His will, His grace. Thus, through this act of grace, Augustine separates the world from God; God is outside the world. But the world is created by God from nothing, therefore this nothing enters the world, and from it all the imperfection and all the variability of the world, and from God, from being - all perfection, all beauty, all the being of the world.
Both matter and form are created from nothing at the same time. Augustine is trying to combine two statements: on the one hand, a description of the six days of creation, and on the other, a phrase from the book of Jesus, the son of Sirach, that God created the whole world at once. Augustine points out that God really creates the whole world at once in the form of some seed logoi, in which all the subsequent development of the world is laid down.
In the future, each thing develops, having this logos in itself - a kind of program for its development, which is described in the Six Days. We are seeing this development in our modern world. God has predetermined the fate of every single thing that has a fate - a plan laid down in God, in His Logos.
The fact that the world is conceived as a rational creation, Augustine proves with a phrase from the book of the Wisdom of Solomon, according to which God arranged everything according to number, measure and weight. Consequently, the relationship between things is determined by numbers, measure, so the world has a hierarchical structure. But the world is not homogeneous, it has both good and evil.
The problem of evil was for Augustine one of the main ones in his evolution, from his initial departure from Christianity and coming to the Manichaeans and subsequent return to Christianity. Augustine shares the Plotinian point of view, according to which evil does not exist in the world. Evil has no substantive basis, and the Manicheans were mistaken in this.
On the one hand, Augustine points out that evil comes into the world from non-existence, from which God creates the world. And since non-being as such does not exist, then evil does not exist. God could not create a world like Himself, for God cannot create God. Any creation is always lower than God, therefore any creation is a lack of goodness. Evil is this deficiency, the deprivation of goodness. Evil exists only in this aspect - as a lack of goodness. Just as there is a shadow, a lack of light; the shadow itself has no substantive basis.
Augustine also perceives another ancient tradition of explaining the existence of evil in the world - stoic, according to which evil and good are in harmony. We know evil only when we know good. On the other hand, we often think that what is actually good is evil. Therefore, evil is part of the general order of the world.
Augustine separates natural and moral evil. Natural evil is an evil that exists in the world, as it were, ontologically; moral evil is evil that exists in a person as his sin. Naturally, evil ontologically does not exist, the world is good, although to a lesser extent than God. There is moral evil in man as his will. Although the will is good, but it is imperfect, therefore this good is not absolute.
In many ways, ancient layers are visible in the philosophy of Augustine, in particular, the position on the hierarchical structure of the world. Even Aristotle had the idea that every object has its own natural place in the world.
The doctrine of man. But if natural evil does not exist, then moral evil exists—evil in man, evil as sin. Man, which for Augustine is also one of the main problems, Augustine interprets from the point of view of two Christian dogmas: on the one hand, man is the image and likeness of God, and on the other, a sinful being, for our ancestors committed original sin.
Therefore, when Augustine describes man as the image of God, he often elevates him, but immediately shows that man, as a sinful being, is not perfect, and often falls into seeming pessimism. Therefore, the anthropology of Augustine cannot be understood without his Christology, without the fact that the Savior performed an act of atonement for human sins.
Speaking about the creation of man, Augustine says that man was created from nothing - both his body and soul. The body is not the tomb of the soul, for, as Augustine writes, answering the Platonists, who asserted that the body is fetters, the tomb of the soul: "Does anyone love his own fetters?" Body and soul are of a good nature, provided that the body is conceived as that part of man's nature which is subordinate to the soul.
But because of the fall, the body got out of subordination, and the opposite happened: the soul became the servant of the body. Christ, by His redemptive sacrifice, restored the original order, and people again understood that the body should serve the soul. Man, according to Augustine, is the unity of soul and body. Here he objects to the Platonists, who argued that the essence of man is only the soul. Augustine corrects the Platonists by saying that man is a rational soul in control of its own body.
Thus, a person is a unity of soul and body. But the body and the soul are still absolutely different substances, both changing, but the soul does not have a spatial structure and changes only in time. And if so, then the soul does not mix with the body, but is always in the body. The soul is the basis of life, the rational principle; it is the soul that imparts life to the body, and allows through the body to cognize the sensible world. But the soul does not mix with the body, remaining united with it, but not merged.
Ethics of Augustine. The main problem of Augustinian ethics is the problem of evil. In addition to the problem of evil, Augustine was also concerned about the problems of freedom arising from the problem of evil, and the related problem of the relationship between human freedom and Divine grace: how to harmonize the free will of man with Divine economy, with the fact that God creates everything and knows everything, through Him everything happening. Despite all the influence of Plotinus, which Augustine himself speaks of, Augustine takes only one aspect of the teaching from Plotinus: his teaching about the metaphysical cause of good and evil.
According to Plotinus, the reason for the origin in the world of evil is the absence of good. There is no evil as such in nature, evil is the deprivation of good. Evil, according to Plotinus, has no metaphysical nature, no metaphysical basis. It was in this that Augustine saw the main problem of Christianity, it was this that led him to the Manichaeans in the beginning, and therefore he abandoned him.
On the one hand, Augustine could not be satisfied with the position that God creates evil in the world, and on the other hand, in the Manichean version of Augustine, he was not satisfied with the fact that there are two gods: one is good, the other is evil. This contradicts the very concept of God as an omnipotent being. According to Augustine, the whole world is created from non-existence, and therefore only God is being, pure being, absolute, and the world is created from non-existence and therefore contains this non-existence.
Hence the possibility of evil. Hence there is physical evil, vice, evil that exists in bodies and in general in the material world: ugliness, imperfection of the material world, ugliness, imperfections in form, and so on, and moral evil, understood as sin. The cause of physical evil, i.e. vice, consists in the lack of perfection in the bodies. The cause of moral evil is the imperfection of the human mind and will.
Since the human mind and will are created imperfect, being created from non-existence, the mind and will are perverted. The will deviates from being complete to being incomplete. In the "Confessions", in chapter 7, Augustine discusses this topic in more detail. Here Augustine highlights this problem once again in all its paradoxicalness and all its seeming insolubility. Augustine writes that from the words of St. Ambrose of Milan he learned that evil is "from me", that evil does not exist in the world, that God cannot be evil, that evil exists in the world because of the free human will.
But this answer did not quite suit Augustine, because, as Augustine writes further, my will was also created by God. And if God created my will such that it can incline towards evil, then God has foreseen this evil in the world. He created my will evil, imperfect, and therefore it doesn't matter, God is guilty of this evil. And if the culprit is the devil, Satan?
The very first angel who committed this sin, where does the evil in him come from? After all, he was also created by God, and by creating this angel - Dennitsa, God also put the opportunity to sin in him, therefore he also put the possibility of evil in him? Therefore, no matter how hard we try to justify God by blaming evil on any of His creations, we finally understand that everything was created by God, in the end we see that evil ascends to the Creator.
This answer, of course, does not suit Augustine and he tries to find another answer. God cannot be worse, this is an axiom that every believer understands. God is complete perfection, He cannot deteriorate. Evil exists only where there is deterioration. Therefore, since God cannot deteriorate, then there is no evil in Him.
But maybe, if there is no evil in the world, then, Augustine continues, there is the very fear of evil - is it evil? Or perhaps the very matter of evil? hinting at Plato's solution to this problem. But it cannot be that God, creating matter, created it evil, being All-good. Maybe then the matter was eternal and had an evil nature?
And Augustine also answers this answer in the negative, because even if matter were eternal, God still has the omnipotent power to change the evil nature of matter, turn it into good or destroy it. Moreover, we know that matter is not eternal, but is created by God. Therefore, Augustine is not satisfied with these answers either. From here he returns to the problem he just posed, that evil is deterioration. But what could get worse?
God cannot become worse, but something good, moral, existing in the world, can become worse. Nothing can be worse than something that does not exist, or God, everything else can be either better or worse. Everything deteriorating is deprived of the good, is deprived to some extent of being. If a thing deteriorates completely, it will cease to be. Therefore, everything that exists is all good, and evil is non-existent, evil has no substance, otherwise, if the substance of evil existed, it would be good.
Evil exists only when there is an object that can bring evil, can worsen, i.e. there is a good that can diminish. If goodness completely disappears, then this thing itself will disappear. Therefore, there is no evil for God. Evil, as Augustine writes, is that which, taken separately, does not agree with something.
Augustine uses the well-known ancient principle of goodness as harmony, a principle dating back to Heraclitus, found in Plato and the Stoics. A person cannot know all the connections of the world, but for God everything exists in a universal connection, therefore everything agrees with everything, therefore there is no evil, as such, for God in the world.
The difference between evil and good lies in the fact that if good exists in reality, good is being, then evil is a deterioration of good, i.e. the process that exists together with good.
The same is true in relation to moral evil, sinfulness. Sinfulness is also not a substance. "Sinfulness is a perverted will, turning from God to the lower, casting aside its inner self and strengthening itself in the outer world," writes Augustine. The human soul can also deteriorate, being good, and the deterioration of the soul is that it turns away from the Creator and turns its gaze on the creation, turns away from God and turns its gaze to the lower material world.
The cause of moral evil, or sinfulness, is not only that our soul is created imperfect, created from nothing. Our will is created free, and therefore in our very will there is the possibility of falling into sin and rebirth. This possibility, of course, is not a necessity, God did not create our soul in such a way that it had to choose such an act, direct its will to disobey God, God only put an opportunity into it.
This possibility can become a reality only with the participation of man, while God gives only the possibility of falling into sin and the possibility of rebirth.
Since the problem of free will is generally the most difficult in philosophy, especially Christian, since perhaps two incompatible theses collide here: on the one hand, a person has free will and can do whatever he wants, and on the other hand, everything in world depends on God, like any human action. How to combine the free will of man with Divine predestination?
One of the solutions was proposed by Blessed. Augustine. He argued that man was indeed created good. He received free will, through which he could either retain his heavenly perfection or lose it. Augustine singled out in freedom not only a formal element, that freedom is a kind of indifferent ability to choose between good and evil, but also a qualitative element: freedom is a moral force that has an internal disposition to acquire some content. This force can be both good and evil.
