Platonism and Neo-Platonism: Their Influence on St. Augustine’s View of the City of Man

St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, is most famous for his magnum opus The City of God. A clear understanding of Augustine’s view of the gospel of Christ and the doctrine of justification will make clearer Augustine’s reasons for his view of Christians being the most just rulers for the city of man. Why Augustine viewed justification the way he did can be explained by the influence of Platonic and Neo-Platonic thought, especially the philosophy of Plotinus. In order to understand the influence the Platonists and Neo-Platonists had on Augustine’s view on justification, the doctrine of justification must be explained. I will explain first the difference between Augustinian justification and forensic justification. I will then explain why Augustine, with his view of justification would view Christians as being the most just rulers for the city of man. I will also need to compare the city of God with the city of man according to the New Testament. Before I can explain the influence Platonic and Neo-Platonic philosophy had on Augustine’s view of justification, I will need to make clear what the philosophy of Plotinus and Plato were and identify Augustine’s connection with them. Explaining the role of the Logos in Augustine’s theology and Plotinus’ influence on the role of the Logos for Augustine will help clarify how Augustine viewed justification and why he viewed it that way. I will then need to examine why God’s grace is important to Augustine when dealing with his view of original sin. The influence Plotinus had on Augustine’s view of his relationship with the Logos will show to be why Augustine viewed justification the way he did. After looking at the influences on Augustine’s view of Christian rulers, I will finally show the significant similarities between Augustine’s Christian rulers and Plato’s philosopher kings.
In order for Augustine’s view on justification to be analyzed, the doctrine of justification must be explained. Justification is how one is made just. As Alister McGrath (1993) points out, Augustine viewed justification as a process rather than a declaration. Instead of forensic justification in which one is accounted by God as just, Augustine viewed justification as being made just through a pilgrimage guided by God’s grace. Forensic justification separates justification from sanctification. In forensic justification, sanctification comes after being declared just. Augustinian justification mixes justification with sanctification, so one is not fully justified until he is fully sanctified. Sanctification is known as the growing in one’s faith in which good works proceed, namely of thought, word, and deed. In order to reach that full justification, Augustine believed that God makes one just by his grace when He works good works and causes one to imitate Christ. Eventually, the process is complete, and the person is fully justified. Augustine’s view of justification influenced his view that Christians would make the best rulers. A mixture of justification and sanctification would result in a process of good works (McGrath 1993). If one is fully justified by just works of the law, he would be able to judge according to the law, so if a Christian has reached that highest point of justification, by being just according to the law, the Christian would be the most just ruler.
St. Augustine acknowledged that the city of God, or the Church of Christ, is not of this world, but rather it is an invisible city ruled by Christ. The members of the city of God are Christians, but Augustine also pointed out that in the church there are false Christians and wicked people (The City of God, V, 35). Also, Augustine told of how a good Christian emperor should rule (The City of God V, 24). He described a just Christian emperor as slow to punish and quick to pardon. The emperors Constantine and Theodosius Augustus are described by Augustine as faithful and just. Augustine pointed out that Christian emperors can be good emperors. Just because the city of God is a different city than the city of man does not mean that Christians can’t still be just emperors in the city of man. Augustine, however, also suggested that Christians not only can be just rulers, but would be the most just rulers in the city of man. As John Wild (1949) points out in his article Plato and Christianity: A Philosophical Comparison, the city of God, or the Church of Christ, doesn’t rule the same way as the city of man. In the 22nd chapter of the gospel of Luke, a dispute rose up among the disciples as to who would be the greatest among them. Jesus explained to them that the Gentiles are the ones who practice lordship among themselves, but His ministers will be servants and dwell in the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is different from the kingdom of man.
The Church, according to the New Testament, is ruled by Christ. The members of this Church, according to the apostle Paul, live and are judged by Christ according to the gospel. “…in the day when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel.” (Romans 2:16) As Christ pointed out in the 22nd chapter of Luke, the Gentiles practice lordship over each other. So the city of man is ruled by law, not the gospel. If the city of God were ruled by the law, Christians would be justified according to the law. If Christians were just according to the law, they would be the most just rulers in a city ruled by law. Since the city of man is ruled by the law, Christians, being just according to the law would be the most just rulers. Since Augustine believed that God needs to cause someone to do good works in order for that person to be fully justified, he would believe that a fully justified person would be good according to the law, and thus a just ruler in the city of man.
Augustine’s view of justification influenced the way he viewed the Christian ruler in the city of man, and a look into the philosophy that influenced Augustine will show how Augustine’s view of justification was influenced. Augustine read Plotinus, a Neo-Platonist, and he read Plato by the translations of Cicero. By looking at Plotinus’ philosophy, comparing and contrasting with Augustine, the similarities between Augustine’s theology and the Platonic and Neo-Platonic philosophies will be easier to recognize. Plotinus was born in Lycopolis, Upper Egypt in A.D. 204. He didn’t start writing anything until he reached the age of fifty years old, and Porphyry, his disciple, edited his writings. Plotinus would often argue with himself as well with others, and these arguments would usually come to pass from readings by Plato and Aristotle. Through years and generations of Platonic thought and explanations, Plotinus, with his mysticism of being able to unite with a spiritual Logos, developed his Neo-Platonic philosophy (Dillon 1992). Plato’s Theory of the Forms, as written in his Republic, describes the infinite idea from which everything derives. Like Plato, Plotinus saw the soul as something that falls from a higher condition. The highest condition, according to Plotinus, is the Absolute One (Dillon 1992, 192), and from this Absolute One pours the Intelligence. From this Intelligence comes the World Spirit which creates the universe. This One is also referred to as God. Contrary to Augustine’s view of God as a freely loving creator (Wild 1949, 4), Plotinus viewed the One as bound to create. According to Plotinus and Plato, God is good. As John Watson (1928) explains, they believe since God is perfect, His perfection is overflowing. This overflowing of perfection is the One’s intelligence, and thus the first product of the One is the Intelligence. From this Intelligence comes the World Soul. The World Soul, as John Dillon (1992, 192) points out, would be the Logos. Logos is Greek for word or to speak (Watson 1928). The World Soul, according to Plotinus, is what created the universe and every sensible object. Sensible objects are those that can change. Since the One can’t create anything that is better than Him, the World Soul must create an imperfect world.

