Augustine and the Mystery of the Church

By James K. Lee

Over the course of the past two centuries, Augustine's ecclesiology has been subject to interpretations that overdraw the distinction between the visible and invisible dimensions of the church, sometimes reducing the church to a purely spiritual, invisible reality, over against the visible church celebrating the sacraments; the empirical community is incidental, at best, and can be discarded. By contrast, this book argues that the church is a mystery that is visible and invisible. Far from discarding the visible, Augustine places greater emphasis on the empirical church as his thought develops.

This study traces Augustine’s ecclesiology from early writings to later works in order to demonstrate this thesis. His early thought is heavily influenced by Platonism and tends to focus on the ascent of the individual soul. After his study of Scripture in the 390s, Augustine gives priority to participation in the visible, sacramental community. In his mature thought, the church is one mystery (mysterium, sacramentum) revealed by Scripture, with visible and invisible aspects. This book explores Augustine’s exegesis of biblical images of the church, such as body of Christ, bride of Christ, city of God, and sacrifice, in order to show how the visible community is intrinsic to the mystery of the church.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Release date: Sep 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781506420523

Book preview

Introduction

The influence of Augustine in the history of Christianity is difficult to overestimate. Jaroslav Pelikan once described the history of Western theology since the Council of Orange (529 CE) as a series of footnotes to Augustine.[1] Augustine’s thought on the church (ecclesia) has been so formative for the Western tradition that he is often called the Doctor of ecclesiology.[2] Yet despite this widespread influence, scholarship on Augustine’s ecclesiology has suffered from impoverishment relative to the richness of his thought, especially over the course of the past two centuries. Many studies from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries betray the tendency to read certain texts from the Augustinian corpus in isolation from others.[3] A selective reading of Augustine neglects the complex development of his thought and leads to reductive accounts of his ecclesiology.

In particular, the church has been reduced to a purely spiritual, invisible reality over against the visible community celebrating the sacraments. This view has taken hold due in large part to the work of scholars who interpret Augustine primarily in philosophical terms. Some claim, for example, that Augustine never got beyond the heavy influence of Platonism after his reading of philosophers such as Plotinus in the 380s.[4] Consequently, Augustine’s thought is best viewed through the lens of Platonic categories. This approach has been applied to his ecclesiology by authors such as Hermann Reuter, Adolf von Harnack, Reinhold Seeberg, J. N. D. Kelly, Denis Faul, and, most recently, Phillip Cary.[5] According to a Platonic interpretation, the true church consists of an inner, invisible reality over against the visible body in history. This is what Johannes van Oort refers to as a two-fold ecclesiology, for the church is first and foremost a spiritual reality in contradistinction to the empirical community.[6]

The Platonic Interpretation of Augustine

The significance of Platonism for Augustine has been well documented, and indeed, Augustine remained indebted to Platonism until the end of his life.[7] However, an exaggerated view of his Platonism fails to account for the development of his thought, particularly after his study of Scripture in the 390s. The result is a misinterpretation of Augustine’s ecclesiology based upon a Platonic framework that undermines the significance of visible things.

A classic example of the Platonic approach is found in J. N. D. Kelly’s Early Christian Doctrines. According to Kelly, Augustine’s ecclesiology arises from and takes shape within a philosophical framework. The essence of the church is its inward being, which is the communion of all those who are united together, along with Christ their Lord, in faith, hope, and love, while the outer manifestation in the world is the empirical community.[8] Kelly attributes the distinction between the invisible communion of charity and the visible church to Platonism.[9] The invisible society of the saints is analogous to the Platonic ideal, which must be liberated from its condition in history. The empirical church celebrating the sacraments ceases to have validity.[10] Kelly so privileges the inward reality that the visible community can be discarded.

Along the same lines, some have suggested Augustine’s notion of the church is full of self-contradictions[11] and conflicts with his mature thought. Benjamin Warfield, for instance, claims Augustine’s mature theology of grace renders the visible church null and void.[12] There is a fundamental incoherence to Augustine’s ecclesiology, and in the final analysis, the invisible reality prevails over the visible community.