The newly created man had a free good will. But if Adam and Eve had only good will, then where did the fact of the fall come from? Augustine says that freedom is not only qualitative, but also formal. That is, in reality, Adam and Eve had a good will, but they also had the opportunity to sin, and both of them realized this opportunity, turning it into reality.
How to connect the fact that Adam committed a sinful act with Divine foreknowledge and predestination? Augustine gives several answers to this question. First, the very fact that a person has a religious and moral consciousness indicates both that a person is free and that there is providence.
If a person believes in God, then he believes that there is a providence. And if a person is moral, that is, he understands that he is responsible for his deeds, this indicates that he is free. Therefore, Augustine says that the existence of both predestination and freedom is an empirical fact. This needs to be explored, not proven.
Augustine argues that foresight does not deny freedom, but, on the contrary, can presuppose it. So, if a person foresees that there will be an eclipse of the sun, this does not mean that it is the person who arranges this eclipse. The order of events is such that the person anticipates this event because it will take place independently of it. In the same way, God foresees some events, because they really will be.
However, God does not just foresee them - He wants them and arranges them. But suits through the final specific reasons. The free activity of a person is also some kind of activity for a reason, because this reason is in the person himself, there is his inner moving reason. Therefore, God predetermines all actions in the world, including human ones, taking into account all actions, including free ones.
Another argument that Augustine brings, arguing that it is only for us that there is some foresight, predestination, because we live in time: for us there is "before", "now" and "after". With God, everything is “now,” so it cannot be said that He foresees or predetermines anything; for Him everything is already as it were accomplished.
Augustine argues that Adam and Eve had good will, but in its original state - the so-called lesser freedom. This freedom was good, but it also contained the possibility of sinning. Adam and Eve, by their deeds, had to direct themselves towards a better service, so that formally their freedom would be such that she could no longer sin.
After the fall, our soul changed so much that it became impossible for a person to return to its original state on its own, only through grace, through the direct help of God. On the issue of the fall and free will, Augustine argued for a long time with Pelagius, who believed that the fall did not change the nature of man, and that man after the fall remained as free and active as before. According to Augustine, the Fall changed human nature in such a way that further salvation is possible only with the help of God.
After the fall, the will became only the will to sin, and this is precisely the corruption of human nature. Man has become such that now he can no longer sin. This should be understood in the broadest sense: even if a person does good deeds, he still commits a sin - after all, there is always an element of either vanity, or pride, or something else in him.
These provisions of Augustine raised many questions - nevertheless, whether a person is free or not, what he is predestined to: to salvation or to condemnation. Augustine did not deny either the freedom of man or the grace of God, he sought to find harmony between them.
Here, once again, the problem of the relationship between free will and predestination arises. Augustine writes in "On the City of God" that even at the creation of the world, God predestined some people to salvation, and others to eternal torment. Doesn't this principle of universal predestination contradict the position on the freedom of man, the fact that man himself creates his own evil? According to Augustine, this does not exclude freedom.
First, Augustine distinguishes between freedom and free will. Augustine says that God knows everything and predetermines everything, and we are free, and we can say that fate in the sense in which the ancient Greeks thought of it, fate as fate, as an impersonal force that controls everything and everyone, there is no such fate at all , especially such a fate as the influence of the stars. God's power is visible in everything, all causes ultimately ascend to God, and the human will, too, ultimately ascends to God.
It turns out some kind of multi-stage system. God controls everything - some things and phenomena directly, such as the phenomena of the material world, and some phenomena indirectly, for example, through angels, and angels act on people or on the world. Or even more indirectly: through angels, and through people, and already people influence the world. In the end, it is the will that acts: the will of God, the will of the angels, the will of man.
Therefore, we cannot say that freedom, i.e. the principle proceeding from the active principle contradicts predestination. Predestination from God is the principle of freedom, so there is no contradiction in this. A person acting according to the will of God is a being that realizes this principle, for freedom is given to man by God.
An evil will, if a person has one, does not come from God, for it is contrary to nature. Free will is the essence of man, because it is given to man at the moment of his creation, therefore no one can cancel free will: neither God nor man himself, this is his essence. And in solving the problem of the relationship between the free activity of man and Divine foresight, Augustine always insists that man always chooses himself.
God foresees what a person will do, because to foresee does not mean to influence, to force. If God knows that I will do something, this does not mean that I am doing it with his direct intervention. We remember, however, from another explanation in the Confessions, that Augustine says that everything exists because of causes that ultimately go back to God.
Therefore, we can say that such a decision of Augustine is not entirely consistent, we will be forced to say that human freedom is illusory, that he has free will, but freedom of action is canceled by God. But this is not entirely true, because freedom, according to Augustine, is the possibility for free will to choose the best.
In which case can a person choose the best? Only if he imagines the whole choice that he faces, i.e., the more knowledge a person has, the freer he is. God himself helps a person to become free, giving him his grace. Therefore, such an interaction between the grace of God and the free activity of man is resolved as follows: grace does not deny freedom, but rather increases it.
A person endowed with divine grace has much more choice in his action, therefore, he has much more freedom. And since freedom is the ability to choose the best, a person under grace is more free, because he always chooses the best.
Without grace, a person is not free, bound to the flesh, becomes a slave of sin, therefore a person who has known God and received grace from Him really becomes free. Therefore, after the Last Judgment, after the general resurrection, there will be more freedom than we have now, because then there will be no sinful will, there will be no sinful knowledge, there will be no opportunity to sin.
The problem of freedom in Augustine is also connected with the problem of love, Divine love for man, which gives him grace, and man's love for God and other creatures, and in general love as a principle that organizes the world. Augustine explains love in Aristotelian terms - as a desire for a natural place.
According to Augustine, the whole world has a hierarchical structure, everything in the world has its natural place. In the inanimate world, the natural manifestation of this love is heaviness for a thing; for fire, the manifestation of love will be the desire to rise up; for oil that is poured on water, the manifestation of love will float to the surface of the water, etc.
Love is the principle that organizes the whole world. The natural place for the soul is in God, therefore the soul is attracted to God. The soul must love God, this is the desire of the soul for God, this is the manifestation of its love for God. If the soul aspires to God, then the body is attracted to the bodily. From this arises bodily love and spiritual love. They can contradict each other, and if a person increases bodily love, then his spiritual love decreases and, conversely, with an increase in love for God, love for the body decreases.
Spiritual love, based on free will, is free, unlike bodily love, which is not free and obeys the laws of the corporeal world. A person can love his love or, on the contrary, hate it, and this is precisely the morality of a person. A moral person is one who loves his love for God and hates his love for the corporeal, and vice versa, a vicious person is one who does not love his love for God and loves his love for the corporeal, for pleasures.
This is the difference between the Augustinian and, in general, the Christian concept of the will from the ancient concept. In antiquity there was no such thing as love or hatred for one's own love. Only deeds succumbed to moral evaluation. Virtue in antiquity is conformity to one's nature. A virtuous horse is one that runs fast, a virtuous person is one who thinks rightly, and so on.
A virtuous person loves only what is worthy of love, for there is an order of love throughout the world. This order is established by God, therefore the order of love, or more precisely, as Augustine writes, "the order in love", is the virtue of man. The internal correlate of this order of love, of assessing whether a person loves rightly or wrongly his own desires, his own love, is conscience.
Every person has a conscience, even those who do not have a correct idea of the order of love, and it is this principle that God has put into man so that with the help of conscience a person can better evaluate his own order in love. If a person achieves this order in love, reaches a natural place, then such a person achieves bliss, happiness.
Therefore, according to Augustine, happiness is finding a natural place. "No one can be happy unless he has what he desires or desires what is evil," writes Augustine in On the Trinity. It is impossible to desire what is evil, otherwise it will lead a person to misfortune. One can enjoy only the unconditional good, the fruit of love worthy of God, everything else can only be used.
Augustine develops the theory of the interaction of two concepts - enjoyment and use. "Enjoy" in Latin - frui, "use" - uti, in all textbooks, as a rule, this opposition is given: uti - frui, use - enjoy. If a person enjoys what needs to be used, then this leads to suffering, if a person uses what needs to be enjoyed, this also leads to suffering, therefore one should enjoy what is worthy of enjoyment, and use what needs to be used.
It also has its own order. And human depravity, or sin, lies in this - in the change of places of enjoyment and use: uti and frui. A person enjoys what needs to be used, and uses what needs to be enjoyed. To enjoy is to love something for its own sake. To use means to love it for the sake of something else.
Only one being is worthy of enjoyment and love for its own sake, and that is God; everything else besides God should be enjoyed. But since everything in the world was created by God, then everything in the world must be loved, because there is an order of love in the world. We must strictly understand this order, we must love all the blessings, but not for their own sake. In things themselves, we must love their beauty, their truth, their goodness, i.e. that which is given to these things from God, to love things for their own sake, is the principle of man's sinfulness.
In addition, Augustine points out, one must love one's own body and take care of one's own health, but do not attach self-sufficient significance to this, i.e. one should love one's body not for the sake of one's own body, but for the sake of the Creator who created this body and gave us and take care of one's health. Because health is a gift that helps us to act in the world, to love our neighbors, to help our neighbors, not to be selfish and to divert all the forces of society to our person.
Another thing is when a person turns his concern for his body, about his health into a primary value, indulges in either gluttony or selfish desire for his own health. The body is the temple of the soul, and we need the body to glorify God in it, and not to glorify our own body.
The hierarchy of love follows from this principle of enjoyment and use, because one must love that which is closer to God. The soul stands closer to God, therefore the soul must be loved. A living body is closer to God than inanimate matter, so the body must be loved more than inanimate, but God must be loved more, as the only thing that can be enjoyed, not used.
