The Authority of St Augustine

Extract

In his ‘Traite des Études Monastiques’ Dom Jean Mabillon quotes with evident approval the opinion of a contemporary writer that whereas all the Greek Fathers are summed up in St John Chrysostom so all the Latin Fathers can truly be said to be contained in St Augustine. From the year 431 when Pope Celestine I sang the praises of Augustine in his well-known letter to the bishops of Gaul, the teaching Church has not ceased to recommend in an altogether exceptional way his writings and doctrine.

Of course it is in the realm of divine grace that his authority is pre-eminent, but it would be inexact to confine his influence within such a limit. He is the Father of the Western Church, bridging the gulf between the old and the new; providing us with a summary of what had been thought out by his predecessors, and preparing the way for the great medieval development which was to follow. Living his life about midway between the councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon—probably the most vigorous period of the Church’s history—he brought to bear on Christian revelation the elements of pagan philosophy which his powerful and essentially courageous mind had duly assimilated.

With Pelagianism in the fourth century something new appeared. It was almost as if the growing distance between then and the time of our Lord called for an increased self-reliance in him who would follow Christ, in order to bridge the gap. St Augustine, ever strongly aware of God’s transcendence and of man’s impotence before it, opposed and crushed this mistaken self-confidence by insisting on the exclusive omnipotence of love in grace.