Augustine’s Enchiridion

Theology of Augustine with Dr. Gerald P. Boersma, April 29, 2021

            St. Augustine was a prolific writer. One of his later works is Enchiridion. Enchiridion is rather unique among Augustine’s work, as it was written at the request of a man named Laurentius, who desired to have a basic outline of the faith. In Enchiridion, Augustine sets out to summarize those truths which he believes most essential for Laurentius to know. Enchiridion is Augustine’s Catechism, even though does not adhere to the classic question and answer format of a catechism. Enchiridion functions as a summary of, and serves as an introduction to, Augustine’s theology, highlighting its essential features. It is available in many different editions, at a variety of price points, and a variety of accessibility as to translation and readability. I utilized the inexpensive and eminently readable Veritatis Splendor Publications Kindle Edition of Enchiridion.

            Augustine begins with a short introduction, in which he equates knowledge of God with wisdom: “Now, just as no one can exist of himself, so no one can be wise of himself, but only by the enlightening influence of Him of whom it is written, All wisdom comes from the Lord.” (21) Augustine wants to Laurentius to have this gift of true wisdom, and thus sets out to write, at Laurentius’ request, this handbook of theology, which Laurentius may carry with him. Augustine states “You are anxious, you say, that I should write a sort of handbook for you, which you might always keep beside you, containing answers to the questions you put....” (23) Augustine agrees to undertake the task but warns of the limitations of a book small enough to carry in one’s pocket can only give an overview and will not serve him if he wishes to defend the faith. He first makes his thesis statement: “To return, then, to the three graces through which, as I have said, God should be worshipped— faith, hope, and love: to state what are the true and proper objects of each of these is easy.” (25) But we will not find such slight knowledge to be enough: “ But to defend this true doctrine against the assaults of those who hold an opposite opinion, requires much fuller and more elaborate instruction. And the true way to obtain this instruction is not to have a short treatise put into one's hands, but to have a great zeal kindled in one's heart.” (26) We must bear this limitation in mind as we read Enchiridion. Augustine does not intend for it to be, in any way, a complete statement of his theology. It is a starting point, a place where one may find answers, but not answers in such depth as to approach apologetics. We have here the essence of Augustine’s theology, presented as a base from which one can learn enough to enkindle that the zeal.

            The first lesson Augustine teaches is that our true wisdom is in our fear of God. He states, “the true wisdom of man is piety.” (21) We are called not to be fearful of God, but to be in awe of Him and worship Him, through the three great virtues of faith, hope and love. Of these, Augustine states “these must be the chief, nay, the exclusive objects of pursuit in religion.” (23) Augustine thus begins with the most basic lesson. Faith leads us to God; hope sustains us in this life; and love is the expression of that faith and hope. Augustine points out that in the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, we “have those three graces exemplified: faith believes, hope and love pray. But without faith the two last cannot exist, and therefore we may say that faith also prays.” (26) Faith’s concern is timeless: “We believe, for example, that Christ died—an event in the past; we believe that He is sitting at the right hand of God—a state of things which is present; we believe that He will come to judge the quick and the dead—an event of the future.” (27-28) Faith, hope and charity are intertwined; “there is no love without hope, no hope without love, and neither love nor hope without faith.” (30)

            Augustine moves on to creation, for ; all things were created by the goodness of God. in creation, we see the Trinity at work. Of God and the Trinity, Augustine states “nothing exists but Himself that does not derive its existence from Him; and that He is the Trinity— to wit, the Father, and the Son begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeding from the same Father, but one and the same Spirit of Father and Son.” (31-32) Since all things were created by God, all things “are good, even taken separately. Taken as a whole, however, they are very good, because their ensemble constitutes the universe in all its wonderful order and beauty.” (32) Augustine goes on to relationship between good and evil: all things are good, and evil is the absence of good. This is an important lesson, for the knowledge of good and evil is vital for the salvation of our souls. Augustine says that “vices in the soul are nothing but privations of natural good.” (33) Our bodies are good; we are made good, but not perfectly good. Thus, we are subject to corruption, because only that which is perfectly good cannot be corrupted. Just as all made things ultimately will fail, so will all things made by God which are not perfectly made. Our souls are perfectly made; angels are perfectly made, and thus our souls and angels both exist in and for all time, for they themselves are not evil. But, as we know, the things of nature change, live, die, cease to exist. A person may be good, and yet do evil, for he is not perfectly good. Augustine explains further: “therefore every being, even if it be a defective one, in so far as it is a being is good, and in so far as it is defective is evil.” (36-37) Evil cannot exist without good, but good can and does exist without evil. Only evil can come from evil; evil intent cannot bring about good: “And in the same way, just as an evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit, so an evil will cannot produce good works. But from the nature of man, which is good, may spring either a good or an evil will.” (39)

            Our goal must be to avoid error, for the avoidance of evil is what holds us on the path to heaven. To do so we must know the causes of good and evil: “But we ought to know the causes of good and evil as far as man may in this life know them, in order to avoid the mistakes and troubles of which this life is so full. For our aim must always be to reach that state of happiness in which no trouble shall distress us, and no error mislead us.” (40)

