A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Vol.I by Johann Eduard Erdmann 1890

§ 144 ,
6.] AUGUSTINE. 277
leads him. Whether a man belongs to the elect cannot be
determined by single good works the best proof of it is
; the
donum perseverantice {De corr. et grat., 12, 13).
6. The inability to do good, and therefore the rejection of
all those whom God does not make free from sin, is a fact.
This however is not the relation originally established by God.
In the beginning man, who at first, in order that all men might
be blood relations, existed as one man, was in a condition in
which it was possible for him not to sin. Destined to attain
to a position where he can no more sin, to pass from posse
11011 peccare to non posse peccare^ he should, by obedience
to God, have wiped out the posse peccare in himself, and with
it mortality i^De corr, et grat. 12, 13; De pecc. mer., i. 2, 2).
This however did not take place. On the contrary, the love
of God grew cold in man, and the temptation of the devil who
had fallen before him brought him, already fallen, to a complete
apostasy. His punishment, inability to do good, was
handed down to all men, who had existed in Adam in germ,
and therefore had sinned (Civit. Dei, xiv, 1 1 ;
De corr. et grat.,
12, 37; 6, 9). That Augustine expresses himself only with
hesitation for Traducianism (propagation of the soul), which
fits so well his theory of original sin (cf Ep., 190; Ad Opt,, 4,
14, 15), and often wavers between it and Creationism or even
Pre-existence (cf among other passages Retract,, i. i), has its
ground, perhaps, in the fact that the example of Tertullian
seemed to show that Traducianism involved the corporeality
of the soul. The descendants of fallen man, begotten in lust,
and thus at the same time poisoned, are incapable of good.
It is more difficult to comprehend how the original man, born
sinless, could fall away from God. In the same degree in
which Augustine denies to man all independent activity, must
the rise of evil, that is of self-seeking, appear impossible.
Consistent Pantheism has in fact always experienced this.
Augustine, although he does not go so far as the latter, nevertheless
often approaches the denial of evil, as for instance
when he shows a tendency to conceive of it as an absence of
good, not as its opposite (Civit. Dei, xi. 9), or when he says
that evil exists only in the good i^De hb. arb., iii.
13), that it is
nothing positive and therefore needs no causa ejpiciens, but
has only a causa deficiens, is an mcausale, that evil is not
commission but only omission, that evil cannot be perceived
for the same reason that darkness cannot be seen, etc. (Civ.
278 FIRST PERIOD OF MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. [§ 144, 7.
Deiy xii. 7, 9, a/.) The tremendous power of sin forces
him indeed often to the (anti-pantheistic) confession that
evil is a positive power over against God. But the fear of
assuming a being outside of God causes him always to return
to the conception of it as a mere shadow in the picture of the
world, as a thing necessary for the sake of contrast, that is,
in fact, to deny its reality. The difficulties which resulted
from the Augustinian doctrine of the absolute self-nothingness
of the creation, furthered the spread of Semi-Pelagianism.
In the form indeed in which the latter arose in the teaching
of Cassianus, it was condemned but at the same time the
;
Predestinationists, probably pure Augustinians, were declared
heretics. The Augustinianism of the Church is already
moderated in the work De vocatione gentmm, probably by Leo
the Great. Later it became an ecclesiastical rule : Attgustimis
eget Thoma interprete,
7. Belief, the means by which man becomes a participant
in grace, is, according to Augustine, not a self-active appropriation
but a pure gift of mercy, a supernatural illumination
[De pecc. merit., i.
9; De prcedest. sanctt., ii. 12), in which
man is certain of his state of redemption. For this very
reason the proper content of belief is formed by the doctrine
of the incarnate Son of God. The heathen philosopher did
not, as in the case of the Trinity, have any idea of this doctrine.
Since, now, only that conduct has value which is an action of
belief, it follows that even the most highly extolled virtues of
the heathen are worthless, indeed crimes [Civit. Dei, xix. 25)^
Only among Christians does boldness, in virtue of the true
foundation, become the martyr’s joy, and temperance the
destruction of passion, etc. The Incarnate One however is
not only the liberator of the individual from sin
and guilt, but
also the proper centre of mankind as a whole, and for that
reason appears in the middle of its history, a goal for those
who lived before Him, a starting-point for those who live after
Him [De vera relig., 16; De grat. et lib. arb., 3 , 5 The history
).
of mankind is divided into six periods, corresponding to the
six days of creation, and in the last of these we live. Through
this whole history runs the contrast between the redeemed,
who form the kingdom of God, the civitas Dei, and those who
have condemned themselves, and thus form the kingdom of
the world, or of the devil. The former are vessels of mercy,
the latter vessels of wrath [Civ. Dei, xv. i ff.). Among those