Philosophy of history. Augustine is rightly considered the philosopher who first considered the problems of history. The fact is that in antiquity there was no linear idea of time. The universe was represented, as it is written by Heraclitus, as tanning by measures, fading by measures. The world was seen as cyclical, a world in which everything repeats itself.
This concept of cyclic time could not give rise to a philosophical-historical concept, and therefore ancient philosophers practically did not deal with the problems of history. Augustine argues with this concept, proving that it is untrue, unfair for at least one simple reason: that if God descended to earth, became human and atoned for our sins, then in the cyclical world this expiatory sacrifice of the Savior loses its meaning.
This sacrifice makes sense if our world is unique and has its own history. The fact that there is history in the world and that this history develops according to the laws prescribed by God to the world is a fact that we can learn from Holy Scripture. The Old Testament tells us that God had a plan when creating our world, and a person, thanks to God's help, can know this plan. This is also evidenced by the activity of the prophets, who were given this ability to know and predict the future.
Augustine divides the whole history into 7 periods, or rather into 6 periods, and the seventh is the seventh day, the day of rest. The entire history between the Fall and the Last Judgment is divided into six periods, each with its own meaning. The first period is from Adam to the Flood, the second is from the flood to Abraham, the third is from Abraham to David, the fourth is from David to the migration to Babylon, the fifth is from the migration to Babylon to the incarnation of Jesus Christ, now there is the sixth period, the sixth century, and the seventh age will be later, this age will be our Sabbath after the resurrection from the dead.
Each period has its own meaning and its own task on earth. Augustine immediately points out that the time intervals of all these periods are different and no temporal dependence can be sought. Therefore, it is impossible to predict when the 7th period will come, when our 6th day will end, therefore Augustine denied the concept of chiliasm, arguing that it is impossible to know the time of the end of our world.
The main work of Augustine is called "On the City of God", more precisely, "On the State of God". From the very name it follows that there is a certain state, a certain city in which the righteous will live and which opposes another community - the earthly state. The inhabitants of the first, earthly state live according to human standards, earthly laws; the inhabitants of the heavenly city live according to the Divine will. The former love themselves, the latter love God; the former enjoy that which is to be enjoyed, the latter have orderly love.
It is impossible, of course, to understand that this is some specific historical or geographical formation. The earthly city is by no means synonymous with some kind of education, moreover, each person does not know to which city he belongs. For each person commits in his life such actions that may belong to one or another city, only God knows whether this person will be saved or not saved, to which city he belongs.
The symbol of the earthly city is Babylon, or the Roman Empire, which Augustine calls the second Babylon, and the symbol of the heavenly city is Jerusalem, or the earthly Church. But if there are different churches on earth, what can we say about a person? A person can be formally in the Church, but in fact, in the eyes of God, belong to an earthly city.
To the earthly state, i.e. Augustine treated real earthly education differently. On the one hand, he denied it as an unconditional good, but on the other hand, he recognized it and considered it a relative good, because the earthly state helps people in this life. This blessing should not be enjoyed, it should only be used.
Although Augustine often attacked the state, especially the Roman state, which opposed Christianity for a long time, however, Augustine also sees some advantages in this Roman state, believes that this state meets all the criteria of the state and helps people in their lives. This state arises, of course, as a result of the fall into sin and exists only in earthly life. The state is useful because it is the guarantor of peace, the guarantor of order.
In an earthly state, this is the order of bodily organization, this is the position according to which the state can be recognized and considered relatively good. Augustine created a holistic and complete (albeit not very coherently presented) doctrine, which became a model for Western thinkers for a thousand years.
Dionysius the Areopagite
In the second half of the 5th century, in the era of the emergence of feudal society, in the Byzantine Empire (more precisely, in Syria), four works were written in Greek, which in the subsequent history of religious and philosophical thought played a prominent role both in the East and in the West.
They were called "On the Names of God", "On Mystical Theology", "On the Heavenly Hierarchy", "On the Church Hierarchy" and were signed with the name of Dionysius the Areopagite. However, he could not be the author of these treatises, for he lived several centuries earlier, and therefore their author, whose name, of course, is unknown, began to be called Pseudo-Dionysius. The treatises were first presented at a church council in 532.
Areopagitics was a synthesis of Christianity and Neoplatonism. It relied primarily on the Neoplatonic concept of a "single absolute" that exists outside of nature; the result was the denial of the dogma of the Holy Trinity. The main meaning of Areopagitics was the method of knowing God, one of the ways is positive theology based on the analogy between the world of real objects, in particular human beings, and God as their sole and highest creator.
The second way - the so-called negative theology - proceeds from the fact that it is impossible to attribute all the countless properties to a divine being, for example, anger or intoxication do not befit God. The absoluteness of God's existence can rather be expressed in a negative way, that is, in terms that cannot be taken from human life, cannot be expressed by means of human definitions. God is not like any of the attributes of the material world, he is pure transcendence. This approach reveals the mystical, speculative aspects of the teachings of Pseudo-Dionysius about God.
Pseudo-Dionysius also adopts other Neoplatonic ideas, such as the idea of God as the beginning, middle and end of everything that exists. The world was created by God, his infinite love and kindness, he also strives to return to God. In this way, the transcendent god can be presented simultaneously as immanent to all species and beings that participate in his perfection. First of all, this is achieved by beings who form the “heavenly hierarchy” (angels, spirits), and then by people who communicate with God through the church.
In this concept, the idea of a hierarchical ordering of the world plays a significant role, which expressed the interests of both the church and the secular authorities in the emerging feudal society.
Of all the ancient Greek writers, Pseudo-Dionysius most significantly influenced medieval philosophical thought in the West, in particular in the direction of mysticism. His peculiar perception of Neoplatonic philosophy inspired Christian teaching. The views of Pseudo-Dionysius were spread by his disciple, successor and commentator Maximus the Confessor (Makhtsh Confessor, 580-662).
At the beginning of the 5th century Marcianus Capella compiled a school textbook on the seven so-called liberal arts (on grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music); the Roman senator Cassiodorus (c. 490-538) compiled an encyclopedia on the affairs of God and men, his merits also consisted in describing and translating ancient manuscripts. Isidore Sevilleskin (c. 600), the Anglo-Saxon Bede (c. 700), and Alcinus (c. 730-804), adviser to Charlemagne, compiled collections that included much of the wealth of thought of the ancient world.
Among those whom the Catholic Church recognizes as holy fathers, one of the most honorable places is occupied by Blessed Augustine. It is to him that she owes the development and most detailed argumentation of the concept of relations with the state. But we find the starting points of this concept in his teacher Ambrose of Milan (c. 340-397). Among the problems that particularly occupied Ambrose (and which passed from him to other religious teachers), three main ones should be singled out: the essence of Divine power, the power of the church and its relationship with state power. According to I. I. Adamov, it was Ambrose who was the first of the Christian teachers and fathers of the church to oppose civitas Dei and civitas terrene, that is, the Divine and the human. At the same time, by civitas terrene, he understood not any particular state, but the earthly world in general, in which sin “reigns”. This world, according to Ambrose, is in close relationship with the devil and therefore morally vicious. On the contrary, civitas Dei is absolutely perfect and morally pure. It consists of the powers of heaven, as well as people after death (but "not equally"; their final fate will be determined after the second coming of Christ).
The Church exists for the salvation of the human soul, and it encompasses the entire globe. Even sinners, as well as those who have been excommunicated or fallen away from the church, can return to its bosom, since faith is an internal, mystical connection with God. In accordance with the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Jews, Ambrose is convinced that the church embraces not only those who now exist on Earth, but also all who have ever lived and can live in the future. They are all equal in faith, but not all are equal in their role. In the church there are eyes, or eyes, - the prophets; teeth - apostles; "womb" - believers who give to the poor, etc. Ambrose even writes about the legs and those who make up the "heel" (calcanent) of the church. Their unity is based on mutual love and unconditional episcopal authority. But the church does not directly force. This is the duty and right of the state, which must respect the institutions of the church, not interfere with its activities, not encroach on its canons and property. Sovereigns who follow these principles are true sovereigns, and therefore Ambrose predicts their future life and bliss.
Ambrose often expressed his views on the problems of power and the state in sermons and letters to the emperors Honorius and Valentinian II, whose adviser he was. These messages dealt with private issues, but over time acquired a fundamental character. Unconditionally recognizing the power of the emperor in relation to all citizens, he objected with no less categorical opposition to any interference in the internal affairs of the church, to any infringement of its rights. Ambrose preached: “The Emperor is in the Church, and not above the Church; a good emperor seeks the help of the Church, not rejects it.” In the famous “Letter on the Altar of Victory,” he calls for the emperor to treat Christianity and its defenders with respect.
When Emperor Valentinian II died, Ambrose dedicated a special Sermon to this event, where he praised the deceased for his attitude towards the church.
The starting points in the teachings of Augustine (354-430) were the following: 1) the division of the world into a divine city and an earthly city; 2) the recognition that "evil is nothing but a belittling of good, reaching its complete disappearance". The cause of evil is free will. The division into two cities in no way depends on the forms of government of individual states. In earthly life, both cities are "intertwined and mutually mixed." The heavenly city temporarily, until the second coming of Christ, "is in earthly wandering." The embodiment of the heavenly city is the church. It is not yet the proper city of God, but the way to salvation. Its task is to prepare believers for the future eternal life. The state, on the other hand, has other tasks - to lead and manage people in earthly life, therefore the earthly city is limited in time, and the city of God is fundamentally eternal. The city of God is higher than the city of the earth. In the state they live “according to the flesh”, in the church - “according to the spirit”. In other words, in the first one they live “according to man”, in the second - “according to God”. The city of God and the city of earth exist independently and should not interfere in each other's affairs. However, they are interconnected and interact with each other. The Christian rulers of the earthly city are obliged to protect the church and assist it in the fight against heretics.