            Augustine gives a short treatise on lying here, similar to what he writes in De Mendacio, stating that to lie is to sin; he does not recognize what we call a “social lie,” such as when we complement a new hairstyle that we may not care for. “It seems certain that every lie is a sin, though it makes a great difference with what intention and on what subject one lies.” (43) Augustine concedes that not all lies are equal. If we lie to assist someone, it is less of a sin than to lie to cause someone harm. Any action which harms another is more grievous than an action which causes no harm; but the lie itself is a sin, regardless of the outcome. Augustine, though, clarifies that we cannot lie without intending to lie. The lie is the action of telling what we know to be an untruth; to make a statement in error is to be wrong, but to be wrong is not a lie. . We sin not by accident, but by deliberate action. As Augustine states, “not only when a man knows the truth, but even when, as a man may be, he is mistaken and deceived, it is his duty to say what he thinks in his heart, whether it be true, or whether he only think it to be true.” (52)

            We may ask why Augustine spends so much time on the sin of lying. It is because to speak what is not in the heart is to lie not just with your words, but to lie with your heart. It is an act of non-love. It is a betrayal of trust. If we are to lead others to God, they must be able to have faith and trust in us, else how could we show them to have faith and trust in God?

            Augustine moves on to discuss angels and men, specifically discussing the difference between the sin and punishment of the angels who turned against God, and the sin and punishment of Adam and all men. The fallen angels were banished from heaven, but man’s punishment is death.

God had threatened [Adam] with this punishment of death if he should sin, leaving him indeed to the freedom of his own will, but yet commanding his obedience under pain of death; and He placed him amid the happiness of Eden, as it were in a protected nook of life, with the intention that, if he preserved his righteousness, he should thence ascend to a better place. (55-56)

Adam’s sin, however, becomes our introduction to the justice and mercy of God. Augustine writes that, while Adam’s sin reduced mankind to the state of misery, we were restored through God’s mercy, “For He judged it better to bring good out of evil, than not to permit any evil to exist.” (57)   As for those angels who were loyal to God, they were rewarded: “the rest remained steadfast in piety and obedience to their Lord, and obtained, what before they had not enjoyed, a sure and certain knowledge of their eternal safety, and freedom from the possibility of falling.” (59) The angels who remain in heaven steadfastly do God’s will, and have no fear of falling, for God has protected them from turning against his will. This bodes well for man, “for this is the promise to the saints, that at the resurrection they shall be equal to the angels of God.” (60)

            Augustine tells us that while we lose our free will through sin, and must be redeemed, it is, as Paul writes, that “by grace are you saved, through faith.” (62) But we must be open to receive grace:

For the man's righteousness of will precedes many of God's gifts, but not all; and it must itself be included among those which it does not precede. We read in Holy Scripture, both that God's mercy ‘shall meet me,’ and that His mercy ‘shall follow me.’ It goes before the unwilling to make him willing; it follows the willing to make his will effectual. (65-66)

Grace is God’s free gift to us, but if we chose to cut ourselves off from God, then we are not able to receive those gifts He wishes for us.

            Augustine next addresses that greatest gift of God, the Incarnation: “The meaning of the Word being made flesh, is not that the divine nature was changed into flesh, but that the divine nature assumed our flesh.” (67) Augustine explains a phrase from 2 Corinthians: “For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.” (2 Corinthians 5:21) Augustine explains “nevertheless, on account of the likeness of sinful flesh in which He came, He was called sin, that He might be sacrificed to wash away sin. For, under the Old Covenant, sacrifices for sin were called sins. And He, of whom all these sacrifices were types and shadows, was Himself truly made sin.” (77) In Baptism, we die to sin with Christ , and rise with him to new life.

            Augustine further shows us that the events of Christ’s Passion, Resurrection and Ascension all give us images of Christian life. For example, “If you then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sits on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For you are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” (90) We are called to follow Christ; to strive to live our lives as he did.

            Augustine concedes that there are things we do not know, such as how angelic society is organized, nor can we explain the way angels appear to man, looking as though they have bodies. We cannot understand things of heaven while we are still in this world. Consider that, as Augustine warns, Satan will appear to us as a good angel to try to trick us, to deceive us into sinning. Satan knows what we will gain by entering heaven; Satan seeks to turn us to sin, so that we cannot attain heaven, the place Satan lost the right to through his own sin. Our task is to attain heaven; Satan’s self-given task is to keep us from that. We cannot even imagine the peace we will find in heaven: “for in heaven there is unbroken peace, both between all the intelligent creatures that exist there, and between these and their Creator. And this peace, as is said, passes all understanding; but this, of course, means our understanding, not that of those who always behold the face of their Father.” (101)

