Introduction
I had final papers this week and last, so unfortunately, there was little time to write an article for the blog. However, since both my rhetoric class and my research class projects relate to the content on this blog, I figured why not post those papers for interested parties? So, that’s what we’re doing this week. If you’re uninterested, feel free to skip on by. Hopefully, in a week or two (since I have guests over this upcoming week and next and won’t have time to write an article), I’ll be back to the American history series with a discussion of Benjamin Franklin. For now, this week’s and next week’s posts are on Augustine and philosophies of early American history.
~~~
Augustine is a name that even non-Christian scholars and a good many students who have studied philosophy or religion recognize when mentioned. They think of his piece Confessions or of his part in early rhetorical tradition, but how much do readers of his work really know about the man and the why behind him? How well do modern readers grasp what made him into the colossal figure so many people still know of and whose writings are still studied today? While Augustine is one of the best known early Christian rhetoricians and provides an excellent example to Christians in blending rhetoric and Scripture, answers to the question of why he became who he was can only be found in the historical and cultural context that shaped both his philosophy and his rhetoric into the famous works still read and discussed today.
Examining Augustine’s Historical Context
To begin in understanding Augustine, one must examine his upbringing. Augustine’s childhood and education helps his readers to better understand how his perspective later on was shaped. Born in Tagasre, about forty miles from the Mediterranean coast in Africa, Augustine was known to be one of three children born to his parents, Patricius and Monnica. His family was of a respectable class, but according to author and former provost of Georgetown University, James O’Donnell, in his article on Augustine from Brittanica (1998), “their means were sometimes straitened. They managed, sometimes on borrowed money, to acquire a first-class education for Augustine, and, although he had at least one brother and one sister, he seems to have been the only child sent off to be educated” (Brittanica, “St. Augustine: Christian bishop and theologian”). So because of his family’s status, they were able to send him to be educated, first in their home town of Tagasre, then Madauros and Carthage.
Throughout his life, his mother would have significant influence. She was a baptized Christian, though Augustine’s father was a pagan and would remain so until, according to O’Donnell, he took “baptism on his deathbed when Augustine was in his teens.” (Brittanica, “St. Augustine: Christian bishop and theologian”). However, O’Donnell also notes just after that neither parent “was particularly devout, but Monnica became more demonstratively religious in her widowhood” (“St. Augustine: Christian bishop and theologian”). Though initially it did not seem that Augustine wanted anything to do with her faith, later on in life, her influence and encouragement to examine specific Christian writers and thinkers would lead, ultimately, to his conversion.
Beyond the influence of his family and family background, his teachers would also shape and influence his views, particularly on rhetoric, which he was to use later on in life alongside Scripture to provide some of the most influential work in the early Christian church that is still studied today. He was not, by any means, the first to present this blend. Others had come before him and were somewhat well-known. Well-known enough, at least, that Augustine would have known of their ideas and writings, at least. In his article, “The Missing Rhetorical History Between Quintilian and Augustine”, published in Rhetorica, Michael Duncan (2015) writes, “Indeed, when Augustine comes to Milan in 381 CE, first-person Christian apologetics by former teachers of rhetoric have been a genre for over two hundred years, with the history of the church mostly locked into place by Eusebius’s history c. 323 CE, its theology codified by the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, and its holy texts authoritatively translated into Latin in the form of Jerome’s Vulgate” (Duncan, p. 375). That said, most of his training early on would not have included Christian apologetics. Instead, he would have been influenced by the texts of Cicero, Plato, Aristotle, and the more recent teacher of rhetoric, Quintilian. He was to carry these ideas of rhetoric with him and would highly revere them through the first half of his life until his conversion.