Despite the fact that the church is higher than the state, in everything that does not relate to faith, one should unquestioningly submit to state authority. In the church, the emperor is the servant of God. Here the emperor is equal to the subjects. Outside the church, the latter must submit to him in everything. True, Augustine does not exclude the possibility of passive resistance when the authorities violate the Divine commandments or interfere in the affairs of the church.
- See: Adamov I. I. St. Ambrose of Milan. Sergiev Posad, 1915. S. 438.
- In this regard, let us recall that, on the basis of a number of imperial decrees, the Christian Church by this time enjoyed a very wide range of rights and privileges. Let us name among them the right to receive property under a will, as a gift and a state donation. In the IV century. a tenth of the state territory was the land of the church. The clergy were exempted from carrying out municipal duties, from supplying provisions, performing public duties (except for extraordinary and honorary ones), etc. From the beginning of the 4th century. (321) the bishops were given the right to act as arbitrators, and from 331 - to carry out ordinary legal proceedings. They could intercede for their parishioners. Later (since 409) they were given the responsibility of supervising the prisons. Christian temples and dwellings of clerics enjoyed the right of asylum (see: Bolotov V.V. Lectures on the history of the Ancient Church: in 4 vols. T. 2. St. Petersburg, 1910. P. 104 et seq.).
Historical figures and representatives of world culture
The Latin adjective attached to the word patristics, indicating the external circumstance that the church writers about whom we will be talking mainly used or only Latin at the same time, it aims at identifying some features that more significantly characterize the described phenomenon, since translation from one language to another is always, to some extent, a transition from one cultural reality to another. This movement occurs not only in space but also ...
Topic 6. Latin patristics IV - V centuries.
(abridged lecture text)
The adjective "Latin", attached to the word "patristics", indicating the external circumstance that the church writers, which will be discussed, used mainly (or only) the Latin language, at the same time aims at identifying some features that more significantly characterize the described a phenomenon, since translation from one language to another is always, to some extent, a transition from one cultural reality to another. In this case, we are moving from the East (Greek-Syro-Coptic) to the West (Latin-Celto-Germanic). This movement takes place not only in space, but also in time: the 4th century is the “golden age” of Eastern patristics, through the efforts of the Eastern Fathers, first of all, their own “dictionary” of Christian theology was developed, that theology in which the former wisdom has firmly taken its official position, and which was engaged in the fact that, solving issues of dogma, reinterpreting the concepts of ancient philosophy in a Christian way. In this sense, the Latins were again forced to learn from the "Greeks" who were ahead of them, i.e. master the Greek-speaking Christian philosophical terminology. However, the teacher-student scheme does not work, it is very approximate, if not simply inadequate, for the reason that, as a rule, the largest representatives of the Latin patristics of this period in terms of their education (most often they are rhetoricians), life experience and circumstances ( here the most striking exceptions are Ambrose and Augustine) - just as "Western" as they are "Eastern", and also because only recently (the Milan Edict of Constantine - 313) did Christianity become an officially permitted religion, it was still the same as orthodox, opposing heresy (in this regard, it is one in hindsight), and Christian thinkers of both parts of the empire (legally, this section took shape only towards the end of the century) unconditionally considered themselves disciples of one God-revealed truth, revealed in Jesus Christ, in the Holy Scriptures transmitted to the apostles and preserved church. The very word orthodoxy (Orthodoxy) in the texts of Christian writers meant the faith of the whole church in opposition to heterodoxy, "non-Orthodoxy", heretics and right, this "glory" was recognized, as it was said, retroactively, in the light of later church history; “Patristics,” however, before this word entered the title of a chapter of a textbook on the history of medieval philosophy, was the theological science that systematically expounded the teachings of the holy fathers, while patrolology was engaged in biographical and critical-bibliographic studies of their life and work. The beginnings of patrology are seen in the "Church History" of Eusebius of Caesarea, but the first proper patronological work is considered to be "On famous men", belonging to just one of the Western fathers, the author of the Latin translation of the Bible, the famous Vulgate, Sophronius Aurelius Jerome of Stridon (340/50-420) who wrote it wishing to say that contrary to what the opponents of Christianity said 1 - Kelsus (the author of the "True Word", with whom Origen argued), Porfiry, Julian and others, Christianity is not the religion of the ignorant, and many learned men were Christians. Translated into Greek, this work became known in the East.
Of course, the almost thousand-year (schism of 1054) separate existence of Orthodoxy and Catholicism leaves a certain imprint on the previous history of the Church, forcing the emphasis on the "peculiarities" of Eastern and Western Christianity. But above all the features there was a commonality dictated by the commonality of tasks and questions that arose before the Christian authors of that era. Moreover, their opponents, the pagans, also faced similar problems. As always, it was about education in the broadest sense and in relation to the most diverse areas, about education as an urgent task of bringing some existing chaotic state to the unity of the "image", i.e. to form, and, accordingly, about the source of that power that turns chaos into order. The conditions of this eternal problem, however, turn out to be different each time, and new solutions must be found each time. The time of the collapse of the empire and barbarian conquests, when the catastrophic lack of order became a given and a fact, set its own ideal, 2 having proved its vitality and effectiveness, the ideal of ascetic detachment from the world, which paradoxically endowed the ascetic-hermit with power over the world, gave him "authority". 3 Christianity won thanks to its radical "otherworldliness", and as a cult, gradually becoming a state cult, it had to somehow preserve this otherworldliness. It preserved it in various ways: first of all, protecting the ritual rites (sacraments) from interpretations that distort its essence and, in one way or another, "reasonably substantiate". Thus, the main heresy of the 4th century, both in the East and in the West, is Arianism, condemned by the Council of Nicaea (325). The example of Arianism and the history of the fight against it clearly shows that the use of a philosophical vocabulary that is fundamentally alien to religious teaching (the word "essence" in the dogma of "consubstantiality"), which developed within a completely different tradition (the theme of "Athens and Jerusalem") was somehow imposed on the church , after all, the Christian doctrine itself is revealed in its entirety and does not need development, but it needs protection, which means that it needs learned theologians who could competently - philosophically competently - formulate the dogmas approved by the ecumenical councils.
Among those who made the trinitarian teachings of the East accessible to the West and contributed to the creation of Latin theological terminology, an honorable place is occupied by the canonized in 1851 as the "ecumenical teacher of the Church" Hilarius of Pictavia (born in 315, died in 367/368), bishop Poitiers from 353 When all the Western bishops, including Pope Liberius, signed the Arian confession under Constantius, the only Western bishop who came out in defense of Athanasius of Alexandria was Hilary, for which he was exiled to Phrygia. In exile, he learned Greek, read Athanasius and Origen 4 , in the same place he wrote his main work, including 12 books and known as "On the Trinity", but originally called "On Faith" or "On Faith, Against the Arians." It attempts to harmonize Greek and Latin trinitarian terminology. The need for such an agreement was dictated by the ambiguity of the Latin equivalents of the three main terms introduced by the Cappadocian Fathers. The Greek prosopon was translated as persona, ousia as substantia, and upostasis as substantia. 5 "Three hypostases," writes Archpriest I. Meyendorff, in Latin sounded like "three essences", arousing suspicion that we are talking about three gods. Therefore, it was decided to talk about one essence and three Persons, giving grounds for reproaches in Sabellianism , modalism, etc. heresies". 6 In 361. Emperor Constantius died, and with the accession to the throne of Julian the Apostate, who began to restore paganism, Orthodox bishops, among them Athanasius and Ilarius, were able to return from exile.
In the seventh book of the "Confessions" (7, 9, 13), Augustine speaks of the "books of the Platonists", Plotinus and Porphyry, read by him in Latin translations, and in the next book (8, 2, 3-4) he talks about who translated them, - about the famous rhetorician Maria Victorina, nicknamed the African. We are talking about the circumstances of his conversion, which, in turn, were told to Augustine by the spiritual father of Ambrose of Milan, Simplician, who was friends with Marius Victorinus. Marius Victorinus, an orator and teacher of rhetoric, a native of proconsular Africa, moved to Rome around 340; he was a follower of Plotinus, translated, among other things, Porfiry's Isagoges, Aristotle's On Categories and On Interpretation, and already a deep old man (in 355) converted to Christianity. His appeal made a lot of noise. He wrote against the Arians and Manichaeans. Commented by the Apostle Paul. Apparently, the author of the work attributed to Boethius "On Definitions" (De definitionibus). 7 Under the pen of Marius Victorina, Neoplatonic terminology is placed at the service of Christian dogmatics, but his treatise "Against Arius" already seemed obscure to Jerome Stridon. 8
The most influential figure of his time, who had a great influence on Augustine, was Ambrose of Milan (333-397), bishop of Milan from 374. His father was prefect of Gaul and prepared his son for an administrative career, in which he succeeded, becoming prefect of Liguria and Emilia. He was elected to the bishopric, being only a catechumen, as a result of a compromise between the Orthodox and the Arians; the gift of a preacher and theologian coexisted in him with an administrative talent, which Ambrose used to plant Christianity in the Roman Empire by law. Through his efforts and despite the protests of the supporters of Senator Symmachus, the Statue of Liberty was removed from the Roman curia, and the policy of Gratian and his successors acquired a distinctly anti-pagan character. When the emperor Theodosius ordered that the Christians who had destroyed the synagogue in Osroene be repaid at the expense of the local church, Ambrose accused him of patronizing the Jews. While remaining loyal to the authorities, Ambrose knew how, in necessary cases (for example, during the massacre perpetrated by Theodosius on the rebels in Thessalonica), to distance himself from them or create the appearance of distancing. From the writings, a small treatise "On the Offices of Ministers" (De officiis) is known, which is something like a guide for clergy, in which the influence of Cicero and Roman stoicism is felt. The book "On the Sacraments" contains sermons for those who have undergone the rite of baptism. Ambrose firmly adhered to the Nicene symbol and, anticipating Augustine's reflections on this topic, spoke of the heredity of sin, redeemed by the abolition of all former life - death and resurrection with Christ to a new life (baptism). St. Ambrose also wrote "Six Days", a treatise on the Holy Spirit, essays on ethical topics, including four treatises "On Virginity".