According to Thomas A. Wassmer, St. Augustine was saved by Plotinus from the “crude fantasies of the Manicheans (1960, 261).” Plotinus’ philosophy was used by St. Ambrose, Augustine’s teacher through his conversion, to explain to Augustine the doctrine of the Trinity. St. Ambrose used Plotinus’ philosophy to defend the Christian Trinity, or Triune God, against the Arians. The Arians taught that Jesus, the second person of the Triune God, was not truly divine and was created. Augustine was able to learn from Plotinus that God is united and that God is spirit. After his conversion to Christianity, he was able to point out key differences between Christian theology and Platonism. For example, Augustine praised the Platonists as being the closest to Christianity in his City of God (VIII); however, he recognized Plato’s theological dissimilarity to Christianity. Augustine applauded Plato for distinguishing between those forms conceived by the mind and those forms conceived by the senses, although he criticized the Platonists for worshipping many gods after acknowledging the one true God.
In order to find why Augustine’s view of justification, influenced by Platonic and Neo-Platonic thought, influenced his theory that Christians would make the most just rulers in the city of man, the doctrine of the Logos must be examined. When it comes to justification in Christian theology, the Logos is what God uses to connect humans to Him. In order to be justified, one must be justified through the Logos. Similar to Plotinus’ philosophy, Augustine also confessed a Logos. The Logos, according to Augustine, was the Word made flesh. The Word made flesh, according to the first chapter in John, is Christ Jesus. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…” (John 1:14) Since, according to the philosophy of Plotinus, the Logos that is called the World Spirit creates an imperfect sensible universe, and the universe is inherently chaotic (Watson 1928, 483). This would be contrary to the Christian Logos. Christ, according to scripture, is both God and Man, and being God, Christ can’t be imperfect (John 1:1.) If the sensible world were inherently chaotic, as viewed by Plotinus, Christ could not be perfect while at the same time Man. Plotinus, however, argued that the sensible universe is as perfect as it can possibly be. By that argument, the creation is perfect. However, the sensible universe was still in itself chaotic, so because of this, Augustine was not able to accept this part of Plotinus’ philosophy. Augustine believed that humanity was sacred. Augustine believed that since nature was made out of nothing, it was able to be corrupted by vice, but nature in itself is not corrupt. God created the universe, and it was good (City of God XIV). If the whole sensible universe were inherently chaotic, Christ would not be able to be man, for He would then be imperfect. Therefore, the Word cannot become flesh with respect to Plotinus’ philosophy. According to Augustine, Christ needs to be perfect in order for man to be justified. He is the link, or the Logos from man to God. Augustine described Him as the mediator between man and God (Confessions VII).

