Gábor Kendeffy: The theme of nothingness of man in the works of Saint Augustine

Developing some important insights of commentators, including O. O’Donovan, R. A. Markus and N. J. Torchia, this paper discusses two traits of Saint Augustine’s anthropology. The first concerns man’s ability to turn away voluntarily from God toward himself and temporal things; an ability which, according to the church father, has always resided in man without being a part of his nature in the strict sense. If we consider that man as a substantive entity (natura) exists in so far as he reflects the divine forms and the will of God, for Augustine, this ability can rather be regarded as a legacy of man’s being created from nothing. Paradoxically, as it seems to me, the church father regards this inherited ‘nothingness”, which became active with the Fall and has been operating since then, as the only characteristic truly peculiar to man. The second trait of Augustine’s anthropology (not independent of the first) to which this paper calls attention is that the bishop of Hippo has an inclination to qualify what is really human, including “humanistic” moral reflection, as the opposite of what belongs to God. As a result of this anthropological tendency, the continuity between the will of God and human moral deliberation is imperilled. This consequence contrasts Augustine with all the other, earlier figures of Christian moral theology. Finally, my paper also intends to examine the logical and genealogical relationships between these two elements of Augustine’s reflections.