The Mestizo Augustine

A Theologian Between Two Cultures

Justo L. González

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780830873081
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Few thinkers have been as influential as Augustine of Hippo. His writings, such as Confessions and City of God, have left an indelible mark on Western Christianity. He has become so synonymous with Christianity in the West that we easily forget he was a man of two cultures: African and Greco-Roman. The mixture of African Christianity and Greco-Roman rhetoric and philosophy gave his theology and ministry a unique potency in the cultural ferment of the late Roman empire. Augustine experienced what Latino/a theology calls mestizaje, which means being of a mixed background. Cuban American historian and theologian Justo González looks at the life and legacy of Augustine from the perspective of his own Latino heritage and finds in the bishop of Hippo a remarkable resource for the church today. The mestizo Augustine can serve as a lens by which to see afresh not only the history of Christianity but also our own culturally diverse world.

1

A Tortuous Path to Faith

The Context

Strange as it may seem, Latin Christian theology did not arise in Rome or even elsewhere in Western Europe, but rather in North Africa. What is more, the first bishop of Rome who wrote in Latin was not a Roman, but an African. Late in the second century Africa was the stage on which Latin theological language developed in the works of Tertullian, who ardently defended his faith both against pagans and against all sorts of heresy. Some decades later that area produced Cyprian, the creator of much of Western ecclesiology and an advocate for the rights of the African episcopacy over against Roman pretensions. And it was in that area that Augustine was born and lived most of his life.

If we find that surprising, we will probably also be surprised to learn that at that time the northern regions of the African continent were not a dry and arid land. At that point the climactic changes that would eventually lead the region to its present condition had not yet taken place. On the contrary, the land in which Augustine was born was rich and fertile. In the areas near the coast, cereals and fruits were produced and cattle were herded. Farther into the interior, on the slopes of mountains, there were abundant olive groves and thick forests. In those forests there were many beasts such as bears and leopards that were hunted and exported to Rome and other cities to serve in the cruel entertainment of those days.

On the other hand, it is important to note that at the time the word Africa would not have meant the entire continent that now carries that name. In Augustine’s time, that was the name given primarily to the Roman province of Africa, whose center was the city of Carthage (near where Tunis is today). But, by extension, “Africa” was frequently a way of referring to the northern coast of that continent from Morocco to Libya, but not including Egypt; that is, besides the province of Africa itself, the provinces of Cyrenaica, Numidia, Byzacena, Tripolitania and Mauritania. For the purposes of our history, the region that most interests us is the province of Africa itself and, toward the west, Numidia and Mauritania.

The small town of Tagaste, where Augustine was born in 354 (and which is now called Souk-Ahras), was in Numidia, near the border of the province properly called Africa, or Proconsular Africa. Being in the interior of the land, Tagaste had a population that was mostly Berber, while administration was in Roman hands. Patrick, Augustine’s father, was one of the representatives of Roman authority in Tagaste, and therefore he was a person of relative importance within that limited circle, but very secondary within the total framework of the Roman Empire. There were also a few other Roman families in the city. One of them was the family of Alypius, whom Augustine does not seem to have met in Tagaste but somewhat later in Carthage, and whom he called “my soul brother.” The very fact that Augustine did not know Alypius until he was in Carthage may be due to the difference in age between them, but more probably to a social scale in Tagaste in which the aristocratic family of Alypius was high above that of Augustine—particularly since Augustine had an African mother. Tagaste was also the hometown of Romanianus, a relatively well-to-do man—and perhaps a distant relative of Patrick and therefore also of Augustine—who saw the promise of young Augustine, opened his library to him and covered the cost of much of his study, apparently hoping that after returning to Tagaste Augustine would become a tutor to his children.

Tagaste would have had a few thousand inhabitants and was the administrative center for the surrounding area, where land was mostly held in latifundia dedicated to cereals, fruit, cattle and olive groves. Most of the owners of such latifundia preferred to live in larger cities such as Carthage or Rome, and therefore the administration of the lands was left in the hands of stewards, some of whom were slaves and some freedmen. As to the population of Tagaste itself, most of it seems to have been of Berber origin, like that of the surrounding area.

Some five or six centuries before the time of Augustine, when Rome was beginning to develop what became its vast empire, the entire area was ruled from Carthage. This was an independent city that had been founded by Phoenician colonizers. In the second century before Christ, it vied with Rome over hegemony over the western Mediterranean. Since these Phoenicians were known as “Punics,” the wars between Rome and Carthage are known in history as the “Punic Wars.” The struggle was difficult, and at one point the Carthaginian general Hannibal led his troops to the very outskirts of Rome. But in the end Rome won, under the leadership of General Scipio, who was called “the African,” not because he came from that land, but rather to honor him as the conqueror of Africa. This was in the year 146 before the birth of Christ, and the Roman senate decreed that Carthage would be demolished so that it would never again rise as a rival to the city set on seven hills. This was done, but less than 120 years later, just before the beginnings of the Christian era, Emperor Augustus ordered that the city be rebuilt, now as part of the Roman Empire and capital of the province of Africa. The success of that new foundation was such that when Augustine was born, less than four centuries later, Carthage was the second largest city in the western Mediterranean, surpassed only by Rome.

