Augustine of Hippo (354-430) , better known as Holy Augustine , was one of the most notorious Christian theologians and philosophers in history. It was at the center of the intellectual and ecclesiastical activity of the transition from the Ancient Age to the Middle Ages, it was still formed in the classical intellectual environment (Greco-Roman) and also saw the Roman Empire fall into ruins for various reasons, such as the barbarian invasions, the administrative lack of control and the moral crisis that settled on Roman society. His theology da history , that is, his interpretations of the meaning of history based on Christian tradition and doctrine, is fundamental for understanding how the Christian conception of History was (and still is) different from classical conceptions.
In works like “City from God", "Confessions" and "On the Trinity" , Saint Augustine exposed much of his conception of History, which was strongly anchored in the doctrine of the Church, but also influenced by the Neoplatonic philosophy of Plotinus . Augustine's theology of history was fundamentally related to his critique of the pagan conception of time. For the thinkers of the ancient world, the Greco-Latin classics, time could be represented by a Circle , since the world was conceived as eternal in itself, always repeating itself. Augustine, following Christianity, conceived a time represented by the Cross , that is:eternity passes through time, it affects it with the coming of Christ (God made man).
In this view, the world cannot be eternal, because time, that which is transitory and passing, according to Augustine, was created together with the world by God, who is not temporal, but eternal. This critique of pagan times is associated with the Judeo-Christian view of history itself that Augustine absorbed. For both Jewish and Christian traditions, history has a meaning that the Creator traced to creation. A sense that goes from Genesis to Revelation. For Christians, and especially for the Augustinian theology of history, this destiny can be understood as history da salvation.
Thus, the pagan doctrine was lost, according to Augustine, because it lacked the Christian virtues of hope and faith, which were related to the future time and the belief in the promise of life. eternal in another world--a promise made with the sacrifice of Christ for the salvation of mankind. For Augustine, this cannot be confused with the doctrine that there is eternity in the world (in this world), in the belief that this world is cyclic, an “eternal return”, in which everything is repeated, without beginning or end. As a scholar of views on history, Karl Löwith, says:
“What really matters in history, according to Saint Augustine, is not the transitory grandeur of empires, but salvation and condemnation in a world to come. The fixed perspective from which [Augustine] departed for the understanding of present and past events is the final consummation of the future:the final judgment and the resurrection. This ultimate goal is the counterpart of the first beginning of human history in creation and original sin. With regard to these superhistorical aspects of origin and destiny, history itself is an interim between the past revelation of the sacred meaning and its future realization. (Löwith, Karl. The Sense da History. Lisbon:Editions 70, pp. 169.)
Augustine always sought to identify the historical process, the saeculum (world), as a project predetermined by God and also sought to justify God in history , seeing the development of human beings in the world as a necessary experience for the fulfillment of salvation history.
By me. Claudio Fernandes