There Can Be No End Apart From God

When we look at Augustine, we note that for him, any concept of a humanity closed in on itself as its end is itself only seen coming from the City of Man, the City of the Damned. There are two possible ends, those who unnaturally close themselves from God and so try to establish themselves as an end in and of itself, or those who realize their proper existence and natural goodness resides with God. Those who posit a pure nature which humanity can attain to by itself apart from God are following the lead of Satan, for it suggests that we can become gods unto ourselves and find our own happiness within ourselves, attached to our notion of who and what we are closed off from all others, including and especially God. “Actually, I think I have said enough on the really great and difficult problems concerning the origin of the world, the soul, and the human race,” Augustine begins in Book XV of the City of God.[3] “In regard to mankind I made a division. On the one side are those who live according to man; on the other, those who live according to God. And I have said that, in a deeper sense, we may speak of two cities or human societies, the destiny of one being an eternal kingdom under God while the doom of the other is eternal punishment along with the Devil.”[4] Augustine entirely dismantles the notion of a pure nature for humanity which has humanity aim for humanity as its natural and good end; such a position would end up damned, because it is closed off from God, the source of beatitude.  To be sure, he agrees that there is a limited good found in humanity, so that there are good things found in human activity, in human civilization: “Nonetheless, it is wrong to deny that the aims of human civilization are good, for this is the highest end that mankind of itself can achieve.”[5] But, contra the notion of a pure nature which is good apart from God, Augustine rightfully states that whatever good that humanity attains from itself, it is good because it is from God. “The things of earth are not merely good; they are undoubtedly gifts from God.”[6] The problem is that they are relative goods, and if humanity closes itself in on any such relative good instead of the source of goodness, it sins and closes itself from beatitude and the higher goods which they left behind. “But, of course, if those who get such goods in the city of men are reckless about the better goods of the City of God, in which there is to be the ultimate victory of an eternal, supreme, and untroubled peace, if men so love the goods of the earth as to believe that these are the only goods or if they love them more than the goods they know to be better, then the consequence is inevitable: misery and more misery.”[7]

And so earlier, this was asserted by Augustine, when he wrote:

When a man lives ‘according to man’ and not ‘according to God’ he is like the Devil. For, even an angel had to live according to God and not according to an angel if he were to remain steadfast in the truth, speaking the truth out of God’s grace and not lying out of his own weakness. The same Apostle elsewhere says of man: ‘Yet if God’s truth has abounded through my lie.’ Notice that he says ‘my lie’ and ‘God’s truth.’ So, then, when a man lives according to the truth, he lives not according to himself but according to God. For it was God who said : ‘I am the truth.’[8]

Humanity is either closed in on itself, and so follows the path of the devil, or it is open to God and receives the eternal bounty of God’s deifying grace, grace established in the incarnation of the Lamb of God, slain from the foundation of the world. The notion of “pure nature” apart from such openness to God is to neglect the reality of what that nature is to be, what God has made ourselves to be.  Thus, to Augustine, it is even a lie to suggest humanity can exist and thrive and find any happiness apart from God. Our truth, our essential truth, is itself not from ourselves but God: “Rather, man has been constituted in truth that he meant to live not according to himself but to Him who made him – that is, he was meant to do the will of God rather than his own. It is a lie not to live as a mean was created to live.”[9]

Thus, we have the paradox of being given a good nature, and with it, a good foundation for our existence, but it is not good for us if we hold on to it as the foundation of our happiness. We all want happiness but if we try to find it in ourselves we do not get it, so that natural happiness apart from God cannot be true happiness, and to suggest such is to suggest a contradiction in terms. Hence, as Augustine points out, there is a paradox before us. “Why this paradox, except that the happiness of man can come not from himself but only from God, and that to live according to oneself is to sin, and to sin is to lose God? “[10] Once again, only by understanding what our nature is – to know it is meant to be empty of all self-attachment, do we truly understand the diabolical aspects of the notion of a “pure nature” which is said to exist independent from God.   It is self-theosis without power, and so without a happy end. But, the concept is founded on the good principle that our nature as it is made by God is good, and that it was made so that it’s end could be designated by God’s loving freedom and not an end which is established by any demand we make for God.

Truly, does this not all suggest what we can learn in the cross, in the revelation of God? When we attach ourselves to ourselves, that self leads us away from God for it creates a barrier between God and us. There is no salvation, no happiness, to be found until we put that falsely constructed self which comes about through our attachment and closing-in-upon the self on the cross, to let it be crucified and perish, so that in dying to the self, we can load all the sin which we have seeded in through such self-attachment upon Christ and by his mediation find ourselves purified by his fiery love, a love which opens us up and them allows us to grow in God once again.

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[1] To be sure, the question and discussion of the category of a “pure nature” goes back before the 20^th century, but theologians such as Henri de Lubac wrote on why they thought the concept, as it had developed in the recent past, was unacceptable; others pushed back, thinking that they were defending theological tradition when they did so, ignoring the fact that it was mere theological speculation and opinion instead of traditional doctrine. Limbo, for example, would make no sense if the category of pure nature was denied, and so those who taught limbo would have to defend some conception of pure nature, while those who denied pure nature will be able to see limbo itself as a theological dead-end.

[2] Once the human order was able to be established in this form, it was not difficult to eliminate the sacred from the world and to turn everything secular, so that the concept of pure nature lends itself to a theological secularization of the Christian faith.

[3] Saint Augustine, City of God Books VIII – XVI.  Trans. Gerald G. .Walsh SJ and Grace Monahan OSU (New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1952),  413 [XV.1].

[4] Ibid., 413 [XV.1].

[5] Ibid., 419 [XV.4].

[6] Ibid., 420 [XV.4].

[7] Ibid., 420 [XV.4].

[8] Ibid.  353-4 [XIV.4]

[9] Ibid., 354 [XIV.4].

[10] Ibid., 354 [XIV.4].

 

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