            Augustine discusses faith without works, which he says is not enough to save one. He here addresses the fact that this handbook is merely a short reference work, and directs Laurentius to one of his own full-length works, Of Faith and Works, stating that in that book, “to the best of my ability, God assisting me, I have shown from Scripture, that the faith which saves us is that which the Apostle Paul clearly enough describes when he says: ‘For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision avails anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith which works by love.’” (106) We can here return to his earlier statement, “there is no love without hope, no hope without love, and neither love nor hope without faith.” (30) Faith without works is faith separated from hope and love. If there can be no love without faith , neither can there be true faith without love. Similarly, we must atone for our sins, but we cannot do that simply by giving charity. Charity alone is not atonement; we must change our hearts and lives. We need to live out the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, and repent. Complete repentance and change of heart means forgiving others and loving our enemies. We are forgiven as we forgive others. We are not the judge of our own sins or the sins of others; only God judges the gravity of sin. Augustine reminds us that “there are two causes that lead to sin: either we do not yet know our duty, or we do not perform the duty that we know.” (126) It is God’s mercy that may lead us to true repentance, and it is by God’s mercy that we are forgiven our sins.

            Augustine cannot state “at what time the infant begins to live in the womb.” (128) This is a reasonable position for someone of his time. Without the tools which we have now to detect heartbeat, growth and other signs of life, there would be little reason for him to suppose any understanding of a technical, medical issue. Still, he does not take a position, at least in this work, as to when body and soul are joined. He does, however, state that once an infant has lived, even if only in the womb, and then die, they share in the resurrection of the dead. He also touches on cases of persons with birth defects, particularly as relates to the resurrection of the body. He concludes that our bodies will attain perfection at the resurrection. In some way, we will look like ourselves, be recognizable, but may or may not be identical to our earthly bodies. Our bodies will be spiritual bodies, and our “ease of movement shall be as complete as [our] happiness.” (134) Augustine further makes it clear that, at the resurrection of the body, the bodies of all will be resurrected, not just those destined for heaven. Those souls lost to eternal damnation will be joined to their bodies, and will suffer, body and soul. This seems harsh to us, but he explains that we will understand what is not now understandable, and God’s judgments will be explained to us.

            Augustine tells us that God permits evil only in the justice of his judgment. All acts work to fulfill God's will. This does not mean that evil acts are God's will, but simply that God is able to turn evil acts toward his will. It is by God's will that we are all saved. Once we are saved, once we enter heaven, we “shall be much freer when it shall be wholly impossible for [us] to be the slave of sin.” (152) In our next life, our wills will be aligned with the will of God; the choice of evil will not be possible for us.

            One of the most important points that Augustine makes is that faith, works, and attentiveness to God’s will are not all we need for salvation. We are saved by God's grace. Even in the garden of Eden, God's grace was necessary for mankind. Eternal life itself is the gift of God. God may grant us this gift because of our good works, but it is a gift, not something we truly earn. Through the sin in the garden, we lost eternal life, and needed a mediator to reconcile us to God, and the mediator could only have been God himself. Augustine states “it was expedient that a mediator, who alone of the human race was born, lived, and died without sin, should reconcile us to God. (156-157) Writing hundreds of years before the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, Augustine would have had no reason to consider that Mary herself had been born, lived, and died without sin. Taking just this one section of this one work of his into consideration, we could imagine that Augustine might be willing to accept Mary having the title of Co-redemptrix, but would certainly reject the title of Co-mediatrix, as he has specifically stated that only God himself could be the mediator.

            Augustine holds that between the time of death and the final resurrection of the body, “the soul dwells in hidden retreat, where it enjoys rest or suffers affliction just in proportion to the merit it has earned by the life which it led on earth.” (158) He appears to suggest that our souls will not attain heaven until after the final resurrection at the end of the world. However, since he in other places has held that heavenly time and earthly time are not comparable, it is difficult to determine if he means to suggest that, or if he means that the “hidden retreat” is a heavenly place where they souls exist while waiting to be reunited with their resurrected bodies. 

            After this short treatise on death and the afterlife, Augustine turns from discussing faith to discussing hope. The Lord's Prayer addresses everything that pertains to hope. He tells us that Matthew list seven petitions of the Lord's prayer, while Luke gives us their substance in five petitions. It is the perfect prayer, and the only prayer we have specifically taught us by Christ. Augustine then moves on to love, thus coming full circle, for, as St. Paul wrote, “So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:13) Love is implanted in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

            Augustine builds to his conclusion by comparing four stages of the life of a Christian to the corresponding stages in the life of the Church. “The first is before the law, the second is under the law, the third is under grace, and the fourth is full and perfect peace. . . For the church existed at first before the law; then under the law, which was given by Moses; then under grace, which was first made manifest in the coming of the mediator.” (171) it is only proper but the stages of life of a Christian correspond to the stages of life of the church, for the church is not a building, is not a hierarchy, but it is the people

            Augustine ends his treatise telling us that love is the goal of all the Commandments, as God Himself is Love. “This the end of every commandment is charity, that is, every commandment has love for its aim.” (173) So, then, let us live in and for this love, holding this work of Augustine’s as our own handbook for our life.