He also learned a great deal from the methods of teaching, which would influence how he would recommend learning rhetoric or the art of eloquent speech from example rather than by specific teaching. Wendy Olmsted writes in Rhetorical Invention and Religious Inquiry that Augustine’s description of his education in Confessions is less than flattering. She says, “The text tells how Augustine becomes fully able to express himself and to make others respond as he wishes, but he does so only because he received an education that taught by means of ‘shattering rituals of pain’, which obliterated the will at the same time that they socialized him into fallen society…But the mature Augustine comments that a free curiosity has more force to teach language than does a rigorous compulsion” (Olmsted, p. 68). It is hardly surprising to see, later on in his life, that he contrasted the methods of his teachers with others he had employed or observed as more effective. This background puts into perspective his remark in On Christian Doctrine, where he states:
For men of quick intellect and glowing temperament find it easier to become eloquent by reading and listening to eloquent speakers than by following rules for eloquence…Nevertheless, in the speeches of eloquent men, we find rules of eloquence carried out which the speakers did not think of as aids to eloquence at the time when they were speaking, whether they had ever learnt them, or whether they had never even met with them. For it is because they are eloquent that they exemplify these rules; it is not that they use them in order to be eloquent. (Augustine, On Christian Doctrine in The Rhetorical Tradition, pp. 515-516)
It makes much more sense to a reader who knows of his experience in forced education that he would then promote learning by example through curious study of good writers and speakers than by force through rules and dictates that may be useful but are not likely to be called to mind in the moment of writing or, more especially, speaking.
As he grew and launched out into his own career teaching rhetoric, he would also be influenced by the discussions and trends within his field. Christianity was becoming more accepted, particularly after Constantine legalized it, and it was beginning to become more predominant within pagan society. In particular, various Christian beliefs were being blended with pagan beliefs to produce various heresies. Julia Dietrich (2018), in her article “Augustine and the Crisis of the 380s in Christian Doctrinal Argumentation”, points out that “as educated men increasingly embraced Christianity, the resources of dialectic and metaphysical argument recommended themselves, but their use ran counter to Christianity’s sense of itself as an oppositional discourse and also to its inclusion of the uneducated” (p. 547). Given this rising concern, the early writers in Christian rhetorical tradition prior to Augustine mostly wrote to defend against heresies and the issues of misuse of rhetoric with Christianity. Augustine observed these discussions and trends, and he himself was even caught up in one of the heresies. Along the way in his work as a teacher of rhetoric, he came across Manichaean philosophy, and it became a particular interest and influence in his life and studies.
According to the New World Encyclopedia, Manichaeanism was a “dualistic religion of Iranian origin, founded in the third century C.E. by the Prophet Mani (c. 216-274 C.E.)…Theologically, Manichaeanism is a dualistic religion that postulated an ongoing struggle between the forces of good and evil in the universe. It is also an eclectic religion that attempted to provide a synthesis of previous religious teachings” (New World Encyclopedia, Manichaeism). This belief also included no omnipotent force of good or, in other words, no God. This belief would cause difficulty for Augustine in accepting the idea that there was an omnipotent God who was only good and was to create difficulty, even after he accepted that, in believing that an all-good God could exist while evil also existed. However, later on in his life, Augustine would abandon Manichaeism in favor of Neo-Platonism and Christianity.
In keeping with his belief that learning of rhetoric was better done through example, Augustine’s study of other orators would also shape his own opinions regarding rhetoric, with Cicero and Aristotle being prominent influences during his time. His study of their definitions of rhetoric coupled with his other studies led him to the understanding he had, and in his later writings, the influence of Aristotle’s ethos, pathos, and logos can be seen in particular through how he presents his arguments and his description of the ideal Christian orator. Unlike Cicero and Aristotle, however, due to other influences in his time and his life, he was to place a heavier emphasis on the character of the speaker than he did on the argument by itself. This may have been, in part, due to the shift in attention toward the character of the rhetorician that came about through Quintilian’s influences.
