In the late 300’s and early 400’s A.D., Augustine was writing to persuade the Roman public that Christianity should be permitted as part of Roman society. Recently legalized in 313 A.D., the new religion was a minority within the empire, and faced discrimination and persecution. Around 410 A.D., when the city of Rome was attacked and heavily damaged by the Goths, many Romans believed that their city had been sacked because the old Roman gods were angry that a few Christians had been allowed to live there. Augustine’s message to the public was twofold: first, that Christianity was not responsible for the Gothic attack on Rome, and secondly, that Christianity was a reasonable system of beliefs. To support the latter claim, Augustine made use of the philosophers and writers who were respected by the educated class in Rome. He pointed out some similarities between Plato’s thought and the ideas in the New Testament.
Augustine was also able to find connections between Cicero, stoicism and Christianity. Cicero was a lawyer and politician in the tumultuous first century B.C. He was able to distinguish himself through eloquent writing and boldly argued and articulated speeches. Augustine wrote in the Confessions, “Following the usual curriculum I had already come across a book by a certain Cicero, whose language (but not his heart) almost everyone admires.” Finding connections between Cicero’s ideas and Christianity was critical in appealing to the Roman scholars because Cicero had their respect. The book of Cicero he found is called Hortentius, which is unfortunately lost to the modern world except for various quotations Augustine used in his writings. “The book changed my feelings. It altered my prayers, Lord, to be toward you yourself. It gave me different values and priorities. Suddenly every vain hope became empty to me, and I longed for the immortality of wisdom with an incredible ardour in my heart.” Augustine has a very emotional reaction to this book. It changed his perspectives completely. It gave Augustine a love of wisdom. Cicero wrote about ideas that expressed the Greek philosophy of stoicism. Stoics believe in Natural Law, universality of mankind, and a strict adherence a virtuous lifestyle. It’s not hard to see how Augustine could reconcile Stoicism and Christianity. Stoicism had gained quite a following in the Roman Empire, and linking together Christianity and stoicism appealed to a wider group of people.
Augustine had to use these sources – Plato, Stoicism, and Cicero – selectively, because, while he could point to some similarities and thereby persuade the Romans to allow Christianity, he also knew that there some points of difference: Plato’s view of women, for example, did not give them the level of dignity which they attained in the New Testament; Stoicism, despite its moral outlook, was a belief system which was comfortable with suicide and with the mass executions of Christians which the Romans had carried out prior to 313 A.D.; and Cicero, while in some ways an inspirational philosopher, was also a sleazy lawyer connected with various shady dealings, and who also glorified the political and social structure of the old Roman Republic to an extent which was neither plausible to the critical thinker nor acceptable to anyone who wished to avoid deifying the state. Augustine knew that neo-Platonism, Stoicism, and Cicero had failed to offer meaningful correctives to the problems of Roman society, but he still found it useful to refer to them in his explanations of Christianity, because such references were crucial to capturing the interest and favor of the Roman readership.