Phillip Cary takes the Platonic approach to new heights in his trilogy of studies on Augustine’s Platonism.[13] According to Cary, Augustine constructs a kind of dualism in which an invisible reality has no relation to a visible thing. The outward is rendered powerless and inefficacious, for visible and invisible operate on entirely separate tracks.[14] This dichotomy completely eliminates the efficacy of sacraments such as baptism and the Eucharist,[15] and consequently the church’s sacramental life has no real meaning or effect.[16] Cary applies this scheme to Augustine’s ecclesiology such that the church is constituted by an inner, invisible communion of charity, over against the outer, visible church and entirely apart from the celebration of its sacraments:[17] The grace of God uses human social means, but these are inward, consisting in the power of charity to form the invisible unity of the church.[18] Cary embraces the fullest possible separation between visible and invisible, and his reading is the culmination of an overly Platonic interpretation of Augustine in modern scholarship that dispenses with the visible church.

An Alternate Shape to Understanding Augustine

On the contrary, in this study I argue the visible, sacramental community is intrinsic to the church in Augustine’s thought. For Augustine, the church is a mystery with visible and invisible aspects that are distinct but not separate. Far from discarding the visible body, Augustine places greater emphasis upon the empirical community as essential to the church in his mature works. In the end, Augustine offers a coherent albeit highly sophisticated theology of the church as one mystery.

I demonstrate the coherence of Augustine’s thought by tracing its development from his early writings to later, more mature works. In his early writings, the influence of Platonism is evident in terms of the priority given to the ascent of the individual soul to the neglect of the communal body. Participation in a sacramental community is mitigated by the power of philosophy and the liberal arts to purify the mind. However, Augustine’s reading of Scripture in the 390s led to a seismic shift in his thought.[19] Augustine no longer conceives of the way to God by means of an unmediated ascent. Rather, the way to God is by participation in a communal body celebrating the sacraments. In mature works from the late 390s on, Augustine insists upon the mediation of the sacraments as necessary for incorporation into the church, a kind of mediation that cannot be found elsewhere.

As his thought continues to develop, Augustine maintains the necessity of sacramental mediation while arguing that the Holy Spirit may work beyond visible bounds. This does not obviate the sacraments, instead it reveals how God works through visible things and is not limited by them. In the end, the Holy Spirit will bring all of the elect into the unity of the church. Until that time, the visible church is a mixed body (corpus permixtum) of good and wicked, elect and reprobate. The church’s mixed condition is part of God’s plan for the purification of the elect and the transformation of the world. Some who share in the sacraments of the visible church may cut themselves off from the effects, yet the sacraments remain the means of incorporation into the one body of Christ.[20] All who share in charity will be united to the one church, either in the present age or at the end time, that is, at the eschaton. Augustine presents a coherent vision of the church as a mystery that is visible and invisible, historical and eschatological.

This study proceeds in two ways. First, it establishes Augustine’s understanding of the church as a mystery according to the Latin terms mysterium and sacramentum. Augustine inherits this distinction from the patristic tradition and develops it further in order to unite the visible and invisible aspects of the church. The church is visible and historical after the pattern of the incarnation, for just as Christ, the transcendent mystery of God (Col 2:2; 4:3), was manifested (1 Tim 3:16) visibly in his flesh,[21] so too the church is a transcendent mystery made visible in history. Augustine’s mature ecclesiology is predicated upon a biblical, incarnational theology rather than Platonic philosophy.

Second, this study explores key images of the church in Augustine’s works, including the body of Christ, the bride of Christ, the city of God, and sacrifice. Augustine’s meditation on these images follows the trajectory of his developing thought. In his early works, Augustine focuses on the ascent of the individual soul with the aim of vision, demonstrating his thorough engagement with Platonism. As his thought matures, he no longer fixates upon the individual to the neglect of the communal body.[22] Instead, he depicts the church primarily in communal terms, placing the individual in the context of the community. Vision is subordinated to charity, and the end of the Christian life is the enjoyment of God within a communal body. The shift from the individual to the communal reflects the corresponding shift from Augustine’s early Platonism to his mature biblical, incarnational theology,[23] for the incarnation makes possible the union and formation of the whole Christ (totus Christus) as one body, head and members. As the body of Christ, the church is a community that is both visible and invisible, and the visible celebration of the sacraments forms the invisible communion of charity. Baptism gives birth to charity in the members,[24] and the church’s eucharistic worship unites the city of God as one body and one sacrifice. Thus the invisible union of the ecclesia comes not at the expense of the historical community, but precisely as mediated by the sacramental life of the church.