The last major influence on him, historically speaking, was that of the historical figures and discussions within the church just before and then after his conversion. While he had for some time been interested in the debates and discussions surrounding the church and the figures involved, he had not found anything within them that really appealed to his mind or persuaded him through reason. After his attempts to build a career in Rome at twenty-eight failed him, he went to Milan to teach rhetoric, and it was there that his views would begin to shift. In fact, they would shift so dramatically while there that he would resign his post as a teacher of rhetoric in the Manichaean tradition, deeming it incompatible with Christianity. But to understand how he came to this point, one must first answer the question why. Why did he make such an abrupt turn? The answer lies in the influences on him during this period of his life.
During this period of his life, his mother, Monnica, had returned to being a prominent piece of his life as she joined him in Milan for a period. Just prior to his conversion, Monnica encouraged him to study Ambrose, a bishop and an accomplished orator himself. Through studying Ambrose, Augustine finally found the argument that was to convert him over to Christianity. He still struggled with overcoming the contradictions between his previous way of life and beliefs and the new ones, but he did eventually work these differences out. However, even after his conversion, he never did give up rhetoric entirely. Instead he turned it toward his new faith, using it to support and defend it, and toward convincing those in power to aid in legislation favorable to Christianity. Brent Shaw (2015), in his piece “Augustine and Men of Imperial Power” for the Journal of Late Antiquity, writes that the trend of his letters to non-Christian officials being written to men of power was no accident. He states that:
The holding of high secular office is the common thread that explains why these particular men became recipients of written communications from the bishop. I mean this in a strict sense. In these letters it was not the case that Augustine was seeking sundry acts of personal patronage from the addressees or that the letters had something in general to do with the so-called Donatists, since more than a few letters might fall under these headings. Rather, Augustine was specifically seeking the aggressive enforcement of imperial laws from these officials precisely because they had the power to do so and he did not. (Shaw, p. 4)
After his conversion, he also became more involved in defending Christianity and studying to determine the intersection between rhetoric and Christianity, which had been discussed briefly by previous Christian rhetoricians like Chrysostom and Nazianzus, both of whom were trained rhetoricians who converted like Augustine did, as well as earlier Christian orators who argued in support of Christianity through the means of rhetoric. His writings, particular those like On Christian Doctrine, demonstrate the culmination of Christian rhetoric at the time. He was not the first to attempt to blend the secular pursuit of rhetoric with Christianity. Others, such as Origen, also attempted to blend the two, but with less success and fame than Augustine had. It is unclear how much Augustine knew of each of these, though there does seem to be some evidence that he did follow their writings, even if he did not engage with all of them. However, it seems that Augustine took a slightly different approach to rhetoric and the blending of it with Christianity than the others did. Many of the early Christian rhetoricians viewed rhetoric as something to be used only when absolutely necessary. They took a Platonian view of the subject and viewed it with scorn even as they used it to prove a point. Michael Duncan (2013) writes in “The New Christian Rhetoric of Origen” that:
It is no surprise that Origen is slippery in his introduction, denying the power of rhetoric even as he uses it (1980, 4–5). This is a recurring theme, one that Gregory Thaumaturgus inadvertently reveals when describing Origen’s successful persuasive attempts to get Gregory to study philosophy with him (1909, 57–59). Gregory is dismissive of “rhetoricians,” who have a “small and trifling and unnecessary study,” and he seems to suggest that Origen taught him rational philosophy and dialectic instead (1909, 65–66); from this, I suspect Origen evinced in his teaching the same simultaneous praise and scorn for rhetoric that Cicero did for Greek thought. (Duncan, p. 94)
When contrasted with Augustine, who believed that rhetoric could be useful, that truth should not face falsehoods unarmed, and that rhetoric and eloquence could be a powerful force in defending Christianity if used properly, it is easy to see the difference. His view that truth, no matter what source it came from, was nevertheless truth, and that man’s wisdom should not be disdained so long as it was in line with Scripture, is a unique take on the issue that is not seen in many—or at least, not seen so strongly—of his predecessors. This shift was one of the reasons that he may have become so widely acknowledged and known as the beginning of Christian rhetoric even though there were others, like Origen, who came before him. While the part that his predecessors played, and their impact on him, should not be ignored, it is not hard to understand why most textbooks on Christian rhetoric focus on Augustine as the origin of the craft.