Platonic and Neo-Platonic influence on Augustine’s view of justification is evident in Augustine’s writings. For example, in Augustine’s Confessions, he spoke to God saying, “And I viewed all the other things that are beneath you, and I realized that they are neither wholly really nor wholly unreal. They are real in so far as they come from you; but they are unreal in so far as they are not what you are. (Confession VII). Here, Plato’s Theory of the forms is shown to have influence on how Augustine viewed the relationship between the creator and the created. Plato’s Theory of the Forms would describe the sensible objects as just imitators of the actual idea, or intelligible. Thus, as Augustine also believed, Plato believed that the creation isn’t fully real. Plotinus’s influence of Augustine is also evident. He viewed the creation, as Augustine also did, as not as real as the creator, but Plotinus also, like Augustine, described a Logos, or link, between the created and the creator in his philosophy. According to Plotinus, the World Soul, being the Logos, would be the link between the individual souls and the Absolute One. Despite criticism from John Dillon (1992, 199) for his theory that the soul cannot be affected by Matter, the imperfection or “other” that is in itself nonexistent, Plotinus explained how the soul can fall away, depicting a similar explanation to how man, according to Augustine, fell away. Plotinus showed that they fall away because of their own power. Individual souls may fall away, and Plotinus explained this as a self will and self identity that the soul develops. It strives to be itself and finds pleasure in being self willing, eventually falling away and losing consciousness of God. This is similar to Augustine’s explanation that humans fall away because of their pride. Plotinus’ theory of how the individual souls unite with the Logos is similar to how Augustine believed he united with his Logos. The way the individual soul is united with the World Soul (Logos), according to Plotinus, is by becoming passive and giving up its sensible desires. Being united with this World Soul, the soul is able to be connected with the Intelligible (Watson 1928, 498). Augustine also expressed his journey of entering his inward soul. He viewed the desires of the sensible world as being ever changing, so entering his inward soul would be giving up his sensible desires. In giving up his sensible desires, Augustine is able to connect with the Logos which is Christ. Augustine giving up his sensible or fleshly desires allowed him to imitate Christ (Logos). Imitating Christ brings him closer to the Father and thus, closer to justification.
For Augustine, a Christian, who is fully just, would be the most just rulers. In order to be fully justified, however, the sinful lusts of the flesh needed to be done away with. Augustine expressed his sinful past in his Confessions. One story, for example was of him stealing pears from a pear tree. He didn’t steal them to eat them. He just threw them away. He stole them for the sake of stealing them. He also stole them because he was in the company of his friends. He wanted to look good in the sight of the other children that stole the pears with him. From Augustine’s heart aching and sorrowful confessions of his sinful nature, he concluded that the flesh is sinful. He expressed in the first chapter of his Confessions that not even the baby who has lived a day is free from sin. Although Augustine confessed that God made a perfect world, he acknowledged the original sin from Adam that cursed the earth. Augustine explained that though Eve, the woman, was deceived first, she came from Adam. She was Adam’s responsibility, so Eve being deceived is Adam’s sin since Adam was her head (City of God XIV, 13) As a response to this sinfulness, he became very devoted to being held humble to Jesus. He viewed man’s unworthiness and weak will toward God as evident for his need for God’s grace. Augustine made plain in his first chapter of his Confessions, “For even at the very first I knew how to suck, to lie quiet when I was full, and to cry when in pain—nothing more.” In the context of this quote are the words of Augustine acknowledging God as the source for his health and the keeper of his life. Augustine viewed Christ, being the Word made flesh, as the Logos in which he finds access to his heavenly father. Since Augustine viewed himself as unworthy, he needed God’s grace to help him imitate Christ.
In order to narrowly point out Augustine’s view of justification, the importance of God’s grace and the Logos must be examined. Since Augustine acknowledged himself as completely dependent on God, he, as Wassmer (1960) points out, separated from Plotinus’ philosophy. This was because Plotinus didn’t recognize divine grace, but rather wrote that philosophers should ascend by their own strength and preparations. When it came to free will, however, Plotinus had a different mindset from Augustine. He didn’t think of free will as a concern with any higher beings, and he certainly didn’t see it as a concern with the Absolute One. Rather, he viewed free will as simply ignorance the sensible world has of the intelligible (Dillon 1992, 200). Augustine viewed original sin as a curse that came from the fall of Adam, but Plotinus didn’t confess a fall of man into sin. Since he viewed the world as in itself imperfect, the bondage to sin wasn’t seen. There was no disobedience that made man an enemy of God in Plotinus’ philosophy, whereas Augustine viewed himself as an unworthy sinner in the eyes of a just God. Also, the relationship between Plotinus’ soul and the World Soul is a different kind of relationship between Augustine and Christ. Christ, Augustine’s Logos, is God and Man, whereas the World Soul, Plotinus’ Logos, is only spirit (Wassmer 1960). Christ being Man was crucial for Augustine since man is at enmity with God (City of God VII, 3). In order for man to be justified by God, he must be justified through the Christ (Logos). God’s perfection and glory is too much for an unworthy sinner to bear. Christ needs to be Man so that man may be linked to God.