Augustine’s exegesis of biblical images reveals the intrinsic relationship between the empirical community and the invisible reality, for while they are not precisely identical, the visible church is the body and bride of Christ, in a process of purification and growth. The sacraments add citizens to the heavenly city of God, which is on pilgrimage to the heavenly homeland. Therefore the visible community celebrating the sacraments is intrinsic to the church.

In his mature works, Augustine attaches greater significance to the visible aspects of the church. This growing attention to the visible community can be attributed not only to his biblical and incarnational theology, but also to his experiences as priest, pastor, and bishop in North Africa. By the late 390s, Augustine had been engaged in pastoral ministry for some years. With his elevation to the episcopacy, Augustine’s ongoing ecclesial ministry enabled him to come to a deeper understanding of the necessity of participation in a visible, sacramental community. In order for us to grasp the significance of this development, a brief historical overview is necessary.

The Church in North Africa

Augustine was born in the Roman colony of Thagaste, North Africa, to a pagan father and a Catholic mother.[25] After studying in Madaura and Carthage, Augustine returned to Thagaste to begin his career in rhetoric. Along the way, he became enamored with Manichaeism, which espoused a radically dualistic view of good and evil, spirit and matter, soul and body. Augustine adhered to Manichaeism for the better part of a decade, but became disenchanted with it after an encounter with the Manichean bishop Faustus.[26] Upon taking a teaching post in Milan, Augustine began to read the books of the Platonists, which freed his mind from the errors of Manichaeism.[27] From the Platonists, Augustine learned that evil is not a substance—or existing thing—of any kind.[28] Moreover, to posit evil as a co-eternal principle, in Manichean fashion, is to deny the omnipotence of the transcendent God. Platonism proved to have a deep and lasting impact upon Augustine’s thought, particularly in terms of the notion of divine transcendence.[29]

It was Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, who led Augustine to enter the Catholic Church. Under the instruction of Ambrose, Augustine discovered the richness and sophistication of Scripture for the first time.[30] Previously Augustine had considered the Bible too primitive and simplistic.[31]  Ambrose  taught  Augustine  how  to  uncover  the  mysteries hidden in Scripture. Soon after, Augustine decided to enter the Catholic Church, but prior to his baptism, he left his teaching post in Milan and retired to a rural villa at Cassiciacum with his mother and some friends. There he composed his first works, which reveal the strong influence of Platonism. In these early writings, the way to God is by an inward turn, a kind of solitary contemplation that enables the ascent to a vision of truth.[32]

After his baptism in 387, Augustine returned to Thagaste, where he established a monastic community and took up a life of prayer and study. During this time, he embarked upon a rigorous reading of Scripture. Much to his dismay, in 391 Augustine was ordained a priest,[33] and in 395, he became coadjutor bishop of Hippo before becoming sole bishop in 396 after the death of Valerius. Augustine continued to study the Bible intensely during the 390s, particularly the writings of Paul, while assuming the responsibilities of the episcopacy, which included preaching, administering sacraments, catechesis, settling ecclesial and civil disputes, and attending African councils.[34]

Augustine’s life in the church as pastor and bishop played an important role in the development of his thought.[35] As a pastor serving a large community, Augustine no longer fixated on an unmediated, inward turn in solitary contemplation as the way to God.[36] More and more, Augustine recognized the necessity of outward participation in an ecclesial community. The Christian journey is not a flight of the alone to the Alone in Platonic fashion,[37] with the aim of solitary vision. Instead, it requires participation in a visible body celebrating the sacraments and offering works of mercy, with the aim of the twofold love of God and neighbor.[38] The church is not reducible to a series of individuals who have attained vision, but rather consists of a living fellowship (societas) united in charity.[39]

This point is pressed home in Augustine’s recounting of the dialogue between Simplicianus and Marius Victorinus in Confessiones. Although Victorinus admitted he had become a Christian in secret, Simplicianus would not consider Victorinus a Christian unless he were found in the church of Christ, to which Victorinus famously replied, Is it the walls that make Christians?[40] Augustine asserts that although the walls do not make Christians, what happens in those walls is essential, namely, the celebration of the sacraments and the profession of faith.[41] To be in the church means incorporation into a visible community.

