Per Caritatem

Augustine and Plantinga: The Civitas Dei, the Civitas Mundi and the task of Ecclesial Philosophy

By Mike Dagle, St. John’s Episcopal Church, Detroit

Introduction

“…two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord. For the one seeks glory from men; but the greatest glory of the other is God, the witness of conscience. The one lifts up its head in its own glory; the other says to its God, “You are my glory, and the lifter up of mine head (Psalm 3:3)” Augustine City of God, Book 14, 28

I take it that here Augustine aims to offer the rivalry of the Civitas Dei and the Civitas Mundi as a depiction of history generally; of the contest or contrast between those who would seek the things of God and those who seek something all together different.  Accordingly, Augustine presents here a stark contrast between the two cities.  The image is that they are fundamentally different things (or places) with different values, concepts, and ideas; or to place the idea within the current context they have different philosophies.  If this is true then for Augustine, citizens of the Civitas Dei have a different philosophical program and agenda than the citizens of the Civitas Mundi.  Following the motif the former glories in God, the latter in itself.

The contemporary analytic philosopher Alvin Plantinga follows and further develops[1] Augustine’s thought and applies the two cities motif to the contemporary intellectual and philosophical scene.[2] More broadly Plantinga utilizes Augustine’s urban metaphor to develop the relationship between Christian belief and philosophy, or the age-old question of faith and reason.  Plantinga doesn’t claim that he offers the correct interpretation of Augustine’s thought on these complex relationships; he instead offers the more pedestrian claim that his approach is “broadly Augustinian”.[3] I aim to present here a brief introduction to Plantinga’s Augustinian thought on faith and reason and the nature and task of Christian (or as I’ll call it Ecclesial) philosophy.  Following Plantinga I don’t claim to present a systematic take on Augustine’s ideas (it is simply beyond my competence to do so) but instead attempt to highlight the Augustinian nature of Plantinga’s thought.

Plantinga’s Augustinian approach to faith and reason centers on a few (though often unmentioned) convictions that are broadly characteristic of the Reformed/Calvinist/Augustinian tradition[4]: (1) the integrality of faith and reason in creation, (2) the cognitive consequences of the fall into sin, (3) cognitive repair from the bondage of sin in redemption and (4) that all philosophical theorizing is fundamentally religious in nature.[5]

Reformed Epistemology[6]

(1) presents the conviction that from creation faith and reason, or the head and the heart, have not been independent and distinct modes of cognition, but integrated parts of human knowing and loving.  In creation knowing, loving and trusting God were not separable acts of cognition but instead one act of obedience and devotion.[7] Characteristic of their purpose and design the first created beings perceived “themselves and all things in relation to God”[8] thus we might call reason sans the fall a God-soaked reason.  Prior to the fall God was the first epistemic foundation of all human thought, not the end in a chain of reasoning.  (2) follows this reflection on creation through the fall.  If the head and heart were as integrated as has been suggested then we would expect that the fall had drastic consequences for both.  Here Augustine’s famous and reflective phrase “…you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you”[9] offers inspiration and instruction.  Our hearts have fallen and our affections are restless and disordered.  We love the wrong things.  We take up residence in the Civitas Mundi, glorying in ourselves and in created things.  In the same way our formerly God-soaked reason is disordered.  Our ability to perceive the world around us and ourselves in relation to God, which on this view is the height of rationally, is skewed.[10] (3) brings us to happy news of redemption.  According to Plantinga part of the benefits of regeneration is “cognitive renewal”.[11] Regeneration, by the work of the Holy Spirit, begins the process of reordering our affections, our loves and hates, and our cognitive faculties.  Plantinga argues in his magnum opus Warranted Christian Belief that characteristic Christian doctrines such as trinity, incarnation, sin, atonement, resurrection and eternal life can be rationally accepted in the basic way.  That is they can be rationally believed and known without the use of proposition evidence and instead serve as epistemic foundations themselves.  Just as in creation all things were known in relation to God in regeneration all things are known in relation to God’s redemptive work in the world.  For Plantinga this epistemic reordering and renewal is primarily the work of the Holy Spirit.

Plantinga follows Abraham Kuyper, who is following Augustine, in emphasizing that mental life is firmly within the domain of Christ and as such is as affected by regeneration as anything else.  Kuyper’s influential quip portrays the sort of cognitive loyalty to Christ that is characteristic of Plantinga and Augustine.: “Oh, no single piece of our mental world is to be hermetically sealed off from the rest, and there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’”[12].

