Van Paul

The article deals with the violence applied to the Donatists, trying to answer three questions. The first is the about the development that Augustine experienced which finally led him to approve violence against the Donatists and to adopt the coge intrare as his device. The second question deals with the function Augustine envisaged for the use of violence and coercion in the process of returning heretics to the Catholic Church. Finally it traces the general and fundamental principles in Augustine’s way of thinking on violence. For this third question the article considers Augustine’s passages on coercion and violence in texts in which he speaks about administration of justice and medicine, and about the role of God at the Last Judgment.

In this contribution it will be demonstrated, on the basis of two treatises in St Augustine’s In lohannis euangelium tractatus centum viginti quatuor, that Augustine, precursor of the later negative theology, sees the awareness of human consciousness as the prelude to the realisation that God is incomprehensible. His reflections on human consciousness as the seat of God, in their turn, form the prelude to reflections on two types of inadequacy of human intelligence. In Tractatus 1 he first reduces this inadequacy to the need people feel to see God as all too human, and exactly therefore refuse to appreciate Him as the Incomprehensible One. He regards this as reprehensible and he attributes this attempt to certain heresies. In addition the cognitive capacity of inspired men like St John is inadequate, because they too are caught in the limitations of the concrete dimensions of time and space inherent in their existence on earth. They are not reprehensible, however. Augustine also expands the awareness of God’s incomprehensibility by emphasizing that God cannot possibly be grasped conceptually by means of words. He takes great pains to evoke some kind of consciousness of God as the Word, by making use of comparisons, but these attempts are structurally embedded in reflections on the incomprehensibility of God, precisely as the Word, not to be compared with a human, spoken, transient word. Nevertheless, in accordance with a principle, already recognized in De ordine, Augustine emphasizes that, on the authority of St John however incomprehensible the Word that is God may be for him, the Word made flesh, Who dwelt among us, is very near indeed. Also in Tractatus I and II of In lohannis euangelium tractatus Augustine tries to find a language evoking God’s incomprehensibility by reminding us that the experience of God is an experience that is in perfect contrast with a sensual experience; it is a counter-experience that cannot possibly be grasped in concepts. At the same time he tries to see the Incarnation as an appeal to become as humble as God Himself.