However, the most complete picture of the Latin "father" of this period, despite the fact that they all fall into the shadow cast by the majestic figure of Augustine, is given by the life and work of the already twice mentioned Jerome of Stridon. He was from Stridon in Dalmatia, from a wealthy Christian family, was educated in Rome, visited Aquileia and Trier, and in 373 went to the East. In Antioch, Jerome met Apollinaris, the future heresiarch, deciding to become a monk, retired to the Chalkis desert, lived as a hermit, learned Hebrew and Greek, and gained fame as a theologian. There, in the desert, he heard a reproachful voice: "You are not a Christian, you are a Ciceronian ..." He was ordained a priest by the "Old Nicene" Bishop of Antioch and himself adhered to Old Nicene Orthodoxy. During the Second Ecumenical Council (381) he was in Constantinople, where he listened to Gregory the Theologian and Gregory of Nyssa, while accusing the former of insufficiently Orthodox views. 9 The fruits of his scientific studies were the biographies of Eastern monks, the translation into Latin of the Chronicle of Eusebius and the sermons of Origen on the books of the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, as well as the Latin translation of the Book of the Holy Spirit, the only one that has come down to us thanks to Jerome's translation of the work of Didymus the Blind ( 310-395), the successor of Athanasius the Great in managing the Alexandrian catechumens school, for the sake of whose lessons Jerome visited Alexandria. 10 Being, like Didymus, a devoted admirer of Origen, although not an Origenist, Jerome witnessed a heated dispute between supporters and opponents of Origen. From Constantinople, Jerome, accompanied by the anti-Origenist Epiphanius of Cyprus, went to Rome, where Pope Damasus made him his adviser. In Rome, a small ascetic circle of devout widows and virgins gathered around him, who loved learned conversations, they taught Hebrew and Greek and made translations from the Bible. After the death of Damasus, Jerome moved to live in Bethlehem, the widows and maidens who helped him in translating the Bible settled in the surrounding monasteries, Origen's Hexapla served as an aid in their work on translating the Bible. (In the 16th century, the Council of Trent recognized the Vulgate as the only ecclesiastical translation). When one of Jerome's disciples and friends, Rufinus, known for his translation into Latin of Origen's On the Elements, was forced to renounce Origen, Jerome wrote a treatise Against Rufinus. Works on Jewish topography (a revision of Eusebius' Onomasticon) and on Jewish names (a revision of Philo based on Origen) were written to help interpreters of the Bible. The content of the dogmatic works of Jerome is predominantly polemical. Questions of Christian ethics are explained mainly in the epistles.
So, as even a cursory enumeration of the known facts and circumstances of the life of the largest representatives of the Latin patristics of the 4th century, the older contemporaries of Augustine, testifies to this, one can talk about some characteristic differences in the Latin patristics of this time, only without losing sight of the commonality of problems, questions, topics and tasks that confronted everyone and understood by all Christian writers and figures, both Eastern and Western. The commonality of these themes and problems was set by that ontological upheaval, that is, downright tectonic shifts in the understanding of being, which were both the cause and the effect of the Christian idea taking root in the mass consciousness. As for the philosophizing part of society, let us recall this again, it had to combine in its head two almost incompatible things, "Athens" and "Jerusalem", two opposite ontologies. One was dictated by the "contemplative" question about essence (what is it?), the other - by the "existential" question about how to be and what to do. The first produced definitions, the second - imperatives (commandments). The first put uninterested contemplation at the forefront, the second - the necessity of an act. Therefore, as we have seen, Origen, the greatest Christian thinker, in the end turned out to be a heretic, because he subordinated his theology to the "logos of essence." If God in his essence is a creator, he is always a creator and cannot but create. If freedom is inherent in the essence of the creature, it will always remain with it, even after "universal salvation." This means that everything can return to normal... And after all, it was not just anyone, but Origen who saw in the freedom of man his god-likeness, devoting the entire third book "On the Principles" to freedom, and this book was especially appreciated by the Cappadocian fathers, including her in his "Philokalia". We remember that Origen was "corrected" by the Old Niken Athanasius the Great, thinking, of course, not about correcting Origen, but about how to refute Arius: he separated nature (essence) and will. God the Father gives birth to the Son by nature, and therefore the Son is consubstantial with the Father (no "subordinatism"), but creates the world of his own will, which means (this conclusion will be of great importance for the development of new vocal science) creates it as he wants and how he wants, and may not work at all. The logos of "creation by will" is the law of action. Conversion to Christianity is also an act, a conversion, in a sense, irreversible: one must “come out” of oneself of the past, die as an “old Adam”, reborn in Christ. It is certainly about an individual, personal act, it is decided by one's own decision, and not belonging to a clan, a people, even a chosen one. Therefore, "there is neither Greek nor Jew." And that is why evil is "allowed" into the world as a price for freedom. Flesh, matter, turns out to be "ethically neutral", in itself it is neither bad nor good, on the contrary, it is rather good. God also performs an act: he creates the world and sends the Son to the sacrificial death: there is no salvation without grace, which does not relieve a person from the need to decide for himself and act on his own ... The mythological and philosophical cosmos pulsates, unfolds from a timeless point and folds into it. The Christian order is the order of history, 11 history, of course, eschatological, making ends meet, but one day. The question of time and freedom grows out of a Christian ontology based on the idea of an act, and this question is not specifically "Western", it is posed in the East and adopted by the West, acquiring, of course, at the same time primarily thanks to Augustine - a special "Western" tone .
Augustine is the father of Western Christianity, both narrowly and broadly. The figure of Augustine is central to the entire Western tradition. His theology is a reworking of the ancient heritage in the spirit of Christian historicism, or "irreversible conversion" (transfiguration). His two main works are, in essence, two "histories" of conversion: personal ("Confession") and universal ("On the city of God").
The sermons of Ambrose and communication with his mother prepared Augustine for conversion to Christianity, which was also greatly facilitated by reading the Epistles of St. Paul, transferred to Augustine by the confessor of Ambrose Simplician. The conversion itself is described in the "Confession" (8, 12, 29). In the autumn of 386, Augustine left teaching and moved to his friend's suburban estate, where he wrote the dialogues "Against the Academicians", "On Order", "On the Blessed Life". In the spring of the following year, he returned to Mediolan and was baptized. He decided to return to Africa, but his mother dies in the port city of Ostia, and Augustine stays in Rome for almost a year, apparently, where he begins the dialogue "On Free Will". 14 Since 391, Augustine - a presbyter in Hippo, writes against the Manicheans, begins the fight against the Donatists. 15 The dying Bishop Valerius of Hippo appointed him as his successor, and in the winter of 395/96 Augustine was consecrated to the episcopate. Since then, Augustine has been dividing his time between the performance of his official duties and academic activities. In the first years of his bishopric, he worked on a treatise "On Christian Doctrine", from 397 he writes "Confession". About 399 he begins to write a treatise "On the Trinity", work on which will stretch for twenty years. It is believed that the idea of \u200b\u200bwriting "On the City of God" came from Augustine under the influence of an event that shook the then world - the capture of Rome by the Visigoths of Alaric (410). Then Augustine struggles with Pelagianism, 16 finishes previously begun works, writes "Revisions". The last twenty years of his life were spent in these works.
As you know, after the publication of "Discourse on the method" R. Descartes received a letter from Andreas Colvius, which said that he borrowed his main position - cogito ergo sum - from St. Augustine. Upon receiving the letter, Descartes went to the city library, took the indicated volume "On the City of God" and found there the place of interest to him: Si enim fallor, sum (Even if I'm wrong, I still exist). In a response letter, thanking the correspondent, Descartes expressed satisfaction that his thought coincided with the thought of the father of the church, but noted that in Augustine this provision serves as the basis for the doctrine of the soul as the image of the Trinity, he, Descartes, proves with his help essential difference between soul and body.
Twelve centuries have passed since Augustine wrote, and now Descartes saw in the "same" self-evident principle "I err (I doubt, I think) - I exist" something other than Augustine. In this difference, the "epochal" images of the mind take on flesh for us. But we start with understand We understand both Descartes and Augustine, of course, in our own way, distancing ourselves from both Descartes and Augustine, and strangely drawing closer to them, as evidenced by the last and unfinished book of J.F. Lyotard "Augustine's Confession" (1997). Lyotard quotes: "The work of my confession, story and reflection is mine only because it is yours." 17 Who is this "you" for Augustine, whom retells Lyotard? Of course, God. For Lyotard it is also Augustine, the psalmist, the invocatio poet, answering questions with questions, obeying the demands of both "Near Eastern poetics of the psalm" and philosophical discourse. Augustine is referring to Lyotard when she says that my work is your work. And here we see something important. What? And the fact that our ideas about "authorship" have changed somewhat in comparison with the common new European idea of the "creative subject". Indeed, not so long ago - and this "recentness" is still in our blood - identifying oneself with some author was equated with the loss of originality, the so-called "poetics of identity" was considered an accessory of the past - namely, the Middle Ages. To this day, the requirement of "novelty" is presented to scientific essays submitted for the competition of scientific degrees. As if the novelty does not lie in the fact that one should understand what one writes about. And to understand is always to understand the same thing that has already been understood, it must be understood by itself, and therefore the result will never be the same. Understanding is essentially "original", originally. It goes back to the beginning. In our time, this return "to the origins" is conceived as "deconstruction". In the medieval poetics of identity, it meant that all auctoritas, or influence, significance, power, comes from the Creator (auctor), and all other powers that be are only "holders of authority." As for the "poetics of the creative subject", its source was the romantic conception of genius.