As his theology developed, Augustine found a way to bring together the visible and invisible aspects of the church based upon his interpretation of Scripture and his mature incarnational Christology.[42] Following his study of biblical texts such as the letter to the Galatians,[43] in which Paul declares the Son of God was born of a woman,[44] Augustine established an incarnationalist framework for his mature thought.[45] This laid the foundation for his theology of the church as a mystery with visible and invisible dimensions. As Christ entered history in the sacramentum of his flesh,[46] so too the church is a sacramentum, a transcendent mystery with a visible body. The church is the body of Christ on earth and continues the salvific work of the head by celebrating the sacraments (sacramenta), namely, baptism and the Eucharist. The church, in essence, is a communal body formed in charity by means of the sacraments.[47]

Augustine’s understanding of the mediation of the sacraments continued to grow in the context of the dispute with the Donatists. For most of Augustine’s life, North Africa was divided between Catholics and Donatists,[48] a division that occurred following the double election of Majorinus and Caecilian to the see of Carthage sometime between 308 and 311.[49] Caecilian was accused of being consecrated by a traditor, someone who handed over copies of the Bible to be desecrated or destroyed in the midst of persecution. Majorinus was elected and soon succeeded by Donatus. Those who supported Donatus in the resulting schism became known as Donatists. Donatism was characterized by the denial of the validity of baptism outside of what was considered the true church, that is, the church free from apostasy. The Donatists rejected episcopal consecration by traditores and insisted on re-baptism for those who entered their community from outside. By the 390s, there were hundreds of Donatist bishops, and in parts of North Africa, Donatists formed the majority of Christians.

Against the Donatists, Augustine argued that the desire to possess a pure church free from sinners is rooted in pride. In conjunction with his insistence that the church on earth is a mixed body (corpus permixtum)[50] of good and wicked members,[51] Augustine contended that earthly members of the church must undergo a process of purification while on pilgrimage. The church’s mixed constitution not only curbs pride and presumption, but also fosters hope, for any of the wicked could become a member of the heavenly city. At the eschaton, the elect will be separated from the reprobate, but this final separation is known to God alone. No one can presume to be a member of the elect; rather, each must place his or her hope in the salvific work of Christ mediated by the sacramental life of the church.[52] Moreover, the power of the sacraments depends not upon the minister, but upon Christ.[53] The sacraments of the church cannot be confined to a single community in North Africa,[54] for the church universal (catholica) is spread throughout the world. The Donatists have cut themselves off from the one body due to their lack of charity, and the net effect of Donatism is a kind of sectarianism that limits the church to the sinless.

In the midst of the dispute with the Donatists,[55] Augustine presented a sophisticated view of ecclesial membership. The whole church includes the visible community throughout the world, along with all the invisible angels and saints in heaven, united in charity. Some who share in the sacraments of the visible church may cut themselves off from the effects,[56] and thus do not share in the bond of charity. These are sinners, some of whom are reprobate. Nevertheless, the sacraments mediate charity by the power of God,[57] and so Augustine posits the necessary mediation of the sacraments for incorporation into the one body of Christ.

At the same time, God is not bound by visible limitations, for there are some outside of the church who will be inside, and there are some inside the church who will be outside.[58] For Augustine, this does not mean there is an invisible body of charity that subsists as an independent economy of salvation apart from the visible church. Instead, the Holy Spirit works to bring those outside the visible bounds into the very same communion of charity mediated by the visible community,[59] for the elect who are outside the visible church will be joined to the one body at some future time.[60] The visible and invisible are not opposed  although  they  remain  distinct,  for  the  invisible  union  of charity constitutes the fundamental unity of the empirical church.[61] Participation in the visible sacraments is not a guarantee of participation in charity, yet the sacraments remain essential,[62] for they retain their mediatory role in the building up of the body of Christ until the eschaton, when the sacraments will no longer be necessary.[63] Until then, the Spirit works through the visible sacraments, and all who share in charity will be joined to the one church. According to Augustine, the one ecclesia is not a purely invisible reality, for the true church (veram ecclesiam) is the visible church of Christ, the one which rises above and is seen by all.[64]