But centuries earlier, when those first Punic colonizers reached the area, they did not find it uninhabited but populated by Berbers, or Libyans, a seminomadic people occupying the lands from the Mediterranean coast to the sands of the Sahara. The Berbers did not disappear. Some of them withdrew to more remote areas where Punic power did not reach, while others remained in the conquered lands, subjected to the Punic conquerors. Such Berbers labored in the less respected occupations, did the most arduous work and bore the most onerous taxes.

Thus, in the region that served as the background for most of Augustine’s life—the area where he was raised and where he did most of his pastoral and theological work—there were at least three cultural strata, sometimes intermingling and sometimes in conflict. There are indications of many people of Punic or Berber origin seeking to become assimilated within Roman culture and order. But it is also clear that relations between these various groups were not always friendly, and that many resisted the invasions, first by the Punics and later by the Romans. Apparently there was not in the area the strict social stratification that existed, for instance, in Egypt, where a Copt who tried to pass as a Greek or as a Roman was considered a criminal and was punished by the state, and where Greeks and Jews occupied intermediate positions between Copts and Romans. But there was a certain social and economic stratification, so that the higher levels of society were reserved for people of Roman blood, and those who tried to approach such social levels had to abandon their cultural and linguistic traditions, while the rest were called “Berbers” or “Punics.” Frequently there was not a clear distinction between these two groups. Therefore, when Augustine speaks of customs, language and traditions as “Punic” it is difficult to know whether he is referring to the ancient Carthaginians of Phoenician origin or to the original inhabitants of the region. Thus, for instance, when he refers to the Punic language it is very possible that he is referring to the most common speech of the area where he was raised, which was actually Berber.

There were three main languages in the area where Augustine was raised: the Latin of the empire and of administration; the Punic language, Semitic in origin, which was rapidly disappearing; and the Libyan language, which the Berbers spoke. The decadence of Punic was such that when Augustine and his contemporaries referred to a language as “Punic” frequently they actually meant Libyan. Augustine himself refers to Libyan as “Punic language, that is, African.” As centuries went by, that ancient language of Semitic origin disappeared, and today only echoes of it are heard in the island of Malta, whose language is a combination of ancient Punic with several other languages, and according to some linguists has some traits typical of the Arabic of that area—a language that, as ancient Punic, is also of Semitic origin. As to Libyan, it continued being spoken in the interior of North Africa through the centuries, and it is the background of twenty-first-century Berber—a language that many in the area prefer to Arabic and that, together with Arabic, in this century has become an official language of Morocco, as well as of other regions of North Africa.

As the ancient Punic language was beginning to disappear, in Tagaste and the surrounding areas the most common language was Berber or Libyan. During the twentieth century a series of archaeological diggings have unearthed hundreds of Libyan inscriptions, and some written in both Libyan and Latin; but very few in Punic. Therefore, although there were three languages in North Africa, two of them were dominant: the Libyan spoken by the lower echelons of society and in rural areas, and the Latin of administration and aristocracy.

Furthermore, this stratification was not only social but also geographic. The Latin-speaking population was concentrated in the cities, particularly those along the coast. But, with few exceptions, even in the cities those of Latin roots and speech were the elite that ruled over a mostly Berber population. In the last two centuries, excavations in the cemeteries in the area—including the one in Hippo, where Augustine served as a bishop—have led to the conclusion that Libyan or Berber was the language most commonly spoken. Farther south, Libyans or Berbers were by far the majority of the population and had a certain degree of autonomy—although when that autonomy was stretched too far Roman legions would intervene to remind the population that it was part of the Roman Empire.

The difference in cultures was not limited to social and geographic stratification, but also resulted in differences in the values that each of them considered most important. Greco-Roman culture valued order and rationality above all. For centuries, Greek philosophy had been proud of its rationality, of its refusal to allow itself to be carried away by those passions that hide the truths that only reason may know. For their part, Romans had reason to be proud of their legal system—that is, of the way in which they had learned to apply to the social order the principles of rationality that the Greeks had proposed. For this reason, many in the Greco-Roman world were convinced that Stoicism was the best philosophy. It certainly was the most commonly held by Romans in Augustine’s time. This was so because Stoicism insisted on knowing the “natural law” that rules over all things, freeing oneself from the passions that hide or oppose that natural law, and thus leading a reasonable life that is the highest level of fulfillment humans can attain. Over against this, African cultures valued emotions and spontaneity. They certainly had laws, but their purpose was not the good of the society at large, but rather the good of the relatively small nucleus of people tied by familial and similar bonds. Such laws were very important, for without them the social nuclei could dissolve. But they were laws of the group and for the group, and not laws imposed from outside on the basis of a supposedly superior rationality. As a consequence of these cultural contrasts, Romans usually saw Berbers as “barbarians” lacking in civilization, and the Punics as slightly better. And the Africans—both Berbers and Punics—would look at the Romans as imperialists who covered the laws and the order they wished to impose under a varnish of rationality.