The final point on the historical context centers on the church at the time. In particular, the uses Augustine’s rhetoric was turned to after his conversion must often be viewed in light of the heresies facing the church during his time as a bishop. During this time, the church was still relatively new, and they were dealing with a great many things that had not been an issue as frequently during the church’s beginnings. Most importantly, for the first time, Christianity was beginning to become legalized, persecutions were beginning to lift, and the pagan world was becoming more interested in the doctrine as an intellectual matter. Unfortunately, with the beginnings of a blending between pagan and Christian starting with Constantine, there came many heresies that would need to be dealt with.
Others, of course, wrote against various heresies at the time, but few if any wrote so prolifically and eloquently against them as Augustine did. Augustine viewed it as his calling to defend Christianity in a time when the early church was still finding its feet and volatility was common along with numerous heresies. He was involved in defending the faith against most of the largest, best-known heresies of his time.
The first of the heresies he confronted is one that still makes itself known as a point of debate and discussion today in the debate over predestination. Though it is best described today as semi-Pelagianism, not necessarily full-blown Pelagianism, Pelagianism as a heresy began in Augustine’s time and managed to gain quite a foothold in the church; that foothold would be retained even after two separate councils condemned the belief as heresies, and it would show up in various forms—both full-blown and partial—long after Augustine confronted it. The heresy began with Pelagius’s teachings in Europe and had pulled many away to follow it there. Augustine wrote strongly against it, but despite his best efforts, as was noted earlier, it would still live on in various forms through to today.
R.C. Sproul (2005), in his article on Pelagianism from Ligonier Ministries, discusses the growth of this conflict. He notes the following:
“Grant what Thou commandest, and command what Thou dost desire.” This passage from the pen of Saint Augustine of Hippo was the teaching of the great theologian that provoked one of the most important controversies in the history of the church, and one that was roused to fury in the early years of the fifth century.
The provocation of this prayer stimulated a British monk by the name of Pelagius to react strenuously against its contents. When Pelagius came to Rome sometime in the first decade of the fifth century, he was appalled by the moral laxity he observed among professing Christians and even among the clergy. He attributed much of this malaise to the implications of the teaching of Saint Augustine, namely that righteousness could only be achieved by Christians with the special help of divine grace. (Sproul, The Pelagian Controversy on Ligonier.org, para. 1-2)
What was Pelagius’s strong response to this? He began to teach his own form of doctrine, which the American Heritage Dictionary defines as denying “original sin and [affirming] the ability of humans to be righteous by the exercise of free will” (American Heritage Dictionary, Pelagianism). In the end, after a great deal of writing back and forth about the topic on both sides, Pelagius’s doctrine was condemned as heresy.
Another heresy, which he had once been so intrigued by, was Manichaean philosophy. As discussed earlier, Manichaean philosophy taught that there were two equal forces—good and evil—which were in an eternal struggle. Augustine himself was intimately acquainted with the heresy as he had spent almost nine years as a devout follower of the doctrine prior to his conversion to Christianity. This uniquely equipped him to fight the heresy, and he did just that, writing extensively against it and showing from Scripture how it failed. This was to come some time after his conversion, however, as he first had to struggle himself with how he might reconcile the idea of a perfectly good God and the existence of sin with what he had believed prior. He finally came to the conclusion that God was entirely good, not the author of sin, and that Manichaean philosophy was false as it did not match with Scripture. After this, he turned his pen to showing it for the falsehood it was.
