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[sid] => 160970
[catid] => 1
[aid] => mick
[title] => MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY :PART - II -ON ST. AUGUSTINE
[time] => 2010-07-05 23:43:25
[hometext] => CONTINUING MY MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY IN VERSE , I COME TO PART -II OF MY WORK NOW !
[bodytext] => Friends , continuing my 'History of Medieval Philosophy in Verse' , I have skipped the portion on 'Church Fathers' ! I humbly present Part - II of my research work on St Agustine of Hippo ; with whom Medieval Philosophy proper commences ! He was a pioneer in shaping early Christiany Theology ; and while doing so , gave us gems of his philosophic thoughts ! I love his original writings on the concept of "Time" ! MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY IN VERSE: Part- II: On ST. AUGUSTINE * PART – II * ST AUGUSTINE – BISHOP OF HIPPO (354 AD – 430 AD) HIS EARLY LIFE : He was the last of the great classical thinkers , And the first amongst the Medieval ones ! Was born in the town of Thagaste in 354 AD , - Forty five miles south of Hippo , in the Roman province of Numidia , - In North Africa , in our present day Algeria ! His father was a pagan and mother Monica , - a devout Christian ! She wanted her son to be baptized , and not to remain a pagan ! At an early age after having read the writings of Cicero , Augustine’s initial interest in philosophy had begun to show ! At the age of seventeen was sent to Carthage to study rhetoric ; There he adopted a hedonistic life style and became a Manichean freak ! He took a concubine for the next thirteen years , And she also gave birth to his son Adeodatus ; Causing great distress to his mother Monica , - Driving her to tears ! Young Augustine taught rhetoric for nine years in Carthage ; But his life began to change , when at thirty years of age , He became a professor at the Imperial Court in Milan ! For there he met Bishop Ambrose , who had influenced him the most ! His mother Monica soon followed him to Milan , - To arrange a society marriage for her son ! But Augustine had to wait for the would-be - bride to come of age ; And he took a second concubine , - forcing his mother to get into a rage ! HIS BAPTISM : Subsequently, experiencing inner torment and after much introspection , He decided to lead a life of celibacy with religious contemplation ! Breaking his engagement and giving up his second concubine ; In 387 both he and his son , by Bishop Ambrose got baptized , - To serve God and in search of a life divine ! But during his return journey to Africa , - He lost his dear mother Monica ! This was followed by the loss of his only son , And Augustine felt lost , with nowhere to turn ! He sold his property and donated his money to charity , And converted his house into a lay monastery ! ORDAINED AS A PRIEST and NEXT AS BISHOP : In 391 Augustine visited Hippo to hear Bishop Valerius preach , Who was a Greek , and Latin he could hardly speak ! The Bishop had prayed to God for a Latin priest ; So the young Augustine for him was God sent ! He was appointed as his deputy, and as a priest ordained ! And five years later , after the death of Valerius , Since God’s ways are truly mysterious ; In 393 AD Augustine was made a Bishop to succeed Valerius ! Augustine continued his writings on the subject of Christian theology ; And with excellent expositions on Medieval Philosophy ! HIS DEATH AND SAINTHOOD : When the fortified city of Hippo lay under a fourteen month’s long siege ; On 28 August 430 AD , the great Augustine breathed his last to set himself free ! Hippo was later burnt down by the Vandals , But Augustine’s monastery and library , - Were left untouched by those barbarians ! Initially his body in Hippo was laid to rest ; But according to historian Bede , around 720 AD, Augustine’s body was finally rested at St Paul’s Church in Pavia , Italy ! In 1303 he was declared Doctor of the Church by the Roman Bishop Boniface , - And was officially canonized as a Holy Saint ! HIS TOTAL WRITINGS : In terms of his surviving works , Augustine was the most prolific of Latin writers ; Which consists of 117 books , some 500 holy sermons , and around 200 letters ! Both his theological and philosophical works show , Platonic and Neo-platonic influences , - inclusive of Aristotle , Virgil and Cicero ! Whereas Plato’s and Aristotle’s total works contain , - Half a million and a million words respectively ; Augustine uses around five million words for his entire philosophy ! Amongst his most significant and enduring works are; - His ‘Confessions’, ‘The City of God’, on ‘The Trinity’, and ‘On the Christian Doctrine’ ! And amongst these , the first two are considered as literary classics , And I will be highlighting two of these ! Augustine’s writings against the heresies of his time are well known ; And also on educational , moral and ethical issues , - Inclusive of his writings on the salvation of the human soul ! By reading his writings we try to delve Augustine’s pious mind , Despite the yawning gap of sixteen centuries he has left behind ! HIS “CONFESSIONS” ( 397 – 401 AD ) : Augustine wrote his ‘Confessions’ after becoming the Bishop of Hippo , - Completing his twelve books in 401, spread over a period of four year’s or so ! It is directly addressed to God in a style unique in those days , - Using the first nine books to admit his sins and seek His forgiveness ! The last three books are a transition from auto- biography to direct analysis , - Of philosophical and theological issues relating to the Christian faith, with due emphasis ! But his 11th Book deserves a special mention , Dealing with concept of 'Time' and God’s Creation ! Infinity and nothingness - were concepts alien to the Greek mind , Yet God in ‘Genesis’ created the world from void - with time ! Though God created Time along with His creation , He Himself is timeless and remains outside His own creations ! Time is a subjective element of the human mind ; As we measure its passing with the illusion of our mind ! The past remains as our memory and the future as our expectation ; Yet both past and present are contained in our present moment as sight , - In all our visual contemplations ! Yet this present moment too , has no permanence or dimensions ! Sir Bertrand Russell praised it as pure philosophy ! Since Augustine foreshadowed Descartes and Kant ,– By treating Time subjectively ! 