Barry's Blog

I came across an article recently, written by Daniel Williams in Christianity Today, on Augustine's perspective on the "greatest good," and it really impacted my thinking about the things that we pursue in our lives, the things we set our hopes and affections on in this brief, temporal life. You may recall that Augustine lived in the fourth and fifth centuries AD, and is considered one of the greatest theologians and philosophers of the church, and served as the bishop of the North African city of Hippo the latter part of his life.

Philosophers and thinkers over the centuries have contemplated the human condition, and what every man strives for, in terms of pursuing the highest good. Cicero, a century before the first century Christian era, argued that there is a "spark of deity" in the human soul, enabling us to reach ultimate goodness. The Greek philosopher Epictetus, a contemporary of the apostle Paul in the first century, reasoned that human nature contained a distinct portion of the essence of God. Such views of humanity suggest that all that is necessary for goodness is to be reminded of the good, and we will naturally follow it.

Yet such views seem to be at odds with human nature, and the Biblical perspective on our behavioral orientation. True, we are made in the image of God, yet we don't seem to have a fundamental propensity toward good. In his great theological treatise to the Romans, the apostle Paul echoes the words of the Old Testament prophet Isaiah when he declares of the human race: "There is no one righteous, no, not one; no one understands, no one seeks God. All have turned aside, together they have gone wrong; no ones does good, not even one"  (Romans 3). Later in the same letter, he even admits that while he agrees with God's law in his mind, he sees a different kind of law waging war in the members of his body (Romans 7).

While self-help books (Christian and secular) tend to proliferate in our own age, promising to help us have a better self-image, become the "new you," raise our children, become better husbands and wives, and meet the moral challenges of our day, few have thought as deeply as Augustine, about how we humans are to properly relate rightly to the objects of human love--temporal goods, oneself, one's neighbor, and God.

In the course of his religious journey to Christianity, Augustine recognized that no object or physical thing can be good or bad in itself. Rather, he argued that it is our will that takes good things and makes them bad by our absorption with them, and consequently, our perversion of them. He also believed that our affections to the world can only be rightly determined by having a proper relation to all things in the light of their Creator. Further, he believed that if anything exists, it exists because it was given existence and is sustained by God. In his book, On The Nature of Good, he wrote that: "All life, potency, health, memory, virtue, intelligence, tranquility, abundance, light, sweetness, measure, beauty, peace--all these things whether great or small...come from the Lord." To Augustine, what makes things good is their right use in the scheme in which God has placed them. Whoever makes a bad use of good things does not make them bad, but merely abuses good things.

He also made a distinction between things that are to be enjoyed and things that are to be used. And what is the difference? "To enjoy something is to hold fast to it in love for its own sake," while everything else is a means to what we should hold fast to, or love. In his magisterial spiritual autobiography, Confessions, he asks:

"What is the object of my love? I asked the earth, and it said, 'It is not I.'...I asked the sea, the deeps, the living creatures that move about, and they responded, 'We are not your God, look beyond us.'...I asked heaven, sun, moon, and stars, and they said, 'Nor are we the God whom you seek.' Then tell me of my God who you are not, tell me something about him. And with a great voice they cried out, 'He made us.'" 

In these few words, Augustine is saying to us that the only thing to be enjoyed, or loved for its own sake, is what is unchangeable and eternal, namely, God. And to love anything else for its own sake (including one's self) is to confuse the creation with the Creator. So when we put our deepest affections on anything God has made as if it were God, we will never find the fulfillment we crave, no matter how good or noble or innocent, because these things were never intended to deliver ultimate happiness. They were given as signs that are supposed to lead us to God.

While Augustine's insights do not tell us how to deal with the specific challenges we face, his wisdom does help us to order our passions, and put the objects of our desire in their rightful place before God. Better to worship and serve the Creator rather than the creation. He once observed, "Good men use the world to enjoy God, whereas bad men use God to enjoy the world."

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow

FinishingWell serves under the auspices of Reflections Ministries, Inc., a non-profit 501©3 organization. If you benefit from these posts, please consider making a financial contribution for the underwriting of this ministry. Please go to the "Donate" page on this website for information about contributions that can be made both by credit card or check. Your contribution is appreciated, and is tax-deductible.