All this was reflected in the religious life of the area. Ancient Berbers had been polytheists who worshiped a great variety of deities related to the various forces of nature or to a particular sanctuary. But above all these divine beings there was a supreme and wise God known as “the Ancient”—Senex. Punics brought with themselves the gods of the lands of Canaan and Phoenicia, dominated by Baal Hammon—from whose name many Punic names are derived, such as Hannibal and Hasdrubal. The rule of this particular god over all others was such that today many see emerging monotheistic tendencies in Punic religion. At any rate, soon Senex and Baal were joined into one, which resulted in a general religiosity that was common to the entire area. When the Romans arrived, they applied there the religious policy that they followed in their various conquests: while bringing their own gods and promoting their worship, they tolerated the various religions of each place and encouraged a process by which the gods of those religions would become progressively identified with some of the gods of the Roman pantheon. In formerly Punic lands efforts were made to identify Baal Hammon with Saturn. This policy seems to have succeeded, for ancient documents indicate that the population of that region was devoted to Saturn. But scholars who have studied the matter make it clear that the “Saturn” whom Punics worshiped was more like the ancient Baal Hammon than like the Roman Saturn.

Christianity seems to have arrived in North Africa during the second half of the second century, probably from Italy but perhaps from Phrygia. It soon developed deep roots, and, as already stated, African Christianity took the lead in theological production in the Latin language. But while some of the leaders of that nascent church were of Roman origin or at least had been assimilated into Roman culture—as in the cases of Tertullian and Cyprian—soon the new faith expanded among the Punic and Berber population. These were times of persecution, when Roman authorities opposed Christianity, and therefore it seems likely that the conversion to the new religion by many Africans had overtones of a protest against the existing order, or at least a desire to reclaim a truth and authority beyond the truths and authority of the dominant population.

Therefore it is not surprising that there was always in the area a type of Christianity marked by its strong opposition to Greco-Roman culture. We find an echo of that attitude in the writings of Tertullian, whose ­criticism—and even mockery—of that culture is symptomatic. Toward the end of his life, when it seemed to him that orthodox Christianity was becoming too easily reconciled to the customs and perspectives of the dominant culture, Tertullian and many others opted for Montanism, a movement that was quite critical of the dominant culture and social order. Paradoxically, one of the reasons we know of Tertullian is that he himself appears to be of Latin rootage and certainly was well-versed in Latin law and language, so that his Latin writings were appreciated by the rest of Latin Christendom. But we may well imagine how many other anonymous Christians of Berber or Punic origin held similar opinions and feelings.

A goodly part of the Christian population of the area always retained that attitude of distancing from and even opposition to the dominant culture. A few decades before the birth of Augustine, Emperor Constantine decreed tolerance toward Christians, and eventually both he and his successors declared themselves to be Christians and lent imperial support to the church. Christianity became at first politically and culturally acceptable, then the dominant religion of the empire and finally almost the only religion that was tolerated. Significantly, at a time when senators and other Roman aristocrats were flocking to the baptismal waters, and most of the population was following them, something very different was taking place in Africa. With the theological excuse that some of the bishops recognized by the official church had not stood firm during the persecution that was now ended, a good number of Christians in the provinces of Africa and Numidia abandoned that church. These rebellious Christians, known as Donatists after one of their leaders, Donatus, refused to bend before imperial authority now represented by the official church. As we shall see, as time went by this movement became ever more extreme, eventually leading to violence. But what at present is of interest to us is that Donatism spread mostly among the population of Berber and Punic origin—and that among the most extreme Donatists most were Berber. We shall later deal with Donatism and Augustine’s polemics against it.

Tagaste, the town where Augustine was born, was in the province of Numidia but very near the border of the province of Africa. Until shortly before Augustine’s birth, most of its population was Donatist, and many of them held to that faith even after the death of Augustine. Furthermore, there were always Donatists in Augustine’s own family, and some of them came to hold high positions within that movement.

In any case, all Christianity in that area, Donatist as well orthodox, was characterized by certain emphases. There was an inclination in the Latin West, particularly in Africa, to understand the Christian faith in terms of rules and moral principles. As I have explained in more detail elsewhere (Christian Thought Revisited: Three Types of Theology), this Western theology saw God foremost as a lawgiver and judge, sin as an infraction of the law of God, the human condition as similar to a moral debt, baptism as a washing away or forgiving of the guilt of sin and the work of Jesus as a payment of that debt on behalf of the believer. The consequences of such a way of understanding the gospel that eventually became widespread throughout the Western churc...