Finally, he had to combat the Donatist heresy in his defense of Christianity. This controversy was one of the worst that faced the African segment of the church, and it was to result in two separate churches for centuries after. Brittanica’s article on the subject states:
Historically, the Donatists belong to the tradition of early Christianity that produced the Montanist and Novatianist movements in Asia Minor and the Melitians in Egypt. They opposed state interference in church affairs, and, through the peasant warriors called Circumcellions, they had a program of social revolution combined with eschatological hopes. Martyrdom following a life of penance was the goal of the religiously minded Donatist. Despite almost continuous pressure from successive Roman, Vandal, and Byzantine rulers of North Africa, the Donatist church survived until the extinction of Christianity in North Africa in the early European Middle Ages. (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Brittanica, para. 1)
At the heart of the problem was the doctrinal issue, once again, of whether or not the church was a body of the elect or something else quite different. This time, however, there was also the issue of how the church and the secular world ought to interact and how much control the government ought to be allowed in church matters.
Examining the Cultural Significance
Historical significance is not the only point to provide insight into Augustine and the why behind him, his teachings, and his widespread fame. Cultural significance also provides insight into Augustine’s views. In some ways, cultural and historical contexts do overlap. After all, it would be nearly impossible to understand history without an understanding of the cultural atmosphere in which it took place. This section, then, may strike on similar issues to the ones in the historical section, but will examine them from the angle of the culture that made them such a forefront in the life of Augustine and in the context of the early church.
As mentioned in the first section on historical significance, Augustine spent the first half of his life immersed in secular Greek and Roman culture, not in a Christian one, and this background came with him when he converted. Culturally speaking, his was a world steeped in a classical education, which focused on language, rhetoric, philosophy, and sciences. Their education centered on developing the mind and the whole man over specializing in one thing, such as religious studies. Rhetoric and philosophy, in particular, were highly prized by Greek and Roman culture, and despite his dramatic conversion from rhetoric to Christianity, Augustine still highly prized it in his efforts to defend Christianity. He was a product of his time, and despite being at the forefront of many cultural changes, he still brought some of the old culture with him.
In further examining the cultural significance, understanding the views of rhetoric in Christian and secular cultures is key to placing Augustine in context. He was an individual who had a foot in both worlds, to some degree, at least toward the beginning of his journey to conversion and for a period after. He found that there was often truth in the secular world, even if they denied the God who gave it. Part of this may have been due to the view that Greek and Roman culture held on religion and philosophy. As part of the culture, they were open to new gods and ideas. While they were resistant to the idea of there being only one true God, even after Constantine’s conversion and subsequent nationalizing of Christianity, they were curious and open to various views. This can be seen through looking at how the Greeks and Romans received Paul in cities like Athens or, even, at the many paganistic heresies that began to crop up in the church as the Greeks and Romans blended bits of Christianity they liked with their old views to come out with something new and different. Coming from a background that looked at the world this way, it is hardly surprising that Augustine would be willing to examine various opinions and beliefs with an open mind, even later on in life when he would use Scripture as the tool to determine what was true and what was not. This is most clearly seen when one observes what he collected and the texts he chose to quote. Gillian Clark (2005), author of Augustine: The Confessions, writes in her chapter “Augustine’s World”, “He also quoted Plotinus, the third century CE Platonist philosopher, who was not a Christian, but whose work had helped Augustine, forty years earlier, to a better understanding of God. As the Vandals encircled his town, Augustine quoted ‘The good man will not think it a great matter if sticks and stones fall and mortals die.’” (Clark, p. 5).
In Christian culture, however, rhetoric was heavily debated, much as it is today, and Augustine was faced with the challenge of proving how it could be used and defining how it properly fit within the sphere of Biblical context. This was seen in the rhetoric and work of those who came before Augustine, and it is clear that most of them held views that align best with Plato and Socrates’s presentation of rhetoric in Gorgias rather than with the predominant ones in secular culture.
Culturally in the secular world, rhetoric had become broadly taught and accepted. The Greek and Roman cultures had moved beyond the days when the predominant view towards rhetoric was derisive and had adopted views more in line with Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian. In secular culture, there were various viewpoints, but during this time, Aristotle’s and Cicero’s definition of it as an art and Quintilian’s views of it as the art of speaking eloquently prevailed, and it was this view that Augustine himself was well-versed in.