Although Augustine rejected Plotinus’ idea of man’s will to come to God with His own ability, his view of God’s grace allowed him to take a similar path as the Platonists and Neo-Platonists on how to reach God and this true justification. In Plotinus’ philosophy, the individual soul is able to move up toward the Absolute One. It first becomes in unity with the World Soul. From the World Soul, the individual soul is able to move up to the Intelligible, and from the Intelligible, the individual soul can finally reach the Absolute One. This had crucial influence on how Augustine viewed his pilgrimage toward God the Father. Jesus, being his Logos, is how Augustine viewed his salvation; however, his righteousness wasn’t an instant righteousness from Christ. Rather than being declared righteous, Augustine believed that he was made righteous through a process (McGrath 1993). “And, as yet, I was not humble enough to hold the humble Jesus; nor did I understand what lesson his weakness was meant to teach us. (Confessions, VII)” Here, Augustine explains that he was not yet able to receive Jesus. Augustine blends the doctrine of Justification, being justified before God for Christ’s sake, with Sanctification, the fruits of Christian faith (McGrath 1993). This results in a process in which, by God’s grace, we are eventually pulled to righteousness. When one mixes Justification with Sanctification, he is essentially mixing the law with the gospel. This is important to remember when dealing with why Augustine would view Christians as the most just rulers for the city of man. “Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” (Romans 3:20) “For by grace you have been saved through faith; that is not of yourselves. It is a gift of God, not of works; lest any man shall boast.” (Ephesians 2:8, 9) According to the apostle Paul, man cannot be justified by his own works, but only by God’s grace through faith in Christ. Augustine also believed that it was only by God’s grace that anyone is justified; however he believed that God makes us good by causing us to imitate Christ’s righteousness. Through this process of imitating Christ’s righteousness, Augustine believed one was made just. If the city of God consists of those who have completed this process of being justified, those who are justified will actually be righteous according also to the law since Christ was righteous according to the law (Matthew 5:17). Augustine is able to conclude from this that members of this city of God are able to be the best rulers according to the law. If forensic justification, being declared righteous, was the truth for Augustine, a member of the city of God wouldn’t necessarily be able to rule according to the law. As a member of the city of God, he does not live by the law; rather he lives by the gospel.

Augustine’s view of the Christian being the most just ruler has a peculiar connection with Plato’s idea of philosopher kings. When Plato described his allegory of the cave through Socrates, he spoke of the importance of philosophy and wisdom (Republic VII). The way one becomes a philosophy king requires a process in which he enters into the intelligible world. According to Plato, we all start off as prisoners seeing shadows caused by puppeteers and a light from the fire behind the prisoners. The prisoners cannot see the puppeteers, and they are only seeing images of what is real. In order for the prisoners to see the intelligible world, someone must drag them out of the cave. When the prisoners first come out of the cave, their eyes take a while to adjust. After their eyes have adjusted, they are able to see what is real. After they have learned what is real, they go back into the cave. When they are back in the cave, they are criticized for not being able to see in the dark. Once their eyes have adjusted to the darkness of the cave, they are to act as philosopher kings and rule with what they have know from the outside of the cave. As Plato viewed philosophers as the most just rulers, Augustine viewed Christians as the most just rulers. Philosophers went through a process of reaching the intelligible world while Christians go through a process of justification. Similar to Augustine’s view of God’s grace as a guide through the process of justification, Plato described the process to the intelligible world as being dragged to the outside of the cave. At the beginning of the Republic, Plato speaks of justice through Socrates. Justice is the main concern from the beginning of the dialogue. In order for any city to the just, the rulers of the city must be just. The dragging of the prisoners to the outside of the cave, for Plato, is being taught philosophy. They are learning of the best knowledge possible. They are reaching that perfect justice. For Augustine, the Christian also reaches that perfect justice by imitating Christ. The Christian learns through Christ, his Logos, how to be just. God’s grace guides the Christian, using the Logos to guide the Christian in the ways of righteousness. The Christian, according to Augustine, is eventually able to reach that complete righteousness and he is fully justified. The Christian is then qualified, as is the philosophy king for the Republic, to be the most just ruler for the city of man.

Augustine’s deep study of the Platonic and Neo-Platonic philosophy caused him to think in the mindset of a process of justification. As Wassmer (1960) points out, Augustine depended on the mystic philosophy of Plotinus when learning Christian doctrine from the sermons of St. Ambrose. Being fascinated by the similarities between Christianity and the Platonists and Neo-Platonists, Augustine found himself influenced by them theologically. As a result of Platonic and Neo-Platonic influence, Augustine viewed his justification as an imitation of Christ. If Augustine would have confessed forensic justification in which one is declared righteous, he would have left works of righteousness out of justification. He defined justification as a process of imitating Christ. Since imitating Christ would require one to live according to the law, the justified Christians, in Augustine’s view, were just according to the law. Since Augustine viewed Christians as just according to the law rather than according to the gospel, he concluded that Christians would be the most just rulers in the city of man.



Bibliography

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