Augustine is one of those great figures whose occasional reference has shaped the Western tradition. The matter is not limited to the Middle Ages. Attempts to understand what I understood in due time - thereby making it own and time (i.e., making time go) - Augustine, are undertaken again and again, and it is, of course, primarily about understanding time itself. Husserl invites everyone dealing with the problem of time to re-read the 11th book of the Confessions, where the famous question, which has been reproduced so many times, is posed: what is time? Until I am asked about it, I seem to know the answer, but if I want to explain to the questioner what the essence of time is, I am at a loss. 18
This passage of Augustine is rightly seen as a kind of preliminary to a more detailed conversation on the merits. However, the preface itself best expresses the essence of what is commonly called "personalist historicism." As already mentioned in the Introduction (Part I), the main thing is not that Augustine asks about the essence (what is it?) of time - the predecessors can no longer be counted, or declares the essence of time a mystery that makes one doubt the existence of time at all: the past is no more , there is no future yet, and the present is an elusive line between what is no longer there and what is not yet. The whole point is that Augustine asks about the time rhetorically . Paul Ricoeur speaks of this in his wonderful 1985 work Temps et Recit (Russian translation of Time and Narrative, 1998) 19
In patristics - not only Western (according to Augustine), but also in Eastern (in connection with the criticism of Origenism and the disengagement from the Neoplatonists) - the irreversibility of time is one of the main issues, since we are talking about the foundations of a new ontology, different from the ontology of ancient, pagan. Augustine does not solve the problem of time, and Descartes almost never talks about it, leaving puzzles over such questions - for example, about the finiteness and infinity of the world - to those "who invented them." And yet, both of them re-create time, each in its own way, creating a new time: one - the time of the Western Middle Ages, the other - the New Time.
So Augustine asks about time rhetorically . Asking rhetorically does not mean avoiding the answer. A rhetorical question is an appeal to the specific situation of the questioner. Here I am, asking about time "from within" time. And although the essence of time eludes me (we repeat once again, in order to avoid any doubts on this score: Augustine does not solve the problem of time), without this question there is no myself, for my soul exists only as stretched by this very question, as "stretching of the soul" produced by the question of the essence of time, which (the question of the essence of time) andputs me in time. If I don't ask about the time, it will stall, it won't come true (and I won't). Stories, i.e. temporal about th event, the event of time with its beginning and end, will not be. Such the question of time is the question of a Christian thinker who, unlike the ancient philosopher, thinks within the framework of an ontology that begins with an act and ends with an act.
Why has the question of the irreversibility of time become one of the main ones in Christian ontology, and why is it necessary to talk about the ontology of an act in connection with time? Because only in the act and through it is this very irreversibility of time, in fact, time itself, revealed. And as long as ontology did not begin with an act, everything could "return to its full circle." But "the wicked are wandering around in circles ...", Augustine will say (On the City of God, 12:14). Since then, the circle, remaining a symbol of perfection, also symbolizes the perfection of evil (the circles of Hell in Dante).
First of all, let us pay full attention to the words of S.S. Averintsev from the fact that it was the rhetorical principle that was the factor of continuity in the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages and from the Middle Ages to the New Age. At S.S. Averintsev has a small article, which is called so. 20 This article looks modest, but it puts a lot in its place. Rhetoric is considered as a correlate of logic. Why is it precisely the rhetorical principle that is called the factor of continuity here?
Note that this is not just about rhetoric, but about the rhetorical principle, that is, about what makes rhetoric rhetoric, gives it the quality of rhetoric. Rhetoric, as you know, is the science of decorated speech. (This was already discussed in the introductory lecture, but it was a long time ago, and it's time to recall the main points). As a science, it reveals something necessary: the rules, techniques and norms of beautiful speaking. But the "principle" of rhetoric, that is, its "beginning" is the same as that of other "practical" sciences (according to Aristotle, the sciences of action and production). In them we are dealing with a certain necessity (otherwise, what kind of sciences are they?), but with a necessity not of the same kind as in the contemplative sciences. What kind of necessity is this, and why, again, according to Aristotle, is it “less a necessity” than a “contemplative”, theoretical necessity? itthe need to choose, therefore, the possibility as such, actual opportunitywhy rhetoric as a practical science is called "the logic of the probable". In the sciences of "action" and "creation" the necessity of choice prevails, because, acting and creating, one cannot do without choice. Speech can be decorated in this way, but it can be otherwise. How to do this is ultimately up to the speaker. He knows what's best. Why it is better this way, he, by and large, does not know. And this necessity of choice is a real possibility, a possibility actions, i.e. reality of freedom.
This reality is called experience . And experience is dexterity and caution in actions, it is confidence given by skills, but at the same time openness to experience, even above all openness to experience. The experience is repeated as unique. Idea irreversibility time flows from here. Having decided on an action and having acted in such a way, one cannot "act back", one can only retreat, but the retreat will already be "after" the action, because it is also an action. Likewise, when we say judge , make a judgment, decide, for example, whether to speak or not, and, deciding voice our own decision, we can no longer play it back: the word is not a sparrow ...
In contrast to the art (techne, ars) of rhetoric, which is based on choice and decision, i.e., requiring deeds , logos (ratio), discovered by contemplative philosophers, does not depend on any actions, it is eternal. More precisely, it is atemporal, since it is the most structure act of choice or judgment-judgment. This is what it consists meta the physicality or contemplation of metaphysics. She assumes meta position in relation to speeches and actions, such a position from which their necessary structure or form becomes "visible". As such this structure not selected . You can decide whether to speak or remain silent, but having spoken, we are no longer free to decide anything about the structure of speaking or predication: we will say something about something, add predicates to the subjects ... If speech, decision, act - in to some extent ours ("to some extent" here means that the true solution is where not we decide and we is decided: our decision "decides" us, creates us), then the essential structure of speech, decision and action does not depend on us, we reproduce it unchanged, perhaps even without knowing anything about it. This "theoretical", that is, perceived in contemplation - "theory" - necessity is absolute, it excludes any solutions. You just can't get around it, no matter how hard you try. And you can know nothing about her: she is neither cold nor hot from this. This "necessary" logos being is not inherited, not adopted, does not form a tradition: it is one and the same at all times and everywhere. It was he who, as "knowledge of the causes", was comprehended by the Aristotelian "mentors", thereby ascending above the master craftsmen. This Logos is the same eternal "account" of beings, which Plato speaks of in the VII book of the "State", where Socrates "on the fingers" explains to Glavkon the science of being as the science of counting.
The logic of succession is also the logic of choice, the logic of the probable. Why we choose this, and not another, role model - we do not know; rather than "we choose", but "we choose"; although post factum we try to justify our choice. Recall that in the realm of practical experience decides. Rhetoric has always taught originality. A rhetorical figure is necessarily a find, otherwise it does not decorate, but spoils speech. The rhetorical-sophistic education received by the apologists and the church fathers ensured continuity in the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages.
Rhetorical skills are old wineskins filled with new wine. A vivid example is Tertullian, who crushes Hellenic wisdom according to all the rules of ancient rhetoric. But not just "bellows": the apologist produces a "deconstruction" of pagan wisdom, thereby "constructing" its image - an image different from that Christian wisdom, of which he feels himself a partaker. This deconstruction assumes shifts, as it was said, tectonic. Contemplative necessity (the logic of definition) fades into the background compared to practical necessity (the logic of authority). "Theory" turns out to be "practical" in its very essence. When a pagan philosopher asks the question of essence - What is it?, he, as one might suppose, really lives a blissful life of the mind thinking itself, because the contemplative position is the best for him. He is indeed aloof from this "what", to which he points: - "this is" (swarming, twitching, flickering existence). He "knows the reason". The Christian theologian, who lives by the logic of authority, asks rhetorically; before asking, he "calls" (poetics invocatio) to the First Principle, since to err means to fall into sin. My fate depends on the decision, and it will be to the extent mine and right, which I refused from myself, thereby for the first time becoming yourself themselves (Christian "conversion", from which the irreversibility of earthly time stems).
The question "What is it?" fades into the background: on the first - "What should I do? How to be?". The contemplative question about essence turns out to be secondary in comparison with the "demiurgical" (handicraft) question. This is an ontological shift, a different understanding of being. Being (creatures) begins with an imperative. According to Anselm of Canterbury, for whom Augustine is an unquestioning authority, the creation of the world is "the saying of things" (rerum locutio). / Fiat, fecit, factum est, - Let it be, did it and it became, - this is what one of the most faithful followers of Augustine in the 13th century, J.F. Bonaventure, says about creation, 21 it starts with language. Speech addressed to the creature is also a command: "do it, don't do it!" (commandments, covenants transmitted by the prophets). And the words addressed to the Creator are also imperatives, but requests: "Lord, give, allow, have mercy!" And when is it necessary to ask what is it?", the Christian author remembers the primacy of "imperative being" and the secondary nature of abstract contemplation. This memory is personal effort concentration, attention (intentio) as opposed to "forgetfulness", dispersion (distentio), terms that formally correspond to the Neoplatonic concepts of "exodus" (proodos - emanation, proceeding from the one, dispersal) and "return" (epistrophe), but in fact are filled with other content. Accordingly, taken from Plotinus 22 the term distentio animi - stretching of the soul - in Augustine means something else. But his rhetorical question about time sounds like this: what is time, I don’t know, is it not a stretching of the soul? And the answer is not as important as the question, because if in theory time remains in question practically it is undoubted, because practice is speech, and everything begins with the word (rerum locutio), and if time exists in speeches (and it undoubtedly exists there, we say: it was, is, will be), then this is enough at first. "It is the linguistic an experience (italics mine. - A.P.) to a certain extent opposes the thesis of non-existence / time - A.P. / "(we are talking about time and we are talking meaningfully). 23
Attentio-intentio, attention-concentration, is understood by Augustine as unceasing an effort concentration, because "wakefulness" for the creature is always only an imperative, a person cannot help but sleep, even the apostles fell asleep. But you can’t sleep: the spirit is alert, but the flesh .., no, it’s not bad, it’s weak, and it’s not sin from the flesh at all, but from freedom, which, meanwhile, contains the god-likeness of man, which is why evil is “allowed” into the world - all this is known to Augustine from the Eastern Fathers, albeit fragmentarily. Therefore, the wakefulness of a creature is always only a lesser or greater degree of dispersal, a struggle with dispersion, i.e., distentio animi, i.e., time. tightness human soul suggests its extension in time between memory (the present of the past) and expectation (the present of the future), the elusive line between which (the present of the present) testifies with its elusiveness to the true timeless present - divine being. His image, the image of the Trinity, is the stretched-stretched human soul. Memory preserves being for us (esse), attention produces knowledge (nosse), expectation speaks of aspiration, desire (velle). And this is the image of the Trinity, far from the perfection of the perfect sample the trinity of the consubstantial God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. 24 Through this "imagery" the temporal soul takes root in eternity.
