Augustine is one of the philosophers who has left a major mark on our current Western culture. His nine-part work De doctrina Christina became a guideline for church and state after Roman rule.
Monastic life
After his appointment as a teacher in Milan. When he started his task in Milan, an inner development had already slowly brought him closer to Christianity. In this city he began to understand and regret his errors more and more, especially because in the sermons of Bishop Ambrose he was confronted with a fully matured Christianity of Neo-Platonic color. He experienced spiritual growth that led to his conversion in 386. He was baptized at Easter 387.
At his conversion he renounced all vain hopes. He resigned his position, renounced marriage and from then on wanted to live only for God and for the search for wisdom. That is why he returned to Thagaste via Rome to begin a monastic life together with friends in seclusion, study and prayer. However, his Christian beliefs also drove him to testify of the truth and he began to write many books that gradually made him a famous man.
Apparently the people of Hippo had also heard of him. Because when he once went to visit a possible candidate for his monastic community in Hippo, the people regarded him as the successor sent by God to their bishop Valerius, who was already growing old and could no longer cope with all the work. Thus, initially against his will, he was ordained a priest in 390, followed by the episcopal ordination in 395. For thirty-five years he was bishop of this lively port, which was located slightly more northerly than the present-day Bône and which, according to estimates, had a population of 30,000 and 40,000 at that time.
Augustine himself experienced his spiritual calling as a great burden and the great responsibility weighed heavily on him. Yet this gave him the opportunity to grow into great spiritual maturity through dedication to his task and in contact with the reality of the Church and life, especially through the exercise of loving and heroically sustained service. He was convinced that a careful study of the Scriptures was necessary to properly accomplish his task. He provided good helpers in his task by living together with them monastically and thus founding a community in which their formation could take place.
Augustine pedagogue?
Usually one does not hesitate to regard Augustine as someone who gave us insights into pedagogy of lasting value. Yet there is some danger of misunderstanding when he is simply called a pedagogue. He did not design a pedagogical system. In some works he did address issues related to teaching and education, but these were not strictly pedagogical explanations in our sense.
And anyone who realizes the cultural situation in which Augustine lived and worked will understand that he was not yet ready to develop and defend a particular technique or method of education. After all, he lived in a period in which the prevailing culture was no longer a home for all life of the spirit and could no longer bind everyone.
But Augustine is more than a household member of our culture. He belongs to the people who have given our Christian Western culture its prestige. Because late antique culture had become powerless in its final decline, it became, as it were, a homeless person who, out of necessity, had to look for new values and discover new foundations. He faced a different, more difficult task than the other pedagogues. This explains why he gives the impression of being somewhat of an odd presence among them. But this also makes it clear that he always appears rightly in their company. Because all thinkers about education, who stand within Christian, Western culture, have continued to build on the foundations he laid.
A theology of education
The confrontation with a dying pagan culture, the intensity of his own experience and life in a Christian community that came to realize its own task better as growth to maturity took place, have made Augustine aware of the need to revisit the old question more sharply than his predecessors. to ask: What can a Christian do with the riches and opportunities that ancient culture had always offered?
In addition to his own predisposition , circumstances meant that Augustine had to focus his attention on the most fundamental points. He had to discover, assess and appreciate these in order to gain some clarity for himself. He could therefore not first and foremost be a man of practical pedagogy, although practical indications are not lacking in his works. However, the practical comments arise from a view of the fundamental features. Rather, he is the theologian of culture and formation, theologian, because, guided by his Christian vision of life and listening to Revelation, he tries to understand what this is all about.
It is important to realize this. Because it is only from this theological vision that Augustine arrives at his practical maxims and advice and these are therefore always seen in a religious light because of the religious attitude. This becomes very clear in his work De Doctrina chiristiana.
Main points of a vision
In contrast to the untruthfulness in the culture of his day, Augustine focuses on the truth. Man must come back to the truth, because in knowing the truth lies the blissful life. For Augustine, knowing the truth is closely related to doing the truth, and therefore to having the right relationship with oneself, fellow man and God. Thus the desire for truth encompasses not only knowledge, but also morals.
However, it is impossible for man himself to rise by his own strength to knowing the truth and respecting the right relationships. Man lies hopelessly entangled in error and sin.
A Christian culture
Within this orientation, a new culture grows for Augustine’s view, because human effort is necessary to preserve, defend and explain faith and love, to understand the teaching of Scripture. Everything that does not oppose the mentioned orientation can be useful to a greater or lesser extent. The techniques of ancient literary science and knowledge of history can be very useful, but they are not absolutely necessary.
In this way all selfishness and vanity are removed from the practice of the disciplinae. Logical laws can certainly be learned just as well in schools outside the Church , but the truth of judgments must be sought in the Church books. Antiquity had long had an organization of study into different subjects, which were sometimes placed in a certain order according to the task or importance attributed to them.
To indicate these subjects, Augustine uses the traditional term disciplina or the word ars, which is virtually synonymous with disciplina. From the existing subjects, Angustinus wants to preserve the disciplines and arts that are necessary for the maintenance of human society. However, they have a subordinate place. As a rule, one should not spend too much time on such sciences and arts, especially if they only concern the physical condition of man.
The image of the teacher
Given these backgrounds it goes without saying; that when Augustine thinks about the place and task of a human teacher in this educational process, the same religious radicalism also emerges here. After all, every teaching takes on some of the character of a sermon. The teacher will share in the preaching task of the Church in his own way. For although God is the only teacher who prepares us through Scripture so that we may possess Himself as our inner master, Augustine nevertheless recognizes the law in this salvation process that God always appeals to human cooperation.
Augustine also believes that it is necessary to share the truth you possess with others . After all, spiritual goods cannot be possessed like material goods. Handing out material goods reduces the ownership of them. However, the spiritual good is not diminished by communication. There is therefore no possibility to possess the spiritual good as if it were only for yourself.
Moreover, possessing the truth also leads to possessing love. If one has followed and understood the divine teachings, then one has become a partaker of the truth and love . This love entails caring for the brother, so that he too may share in truth and love. Therefore he who might understand the Scriptures must be ready to instruct his brethren.
In Augustine’s eyes, the community of the Church is thus formed , a community in which those who have been awakened in truth and love, through their loving teaching, give shape to and share in the salvific task of the Church.