“Watch ye“ (Acts 16:13)

Several years ago I delivered a talk on Augustine. An elderly father and grandfather questioned me at the door – “What happened to Augustine’s son?” This was a sound question and one that I had not quite covered. Augustine lived with a woman for many years, with whom he had fathered a son called Adeodatus, who was in his mid teens when Augustine was converted.

The reason this thoughtful man asked the question was that Augustine had abandoned the woman—what we would today call his common-law wife—after many years together. Our sympathies certainly extend to this lady who was left alone, but did he also abandon his son? No – he didn’t. He cared for the lad and we observe something of this in his account of the boy’s heart wrenching grief on the death of Monica, as he wept for his grandmother.

Caring for his son, however, in turn caused the boy and his mother to be separate. Therefore on account of Augustine’s Christianity, a mother lost her son and a family was broken apart. This presents a conundrum.

The question about Adeodatus leads naturally to another question: why did Augustine not simply marry the boy’s mother after his conversion?

The answer lay in his attitude to sexual relationships. Augustine was deeply ashamed of the wanton way in which he indulged his sexual passions. In my judgement, Augustine’s reaction to his former life led him to view sexual desire with excessive suspicion. While affirming marriage as God’s ordinance, he increasingly regarded celibacy as the higher spiritual calling, a perspective that profoundly influenced the medieval Church. Historian Dairmaid McCulloch in his “History of Christianity” aptly remarks – “It was a view momentous in its consequences for the Western Church’s attitude to sexuality”.

Augustine as we will see, is lauded by Protestants for his works on grace and the sovereignty of God. But there was another side to his theology that was neither biblical nor healthy – one which bore fruit in the cloisters and the exaltation of celibacy for centuries to come.

Nevertheless we should reflect upon the moral degradation of Roman society, which almost destroyed the soul of this man. His reaction was shaped by his lifestyle and the times in which he lived.

Therefore, while we thank God for faithful teachers of the past, we must always test their teaching by the unchanging Word of God.

But before we rush off to judge him harshly for his errors, let us search our own hearts in the light of Scripture as we too are children of our times.

“Though with a scornful,wonder
Men see her sore oppressed,
By schism’s rent asunder,
By heresies distressed,
Yet saints their watch are keeping,
Their cry goes up ‘How long?’
And soon the night of weeping
Shall be the morn of song”.
Samuel John Stone