Augustine, with his question about time, finds himself "between" the Platonists, who "know everything", and the skeptics, who deny the existence of time. Inquiring from within time about time, he comprehends his own temporality, i.e. finiteness, which finds expression in the aporia of the stretching of the soul, unable to answer the question about the essence of time, because it itself is time, its coming true. The contraction, concentration of the soul is its expansion, distentio and attentio necessarily presuppose each other. The argument of skeptics boils down to the fact that there is no time at all. The aporetic style of thinking, in contrast to this argumentation, "does not prevent the achievement of some lasting certainty", but, on the other hand, unlike the style of the Neoplatonists, this certainty is not final: it requires more and more arguments to confirm it, the "solution" turns out to be inseparable from argumentation. . 25
A person asks about many things, including about the essence, and about the essence of time too, and even if he asked stupidly and erred in the answers, it is true that he exists as a questioning and erring being - si enim fallor, sum, because "if you did not exist, you could not be mistaken at all" (De libero arbitrio, III, 7). To the question "Does God exist?" (Evodius: Even this remains unshakable for me, not by reflection, but by faith) Augustine replies rhetorical question: Do you exist? It is obvious that you are, otherwise, if you were not, your existence would not be obvious to you. Do you understand it? Obviously yes. And if you understand thereby you live, that is, you feel yourself to be living, for which, of course, it is necessary to exist.
Of these three self-evident things - to be, to live, to understand, which is the most valuable? - The latter, because "both the stone and the corpse exist," but they do not feel this, while life is necessarily the self-perception of life. But in order to understand, one must both exist and live, which means understanding, reason, crowns creation. But is there anything higher than reason? Yes, the truth itself, the partaker of which the mind becomes when it understands something. 26
In the "Confession" and "On the City of God" Augustine's cogito takes on a slightly different form - the one that was discussed above: from the perception of external things that are "not God", the soul turns to the contemplation of itself and sees itself as the image of God - the trinity of esse, nosse, velle.
What Augustine calls "psychologization of time" has nothing in common with psychology, as it is understood in modern times, and with the new European "subjectivism", except that the genetically new European subjectivism is associated with the Christian transformation of pagan ideas about the soul. And it must be said that Descartes, in his answer to A. Colvius, speaks very accurately about the main difference between his cogito and Augustine's cogito: on the basis of this principle, Augustine builds his doctrine of the soul as the image of God, but I, Descartes, deduce from it the "real" difference soul and body (let us recall that the "real" in the scholastic typology of differences is the "material" difference, the difference between two "things", of which at least one can exist without the other).
What, in fact, did Descartes mean when he spoke of the real difference between the soul and the body as some kind of discovery of his own? Didn't the Scholastics cite precisely the difference between soul and body as an example of a "real" difference? To understand how the two cogito differ from each other - Augustine and Cartesian - means to understand the difference between the two "images of the mind", the medieval one, "programmed" for the West by Augustine, and the new European, Cartesian in its origins. The medieval world is the world of the hierarchy (hierarchy) of beings, the ladder of "metaphysical places", the steps of which are the itinerarium mentis in deum, the route of the soul's ascent to God. The "givenness" of this order in late antiquity became its facticity in the Middle Ages. But the same fundamental "non-worldliness" of the Creator, which gave rise to the idea of such an order, concealed its imminent collapse: God, as an absolute creator, could create the world in any way (which Descartes draws the attention of his opponents), or could not create it at all. In a word, the collapse of the hierarchy as a metaphysically substantiated order of beings became the very secularization , which consisted in the fact that the vertical hierarchy unfolded in the end (at the end of the Renaissance) with a direct perspective, the horizon; from a fundamentally known world has turned into a fundamentally unknown, discoverable world, the world has become a "picture". 27 Such secularization was not at all the (self) elimination of religion, rather, on the contrary, the formation of a new - new European - religiosity, such religiosity that is compatible with the world-picture, the world of culture. In the context of these transformations, Cartesian "discovery" of the real difference between thought and extension, which became the basis of mechanism, should be understood. 28
For Augustine, the trinity of esse-nosse-velle in the soul as an image of the Trinity means that our soul itself is an aspiration to the eternal pattern, a certain effort (the future conatus of the Renaissance humanists and Leibniz) of self-transcendence, the paradox of which is that we ourselves rise, but, as the same Bonaventure will say, thanks to the power that lifts us up. 29 Actually, the development of this paradoxical thesis is the theory of "illuminism", the enlightenment of the human mind by the divine, which is one of the versions of the traditional metaphysics of light. Turned by "external" feelings outside of himself, a person sees God's creation, a beautiful world, just as beautiful as in Basil the Great's Six Days, but he sees it, because he is already "enlightened" by the light of the divine mind, and this is only the beginning of the knowledge of God. , for the truth is still not in external things, in interiore homine habitat veritas (), it is inside a person, precisely as the image of God, seen by the soul when it looks at itself. However, seeing itself, the soul sees only an image, infinitely far from the model, the essence, or whatness, which remains for it, thus, incomprehensible. This self-transcendence is the very essence of the human soul, its nature. In other words, "epistemology" in Augustine, as in other Church Fathers, is at the same time both an ontology and a moral - life - task (so to speak, an existential imperative), and the trinity of the First Principle is reflected in the entire universe, including in division of philosophy into physics (ontology - esse), logic (epistemology - nosse) and ethics (velle). 30
Such Christian metaphysics in a sense returns us to the origins of Platonism itself, to the very "care of oneself" that Socrates had in mind, explaining to fellow citizens and foreigners the need for self-knowledge. 31 Self-care is needed when entering adulthood, in some way it compensates for the lack of education and all other shortcomings that can make a young man uncompetitive in the fight against rivals who want to rule the city. Self-care turns out to be the main political virtue, and it consists in sharing wisdom. So what is wisdom? It is not in knowledge, but rather in the ability to abstract from the known, paying attention to the very receptacle of knowledge - the soul. How can you see the soul? This is where the vision metaphor comes into play. The eye can only see itself in a mirror or... in the eyes of another. Eyes that meet eyes see the soul. The eyes are the mirror of the soul. Things invisible are visible in the eyes - love and hate. And the soul knows itself as the knowledge of invisible things, which can only be seen by a glance directed at itself and, thereby, at the divine in us. Traditional self-care is partly translated into Platonic teachings, partly into practical ancient medicine (dietetics). In Christianity, it becomes Christian asceticism, the essence of which Augustine sees in entering "into oneself", and in the imperative of self-transcendence, which is not at all limited by the "cognitive" aspect. But Christian “political” wisdom and virtue is concern for another “self” and for another “polis”, not the earthly one that is built on self-love, which has come down to contempt for God, but about the one that stands on love for God brought to self-contempt (city of God).
The idea of non-worldliness, fundamental for Christianity, is developed by Augustine as the doctrine of two "city" - civitas dei and terrena civitas. They match in circulation. Christian ontology is an ontology of conversion, i.e., an act, and an act gives rise to irreversible time, which is why this ontology turns out to be history at the same time: history or personal, individual (“Confession” is not so much an example of a new, autobiographical genre, as a confession of faith, protocol a record of one’s own appeal, as evidenced by the very structure of the work: the appeal is a scene in the garden / book VIII / this is its center, the actual “beginning” / in eternity, the “eighth day” of Basil the Great /, childhood events, etc. / books with I to VII / beginning "evening", 32 temporal, the abyss of sin, the "valley of tears" and repentance, book IX is still biographical / baptism /, but starting from X it is already about memory, time / XI / and then the Christian doctrine of creation, in fact "Six days"), or universal conversion ("About the city of God"). Two stories - personal and public. Both are "earthly", correlated with the "eternal" sacred history.
A person in this ontology is essentially an obligation, which implies that for a person to be himself means always to be above himself; and if a person is also a trinity of being, knowledge and love, and ethics involves action associated with goal-setting, then the "doer" artisan, poet, artist ...) is inseparable in him from the "contemplator". However, the goals of action may be different. They act for the sake of the result, and the result of the activity, or its product (fructus), can be, Augustine believes, either "used" or "used". Augustine writes: "I know that the word fruit indicates use, and benefit (usus) indicates use, and that the difference between them is that what we use (fruor) gives us pleasure in itself, without relation to something else, and what we use (utor) we need for something else. Therefore, temporal things should rather be used than used in order to gain the right to enjoy eternal things. ("About the city of God". 11, 25). The earthly city is based on "consumption", use for the sake of use itself, this is self-love, brought to contempt for God. The "use" of "temporary" things creates that duality of position, from which the notorious "antinomianism" of Christianity or the simultaneous existence in two worlds - the future world and the post-mortal world - stems. The two worlds seem to be eliminated (“Having left the old man and having gathered myself, so that I will follow one,” “Confession”, 11, XXIX, 39), but is restored, as soon as the goal in this life turns out to be unattainable. This antinomianism can be characterized as an ontological, epistemological and ethical antinomy. Their development will form the main content of late patristics and scholasticism.
