Discussion Starter - City of God

In Book VIII, Chapters 1-12 of City of God, Augustine discusses “’natural’ theology.” He begins by evaluating past Ionian and Italian philosophies, and identifies Platonism as the school closest to contemporary (in Augustine’s time) Christianity.

          Augustine distinguishes ‘natural’ theology from what he calls ‘fabulous’ (of the theatre) or ‘civil’ (of the city) theology, “the former of those makes great play with the scandals of the gods, while the latter reveals their even more scandalous desires, showing them to be malignant demons rather than gods” (VIII.1). He asserts that “wisdom is identical with God” and therefore one must love God (since “philosopher” means ‘lover of wisdom’) if he wants to call himself a true philosopher. Augustine singles out Socrates as the person who turned the goal of philosophy away from the diving and toward improving morality. He says that Socrates thought that “the causation of the universe could be grasped only by a purified intelligence,” hence why he focused on improving one’s moral standard and reaching toward “the Highest Good” (VIII.3).

            Plato’s great achievement, according to Augustine, was to join the two lines of philosophy—one concerned with action (exemplified by Socrates’ excellence in practical wisdom), the other with pure thought (exemplified by Pythagoras’ intellectual power)—and then divide philosophy into three parts: natural (based on speculation), moral (based on speculation), and rational (based on distinguishing truth from falsehood).  The Platonists surpass other philosophers because they are able to conceive a world with immaterial origins (i.e. not derived from a physical substance such as water, fire, even air). This is an essential feature, because “no material object can be God” (VIII.6), the reason being that anything material is also corruptible, but God is incorruptible and immutable.

            For Augustine and the Platonists, the ‘intelligible’ (things that can be recognized by the mind’s eye) is preferable to the ‘sensible’ (anything that can be physically perceived by sight or touch). “Physical beauty,” he says, “can be appreciated only by the mind. This would be quite impossible, if this ‘idea’ of beauty were not found in the mind in a more perfect form, without volume or mass, without vocal sound, and independent of space and time” (VIII.6). Again, it is the mutability of the sensible, material objects that makes the immutable, intelligible, immaterial forms of objects preferable. Augustine then says God is “the light of the mind” or the sun, to use Plato’s analogy, because God makes it possible to even acquire knowledge. The enjoyment of God (which he says is man’s true Good) is “like the eye’s enjoyment of light.” Therefore, without knowledge of God, it is impossible for a person to achieve ‘the Sovereign Good,’ which Plato defines as “the life in accordance with virtue” (VIII.9).

That is why he identifies the Platonists as the philosophers aligned most closely with Christians. However, the critical fault he finds with their point of view is that they accepted polytheism.