A Study On Augustine's Hominology Thought

Bishop Augustine of Hippo, known as "the greatest thinker of the ancient church", is one of the main founders of Christian hominology. Through "Faith seeking understanding"(fides quaerens intellectum), Augustine, on the one hand, gave the hominology legacy baptism of religion and theological transformation, which belongs to Greek and Roman philosophers, such as the Plato and Plotinus. On the other hand, Augustine rationally demonstrated these scripture doctrines and analyzed them from philosophical perspective, on the theological concepts of the Bible and the early church such as divinity and humanity, soul and body, original sin and redemption, freedom and grace. So Augustine has created a"rational defense doctrine" path of research to the maturity of the early Christian hominology thought mature; besides, he has put forward a series of theological and philosophical views which had produced large significance and far-reaching impact to Christian hominology thought of later generations and still influence them today.Although Augustine hominology thought has great research value, but so far, none of domestic scholars have system and comprehensive research on the ideology. Investigating its reason, we find the research mainly faces two major difficulties. First, Augustine hominology thought not only involves the philosophy of ontology, epistemology, theory of human nature and ethics, and also involves theology field such as the theory of god, theory of Christ, theory of original sin and salvation theology.so,as beginning to a system study on his hominology thought, some scholars tend to feel its content too confused and do not know how to start. Second, since the Latin father is unlike the later philosophers who write a special discussion to study problem of human, he make his own humanism thought spread in vast and wide works of different themes, which further increased the difficulty of systematizing his hominology thought.In view of the above difficulties, when we are looking at Augustine's hominology thought, we attempt to search and analyze relevant original documents and research data which are closely around the core issue of its most attention and the most important core concept, without stating and listing all of its related views without emphasis and principle, and thus establish our own research starting point. Augustine's hominology thought, we think, is involved in numerous views of philosophy and theology, but it focus the interpretations of a few basic tenets which the bible provides the Christian hominology:the explanation of "the image of God", the source of the original sin and its heredity and influence in the human nature, the relationship between free will and the grace of God and the significance of the theory of salvation. Through text analysis of Augustine's related works, we further find that his discussions of the above several core problems to some extent, reflect his interpretation of the "soul" which is his core concept, and directly or indirectly, represent his understanding of the origin of the soul, the nature of the soul,home of the soul and the relationship between soul and body.Based on these findings, this dissertation analyzes significance of soul concept in Augustine's related works, in order to investigate and comprehensively review Augustine's hominology ideology which is constructed through explaining and demonstrating the above basic tenets. The full text is divided into the following three parts.The first part is the first two chapters, mainly discusses the theory background, theological and philosophical source, and ideological context of Augustine's hominology thought. Among them, chapter one analyses the influence of the hominology thought from Platonism and Stoicism, and the enlightenment from interpretation of early apologists and fathers about the above basic tenets; chapter two further respectively combing hominology thought development of early Greek-Roman philosophy and Christian theology from two dimensions of theology and philosophy, indicating Christian hominology thought how gradually focused on the interpretation of soul concept in Augustine's age.The second part is chapter three, four, five. They are the core part of this article, mainly around the Augustine's understanding of the concept of "soul", investigating the basic content, key link and theory characteristic on his hominology thought. Among them, chapter three(the nature of the soul and the image of god) emphasizes thought characteristics that Augustine attribute "the image of God" mainly to the rational soul rather than physical body. For Augustine, the rational soul, as receiver of God's image, has shared rationality, freedom and wisdom from God, but he has not negated the value of the body and the unity of soul and body. Chapter four (the origin of soul and delivery of origin sin) mainly discusses Augustine's special theological and philosophical interpretation on the the origin and delivery of origin sin which is based on how he reflect and develop three different views on the origin of soul of early Christian apologists. Chapter five(the ability of soul and the grace of God) analyzes how Augustine treated the relationship between free will and the grace of God and its significance in faith and salvation. Augustine believes that the original sin has tarnished rational soul and resulted in the will losing the original freedom, but he has not put forward an absolute predestination "only by grace" like later Calvin, because in his view, the grace of God in people is mainly embodied in it can update the inner soul and prompt soul to stick to the grace of God and the picking of God, and people also need to restore the freedom of the will and actively cooperate with God's salvation under the action of God's grace. In short, the human in nature is a rational soul created according to the image of God, which is suited for governing the body, and thus enjoys a high position and the freedom of the will because of the image, but original sin has distorted "the image of God" and resulted in "utterly corrupt" of human nature, so human nature can restore its original freedom and goodness only by the grace of God.The third part is chapter six, mainly discussing the basic characteristics and the historical influence of Augustine's hominology thought. We believe that the human in Augustine's idea is the unity of spirituality and materiality, limitless and finiteness, potentiality and reality. On the one hand, he admitted that the soul is the spirit entity which can exist without the body, on the other hand, he did not derive the conclusion of "transmigration of soul"like Origen and others, and also did not interpret the body as temporarily inhabited cage of soul or eventually abandoned tools like Plato and others; He claimed that human is created according to "the image of God", thus has the infinite development potential, on the other hand, he thought that original sin limit the freedom of will which can transform from potential into reality only by the grace of Christ. His thought not only had a great influence in studies of late Roman Christianity, and to a large extent determined the characteristics and development of the medieval Christian hominology thought. After one thousand years of sedimentation and development, his hominology thought during the Reformation once again became the focus of debate of the protestant reformers and Catholic theologians. Until now, his hominology thought still has its position in the protestant theology and its influence in the Catholic philosophy. Any modern Christian philosopher will inevitably involve the issues of what he discussed, used methods, and views what he put forward when he discusses the question of the human.