'THE CITY of GOD ' (413 -429 AD) : Perhaps the lengthiest of his single works - and a great endeavor ; Involving thirteen long years of his intellectual labor ! Remains as the finest example of Patristic literature ! It was a vindication of Christianity against the heathen attacks , - In view of the sacking of the city of Rome by the barbarians ! It was the time when the Greco-Roman civilization was witnessing its downfall , With the new Christian civilization rising from its ruins , - Emerging to stand firm and tall ! Rome which had not been sacked in 700 years , Had come to be known as the Eternal City , and had no fears ! After it fell to Alaric in 410 AD , the Romans blamed it on Christianity ! For Augustine the only ‘eternal city’ was the ‘City of God’ , - That spiritual kingdom in Heaven , far removed from the earthly sort ! The kingdom of the spirit awaits a true Christian in that Heavenly City , Thus proceeds his progressive arguments in his 22 Books - systematically ! Augustine weaves aspects of philosophy , theology , politics and Western History within , Though these areas of learning never existed then - as separate disciplines ! The classical pagan view held History to be cyclic , - With some variations but mostly repetitive ! In keeping with the Judeo-Christian tradition , - Augustine declared History to be linear ; It was not cyclic and was rather dissimilar ! He quoted the Bible in defense with its linear sweep , - From the Genesis till the Apocalypse complete ! Thus History has a positive beginning with a positive end ; Let us prepare ourselves for the Day of Judgment ! One day man’s political ventures shall all end , Just as the great Roman Empire before their eyes fell ! But only 'myopic men' will blame the Christians , - St Augustine had written and proclaimed ! Let me quote from the hymn I had once sung , In the morning chapel before the school begun ; - “Kingdoms will rise , kingdom will fall , For nations refuse to hear the Lord’s call ; But the word of God endures for evermore !” Thus Augustine distinguishes between the City of Men and the ‘City of God’ , - Which is not a political but as a spiritual entity - with the Lord ! HIS OTHER WORKS : Augustine’s second largest work was on the subject of ‘Trinity’ , Which was directed against the Arian controversy of the 4th century ! Jesus was human and was made by the Father , - the Arians said ! But the Father , the Son and the Holy Spirit were of ‘one substance’ - as per the Christian faith ! The Greek word for it was ‘homoousios’ ; And this was adopted by the Council of Nicene in 325 AD as unanimous ! Augustine wrote against the Manicheans , the Donatists , the Arians and the Pelagians ; And with his writings defended the Catholic Church from those heretics and pagans ! HIS RELEVANCE : A person should be judged in respect to his time and age , To give us a proper perspective and his true worth and relevance ! St Augustine was a transitional figure between the Classical and the Medieval Age ; Quoted extensively by philosophers , theologians , and later religious sages ! The figure of St Augustine towers like a giant colossus , Whose lengthening shadow falls beyond his Age , - looming large ! Rather than formulating new dogmas for the Church , or new theologies , He valiantly defended the Faith from the repeated onslaughts of the heretics ! Augustine unlike Aquinas , was neither a system builder, nor an University teacher ; But an isolated pious thinker and writer of his age , Searching for deeper allegorical meanings in the Bible , - To interpret for us the Lord’s message ! That ‘Supreme Being’ of the Neoplatonists known as - ‘The ONE’ , Was named ‘GOD’ by Augustine , from Whom all things begun ! And in doing so , St Augustine is said to have baptized - the pagan Greek Plato ! His writings on the Theory of Knowledge , on the problem of Evil , and Divine Grace ; Had disarmed all the vacillating skeptics of his Age ! His theory of Creation from ‘nothing’ -‘Ex Nihilo’; Is consistent with our Big Bang theory of today , - as we know ! In his synthesis of Faith and Reason , and Religion with Philosophy , He later inspired St Anselm to prove God’s existence , - With arguments from cosmology ! Following him , Aquinas defines Sin , as “a word , deed or desire ; anything that disobeys God’s will ; As a privation of Good , and synonymous with evil !” In his wealth of perception and dialectic sharpness of thoughts ; For religious fervor with which his greatness of aim and action is wrought ; Even after sixteen long centuries St Augustine is never forgot ! Regarded as the greatest of Apologist Fathers of the Patristic Age , And a leading Doctor of the Latin Church and a sage ! St Augustine shines bright in the firmament of the nascent Church , Shedding his illuminating light from the Heavens above ! ( To be continued , next being Part - III) ............................................................................................. Thanks for reading ! From : Raj Nandy of New Delhi , the author . [comments] => 1 [counter] => 195 [topic] => 11 [informant] => RAJNANDY [notes] => [ihome] => 0 [alanguage] => english [acomm] => 0 [haspoll] => 0 [pollID] => 0 [score] => 3 [ratings] => 3 [editpoem] => 1 [associated] => [topicname] => ChristianPoetry )
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