Augustine’s reflections on the church continued in the midst of controversies with groups such as the Pelagians and the pagans until his death in 430, which coincided with the invasion of Hippo by the Vandals. In works after 400, Augustine refines his views on grace and predestination[65] based upon deep faith in the mystery of God’s salvific plan. God’s plan is enacted precisely through the visible church as the pilgrim city of God on journey to the heavenly homeland (patria). Predestination is a source of hope for Christians on their journey, for God’s will cannot be thwarted, yet the identity of the predestined is known to God alone. The Pelagians, like the Donatists, err in the attempt to identify an elite communion that constitutes the true church. The church remains a mystery with visible and invisible dimensions, and the final constitution of the church will be revealed only at the eschaton.

Against the pagan Romans, Augustine constructs a rich eucharistic ecclesiology in his defense of Christian worship. In contrast to pagan sacrifices, the church offers the true worship that leads humanity to its final end, namely, to cling to God. The Platonists are able to see this end, but they do not possess the way since they are guilty of pride and cling to their own wisdom.[66] Augustine offers a sharp critique of the Platonists, which reveals his departure from earlier philosophical commitments. The way to God is not by an isolated, inward turn in Platonic fashion, but by participation in the visible community celebrating the sacraments. In this apologetic, the visible church is indispensable, for the eucharistic worship of the pilgrim city unites the whole city of God, on earth and in heaven, as the one true sacrifice pleasing and acceptable to God.[67] The kingdoms of this world rise and fall, but the church continues the salvific work of Christ by celebrating the sacraments.

In sum, Augustine’s ecclesiology develops from the early influence of Platonism to the Christological shift in his thought after his study of Scripture in the 390s, and refined within the context of his disputes with the Manicheans, Donatists, Pelagians, and pagans. Augustine’s mature thought yields a complex yet coherent account of God’s salvific work accomplished through the church as an irreducible mystery, with visible and invisible dimensions.

Ecclesiology in Renewal

Several important studies have contributed to a renewed understanding of Augustine’s ecclesiology, although none has traced its development. For example, in contrast to a dualistic conception of the church, Fritz Hofmann argues in favor of a single ecclesia, with three layers: 1) the visible Catholic Church, which shares the communion of sacraments (communio sacramentorum); 2) the invisible communion of saints (communio sanctorum), that is, the holy members within the church; and 3) the fixed number of the predestined (certus numerus praedestinatorum).[68] These distinctions lie one within the other, like concentric circles, with the predestined at the center. Hofmann’s work proves useful, particularly his argument for a single ecclesia, yet one wonders if Hofmann’s multilayered interpretation gets beyond a separation between the visible and invisible.

Joseph Ratzinger offers another approach in Volk und Haus Gottes in Augustins Lehre von der Kirche.[69] Ratzinger examines Augustine’s theology following his conversion to Christianity in 386 and argues that Augustine’s journey led him from a more metaphysical, speculative theology to an understanding of the church’s mediation in history. Augustine began to see the divine world no longer as the world of eternal Urgestalten, the primordial and timeless Forms, but as the holy community of God’s angels, the intelligible world (mundus intelligibilis), distinct though not entirely separate from the sensible world (mundus sensibilis).[70] The church, as the house and people of God, is at the locus of the union of these two orders or levels of reality without being reduced to either, possessing a revelation-character as the appearing of the invisible in this world.[71] Ratzinger shows how Augustine’s thought grows in contact with the great masters of North African ecclesiology, including Tertullian, Cyprian, and Optatus of Milevis,[72] yet Ratzinger leaves room for further study of the development of Augustine’s ecclesiology.

Along the same lines, Yves Congar identifies the visible and invisible aspects of the different kinds of communio in Augustine’s works.[73] Congar establishes the biblical character of Augustine’s thought and points to certain passages that demonstrate the unity of ecclesia as one subject, with interior and exterior elements.[74] According to Congar, the internal and external dimensions of the church relate as res and sacramentum, wherein the res is available