Blending the two together presented a unique viewpoint that Augustine would express more clearly than most of the previous Christian rhetoricians had, and it was this cultural inroad that would lead to his fame. As has been noted, there were other rhetoricians in Christianity prior to Augustine. The problem was that they did not present the intersection between the secular and the Christian in a way that was practical. Their views tended to discourage the use of rhetoric just as Plato’s had, and this left Christians with no method of defense against rhetoric used to promote anti-Christian, secular views. By the time Augustine ended up working within the realm of the church, the topic was being discussed, and Augustine did have contemporaries who had also been converted from their work as rhetors, which added to the discussion and broadened the scope of the issue. This cultural shift within the church and the secular world allowed Augustine to bring the two together.
Augustine wrote copiously on a variety of subjects relating to Christianity, but in the area of rhetoric, his most significant works contributed to a better understanding of how a Christian could use language and the art of eloquence in speaking to present Christian doctrines. Even those who did defend rhetoric in the pursuit of defending Christianity had not presented such a clear guide, and perhaps their failure to gain more traction in the church was due to their positions within the church. Augustine’s appointment to the post of bishop of Hippo gave him more reach and influence to impact the church’s trajectory. While his other contributions in defending Christianity and the early church from heresies was important, his contributions to the discussion on how rhetoric should properly intersect with Christianity made a much more important impact since he was one of the first to examine the subject in any depth. They were also the most useful to those in the church later on, long after the heresies he fought against died out or diminished. His pieces on rhetoric and theology are still examined today by modern theologians and pastors, depending on the denominations. However, he still maintains his status as a controversial speaker even in modernity, and perhaps the controversial nature of his work is another piece that helps to explain why he remained so popular and widely read.
In the end, while readers can understand what Augustine’s views were and what was important to him by simply reading his works, a deeper understanding of the why that motivated him and the why for his particular approach to the blend between Christianity and rhetoric can only be understood in full by examining the cultural and historical contexts that shaped him as the man and the thinker that he was. The context in which he operated played a major role in vaunting him to the fame that he would attract and the widespread use of his work. He was a great instrument of both change in the church and defense of Christianity, but he could not have been so without his unique cultural and historical context. It would be that background that would allow him to become the famous Christian rhetorician still studied and debated today.
References
Bizzell, P., Herzberg, B., Reames, R., & Augustinus, A. (2020). On Christian Doctrine. In The rhetorical tradition: readings from classical times to the present (pp. 487–541). essay, Bedford/St. Martin’s.
Clark, G., & Clark, G. (2005). Augustine’s World. In Augustine: The Confessions (pp. 1–33). essay, Liverpool University Press.
Dietrich, J. (2018). Augustine and the Crisis of the 380s in Christian Doctrinal Argumentation. Journal of Early Christian Studies, 26(4), 547–570. https://doi.org/10.1353/earl.2018.0051
Duncan, M. (2013). The New Christian Rhetoric of Origen. Philosophy & Rhetoric, 46(1), 88. https://doi.org/10.5325/philrhet.46.1.0088
Duncan, M. (2015). The Missing Rhetorical History Between Quintilian and Augustine. Rhetorica, 33(4), 349–376. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2015.33.4.349
Farlex. (2016). Pelagianism. The Free Dictionary. https://www.thefreedictionary.com/Pelagianism.
Jost, W., Olmsted, W., & Olmsted, W. (2000). Invention, Emotion, and Conversion in Augustine’s Confessions. In Rhetorical invention and religious inquiry: new perspectives (pp. 65–86). essay, Yale University Press.
Manichaeism. Manichaeism – New World Encyclopedia. (2018, August 9). https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Manichaeism.
O’Donnell, J. (1998). St. Augustine. Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Augustine.
Shaw, B. D. (2015). Augustine and Men of Imperial Power. Journal of Late Antiquity, 8(1), 32–61. https://doi.org/10.1353/jla.2015.0001
Sproul, R. C. (2005). The Pelagian Controversy by R.C. Sproul. Ligonier Ministries. https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/pelagian-controversy/.
