Augustine's Enchiridion

As I read the Enchiridion I could not help but find myself thinking of the world as Augustine knew it. He lived in one of the most transformational times in Western (perhaps world) history, the disintegration of the Western Roman Empire. I took note that his City of God was prompted by the sack of the Eternal City.

The Sack of Rome by the Visigoth King Alaric and his army was a tragic event for the Latin West. But, Alaric’s sack was not as violent as one might think. Alaric was a semi-Romanized Goth who led an army of Foederati. They were seeking pay, titles, land and such things that might have allowed them to be incorporated into the Roman Empire; they did not seek to destroy it. If the arrogant Valens had handled the situation of the Danube crossing better perhaps the tragedy could have been avoided altogether.

Now I flash to the time when Augustine is writing the Enchiridion. The West has all but fallen. Germanic tribes occupied vast tracts of the Empire and within a few years Gaeseric would be leading his armies to into Africa itself. Africa was wracked with violence and religious strife. Everywhere he looked the world he knew was falling apart. I tend to think this constituted a real and present danger to folks like Augustine. Where the sack of Rome was perpetuated by an enemy far away who sought to be incorporated into the Imperial order, the Vandals were a horse of a different color. Nor, were the Vandals far away, they were scouring the sea in piratanical raids that the Roman Navy was becoming unable to resist. The Vandals were not the Goths, Gaeseric was not Alaric, Augustine and his contemporaries had every right to know fear.

In 421, the year Augustine wrote his Enchiridion, the Church was a bubbling cauldron. The struggle with the Donatist’s was still fresh in the minds of Christians, the Pelagian controversy was in full swing and the life and death struggle with Arianism, once thought defeated, was coming into the for again, on the spears of Germanic tribesmen.

Pelagianism can be drawn around a few central points;

1. Even if Adam had not sinned, he would have died.


2. Adam's sin harmed only himself, not the human race.


3. Children just born are in the same state as Adam before his fall.


4. The whole human race neither dies through Adam's sin or death, nor rises again through the resurrection of Christ.


5. The (Mosaic Law) is as good a guide to heaven as the Gospel.


6. Even before the advent of Christ there were men who were without sin.

To my 21st century ears these sound like rational and sane statements of a legitimate faith perspective. But, to the Ortho-Catholic party of Augustine’s time these were dangerous heresies that must be stamped out. Augustine opposes Pelagius’s theology in a number of places in his handbook; some to be noted are as follows;

XXVI-Through Adam’s sin his whole posterity were corrupted, and were born under the penalty of death which he had incurred
XLV-In Adam’s first sin many types of sin were involved.
XLVI-It is probable that children are involved in the guilt not only of the first pair, but of their immediate parents as well.
LI-All men born of Adam are under condemnation, and only if new born in Christ are freed from condemnation.
Augustine goes out of his way to refute Pelagian thought without actually addressing the Pelagian issue head on. Arian Christology is attacked the same way and if the primary tenants of Arian Christianity were held in contrast to Augustinian thought a similar result would manifest itself.