Ontological antinomy describes the paradox of equality to oneself in inequality to oneself (self-transcendence), it will develop into the doctrine of the ontological incommensurability of created being and the Creator, the basis of which will be the distinction of essence and existence. God, incomprehensible in his essence, is revealed to Augustine as Existing ("And You proclaimed from afar:" I am, I exist. "- "Confession", 7,10,16; - Ex. synodal translation: "I am Siy" 33 and scholasticism will prove precisely Existence God, based on his "first name". The epistemological antinomy will bring to the extreme the paradox of scientific ignorance known to antiquity and will be discussed as an opposition of evidence-based knowledge and faith with the unconditional priority of the latter. The ethical antinomy will take shape in the question of the relationship between free will and predestination. Augustine's position in this regard is extremely clear: I am then free when I am a servant of God (I am "myself", when "not myself", when, as another follower of Augustine, Meister Eckhart, will say, having freed his soul from all "forces", aspirations and images - after all, the slightest image of God will obscure the whole God for you - I will allow the Word to be born in it). 34 Man is burdened with hereditary sin (unbaptized babies will go to hell); man cannot be saved by his own, only by his own strength, grace is needed (we rise thanks to the power that lifts us: cf. "... I returned to myself and, guided by You, entered into my very depths: I was able to do this because "I became You are my helper, "-" Confession, 7, 10, 16) ". This is the meaning of the dispute with Pelagius, on the one hand, and with the Donatists, on the other: there is no need to rebaptize, even if baptism is taken from the hands of an unworthy minister, -" for him, as the late A.M. Panchenko said, angels serve.
Against the backdrop of the undoubted commonality of Eastern and Western patristics, equally undoubted features stand out for us. For the West, they are associated with the exceptional influence of Augustine, with the scale of his personality and the originality of his teaching. On the other hand, its influence was due to the fact that the seeds of the teaching fell on the soil, or rather, on the "soils", the composition of which contributed to their growth. This composition was determined not only by the substratum (the Latin culture of the metropolis and the western provinces, which was different from Greek), but also by the superstratum (the barbarian tribes moving to the West and settling there). Augustine himself, although he belonged to ancient culture and received a good education, was in philosophy an amateur, a provincial, whose indefatigable temperament led him to pass through himself, to make his own experience, so to speak, existentially verify and confirm or reject all the teachings known to him , especially since such a personal "practical" attitude in science coincided with the religious dominant of action and deed. And since Augustine turned out to be a talented writer, the result was a highly convincing synthesis, the convincingness of which is based not on general metaphysical considerations, but on the fact that everyone who reads Augustine is forced to repeat the experience of thought, once done and experienced by him, anew. worrying. And for this, special scholarship is not required. There is no other "psychologism" in Augustine.
1 On the "ancient critics of Christianity" see: Ranovich A.B. Primary sources on the history of early Christianity. Ancient Critics of Christianity. M., 1990.
2 "To real and actual disorder, the public consciousness of the early Middle Ages (as well as late antiquity - A.P.) with all the greater passion and energy opposed the speculative spiritual order (he taxis, ordo), so to speak, the categorical imperative and the categorical idea of order, the will to order<...>But the idea of order was experienced<...>so tense just because the order was for them a "given" - and was not a "given"".
3 Averintsev S.S. Authorship and authority // Averintsev S.S. Rhetoric and the origins of the European literary tradition. M., 1996. S.76-100. On the medieval world order as "the order of holders of authority", see: S.S. Averintsev. The fate of the European cultural tradition in the era of transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages. // From the history of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. M., 1976. S. 17-64.
4 Meyendorff I. Introduction to patristic theology. S. 224.
5 There. For the harmonization of Latin trinitarian terminology with Greek, see also: Boethius. Against Eutyches and Nestorius. // Boethius. "Consolation by Philosophy" and other treatises. M., 1990. S. 173-175.
6 Meyendorff I.. UK. op. S. 224.
7 Abbagnano N.. Historia de la filosofia. T.1, Barcelona, 1955. P. 230.
8 Christianity. Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron:. in 3 volumes. T.2. M., 1995. Article "Mary Viktorin".
9 Meyendorff I.. UK. op. S. 229.
10 Christianity. Ents. sl. T.1. M., 1993. Article "Didim the Blind".
11 Averintsev S.S. The order of the cosmos and the order of history. // Averintsev S.S. Poetics of Early Byzantine Literature. pp.88-113.
12 An excellent guide for those who get acquainted with the work of Augustine is the edition of "Confessions" prepared by A.A. Stolyarov (introductory article, chronological tables) translated by M.E. Sergeenko (translation, notes, index of historical figures, mythological and biblical characters ) - M., 1991.
13 Christianity. Ents. sl. T.2. M., 1993. Article "Manichaeism"
14 Chronological list works of Augustine, see Augustine. Confession. M., 1991. S.387-398.
15 Donatists (on behalf of Bishop Donat) participants in the religious movement in the Roman province of Africa (IV V), originally born during the persecution of Christians. It was a sect "with an elitist psychology" (in the words of I. Meyendorff), the essence of the differences of which with the official Christian church was the rejection of the sacraments performed by the clergy, who compromised themselves during the persecution.
16 Pelagianism (on behalf of Pelagius, ca. 360 ca. 418) teaching that spread at the beginning of the 5th century. and condemned as heretical at the Council of Ephesus (431). Pelagianism emphasized the moral and ascetic efforts of the individual and belittled the hereditary power of sin. In a polemic with Pelagius, Augustine's doctrine of salvation through grace was born.
17 Lyotard J.-F. La Confession d "Augustin. Paris, 1977.
18 Augustine. Confession. Book. XI.14.17.; E. Husserl. Collected works. T.1. Phenomenology of the inner consciousness of time. M., 1994. S. 5.
19 Riker P. Time and story T.1. Aporias of temporary experience. Book XI of Augustine's Confessions. M., 1999. S.15-41.
20 Averintsev S.S. The rhetorical principle as a factor of continuity in the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages and from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.// Western European Medieval Literature. Moscow State University, 1985. S. 6-9. See also Averintsev S.S. Rhetoric and the origins of the European literary tradition. M., 1996.
21 Anselm of Canterbury. Monologion. 10.// Anselm of Canterbury. Op. M., 1995. S. 52; J. F. Bonaventure. Guide of the soul to God. 1, 3. M., 1993. S. 53.
22 . Diastasis zoes (Plotinus. Enneads. III, 7, 11, 41). The use of diastasis in a Christian environment goes back to Gregory of Nyssa. See: P. Riker. UK. op., approx. 43 on p. 267.
23 Ricker P. UK. op. S. 17.
24 "No one can doubt that he lives / exists /, remembers, desires, reflects, knows, judges, because if he doubts, then he lives; if he doubts that he doubts from this moment, then he remembers; if he doubts, then he understands that he doubts; if he doubts, he wants certainty; if he doubts, he knows that he does not know; if he doubts, then he judges that one should not agree imprudently "(" On the Trinity ". X. 13). “Everyone who recognizes himself as doubting, is aware of something true and is sure that in this case he is aware, and therefore is sure of the true” (“On True Religion. 39). “And in ourselves we recognize the image of God, that is, e. of this highest Trinity, the image, however, is unequal<...>For we also exist, and we know that we exist, and we love this our being and knowledge. About these three things<...>we are not afraid to be deceived by some lie<...>Without any fantasies and without any deceptive play of ghosts, it is extremely certain for me that I exist, that I know this, that I love it. I am not afraid of any objections to these truths from academics who might say, what if you are being deceived? /Quod si falleris?/ If I am deceived, that is why I already exist. /Si enim fallor, sum./<...>"(" About the city of God, 11, 26).
25 Riker P.. UK. op. S. 16.
26 On Free Will (De libero arbitrio). II,2.
27 Heidegger M.. Time of the picture of the world.// Heidegger M.. Time and being: Articles and speeches. M., 1993. S. 41-62.
28 For more about mechanism in connection with the transformation of the world into a "picture", see: Pogonyailo A.G. Philosophy of Clockwork Toy, or Apology of Mechanism. St. Petersburg, 1998.
29 Bonaventure J.F.. The soul's guide to God. 1.17 Dec. op. S. 49. Cf. Dante: "O Beatrice, help with the effort of the one who, out of love for you, has risen above everyday reality" (Ad. 2, 103); or Petrarch: "Man is born for effort, like a bird for flight" ("The Book of Everyday Affairs", XXI, 9, 11).
30 “For if a man is created in such a way that through that which has superiority in him, he can reach that which surpasses everything, that is, the one, true, all-good God, without whom no nature exists, no doctrine edifies, and no practice brings any benefit; then it is He Himself who must be the object of our search for us: since in Him everything is provided, and the object of knowledge, since in Him everything is reliable for us, and the object of love, since in Him everything is for us wonderful". (About the city of God. 8:4.)
32 Explaining why the first day of creation is called in the Bible not the first, but "one" ("And there was evening, and there was morning, one day"), Basil the Great writes about the double counting of time in Christianity - an irreversible historical and "eternal" week filled with one day, returning to itself seven times: "For according to our teaching, that non-evening, without succession and endless day is also known, which the Psalmist called the eighth (Psalm 6:1)<...>"(Conversations on the Shestodnev. Second conversation. / / Creations like in the saints of our father Basil the Great. Part 1. M., 1845. Repr. ed. M., 1991. S. 38-39.).
33 On this occasion, see S.S. Averintsev’s commentary: “The absolute of Plato’s philosophical religion is called “essentially existing” (to ontos on), the absolute of biblical faith is called “living God” (“hj). The translators who created the so-called Septuagint, to the delight of all the philosophizing theologians of the Middle Ages, conveyed the famous self-description of the biblical god "hh sr hjh" (Exodus, ch. 3, v. 14) in terms of Greek ontologism: ego eimi o on ("I am the One") . But the Hebrew verb hjh means not "to be" but "to be effectively present"<...>"- S.S. Averintsev. Rhetoric and origins ... S. 59.
34 Meister Eckhart. Spiritual sermons and reasoning. M., 1912. Repr. ed. M., 1991. S. 11-21. Compare: "When you lose yourself and everything external, then you will truly find it." (Ibid., p. 21).
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