Christian (or Ecclesial) Philosophy

If, as Plantinga maintains, characteristic Christian doctrines can be believed and known in the basic way (or we might say by faith) and serve as epistemic foundations in themselves how does this notion relate to the task of philosophy?  Philosophy is said to be the domain of reason alone.  If we use what we know by way of faith as a premise in an argument we may proceed reasonably but what we are doing is in fact theology not philosophy.  This perspective on the relationship of theology and philosophy is often associated with Aquinas and is developed magnificently in Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Fides et Ratio.  The Thomist agrees that reason may be fallen in some way but maintains that considerable ground towards revelation can be achieved on the basis of reason alone.  Plantinga’s Augustinian approach instead maintains that all philosophy is really the articulation of fundamentally religious perspectives (4).  For us to know the world in a philosophically correct way our hearts must be cured as well as our minds.  Non-Christian philosophy then “is less a deliverance of reason than the articulation of a rival faith”[13]; or put in Augustine’s motif it’s the philosophy of the Civitas Mundi.  Some non-Christian philosophy may have similarities with Christian belief but nevertheless it proceeds from premises that are wholly different than that of Christian thought; which ought to proceed (at least in many cases) in the light of God’s self revelation and a renewed cognitive outlook.

Given this perspective on the nature of philosophy, Plantinga maintains it is perfectly acceptable for a Christian philosopher to deploy what they know by way of faith right along with what they know by way of reason when doing philosophy.[14] Indeed it can really be no other way.  This may blur the lines between philosophy and theology but this is only to be expected given the Augustinian convictions of (1-4).  The Christian philosopher is using the tools of philosophy to articulate the Christian faith.  This is fundamentally no different then the naturalist philosopher assuming naturalism and thus giving an account of humor, love, money or any other facet of human existence.  This naturalist program in fact makes up for much of contemporary philosophy.

The task of the Christian philosopher then becomes an Ecclesial one.  The Church is faced with many intellectual challenges from the world.  Philosophers are often in a unique position to deploy their skills in service to the Church[15].  I call this approach Ecclesial Philosophy to emphasize that the philosopher’s work is designed (or should be) to serve the larger Body.  The Christian philosopher must understand that the Church often needs answers to questions that are characteristically asked by philosophers.  The Church often needs to know what the Christian perspective on questions concerning personal identify, political philosophy, the status of non human nature, how we come to know and believe things and a thousand other topics need the skills that the Christian philosopher brings.[16] It only makes sense that the Christian philosopher deploys everything they know to answer these questions; whether known by faith or reason.[17] Otherwise the answer is incomplete by default.  Plantinga’s Augustinianism offers a way forward for the positive interaction of rigorous philosophical reflection and heartfelt devotion and service to the Civitas Dei.

There is much more that can be said but space does not permit.  A deeper treatment might include a fuller account of Plantinga’s epistemology and model of Warranted Christian Belief or a closer study of Plantinga’s faithfulness to Augustine’s thought.  In particular Augustine’s use of the looting of Egypt by Israel in the Exodus as a parable of the relationship of Christian faith and pagan philosophy offers a much richer way to understand the interactions of the Civitas Mundi and the Civitas Dei than Plantinga seems to allow for.  But that will have to wait for another time.

Notes

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[1] See Plantinga, Alvin. Augustinian Christian Philosophy. The Monist, v. 75, no. 3 July. (1992): 291-320.

[2] Ibid. Plantinga identifies two “burrows” within the Civitas Mundi; perennial naturalism and creative antirealism.

[3] Ibid.

[4] It is worth noting that some Reformed theologians such as John Frame and Paul Helm have questioned Plantinga’s faithfulness to the Reformed tradition.

[5] See Cooper, John. Fides et Ratio, Reformed Epistemology, and the possibility of Christian Philosophy.  To my knowledge currently unavailable.

[6] The religious epistemological work of Alvin Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff, and William Alston has characteristically been referred to as Reformed Epistemology though all agree that it is not necessarily dependent on Reformed theology.  I interact here only with Plantinga’s work.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Augustine. Confessions. Trans. Henry Chadwick. New York: Oxford UP. 1998.

[10] Just how far reason has fallen is a well-worn topic of interest that brings out fundamental theological disagreements between Catholic and Protestants.  Along that vein it is at least helpful to point out that John Paul II in his encyclical Fides et ratio acknowledges that reason is “wounded and weakened by sin.” though he is firmly within the Thomistic understanding of faith and reason.

[11] See especially Chpt 8, pg 280-282. Plantinga, Alvin. Warranted Christian Belief. New York: Oxford UP. 2000.

[12] Kuyper, Abraham. “Sphere Sovereignty”. Abraham Kuyper, A Centennial Reader. Ed. Bratt, James D. Grand Rapids: Eardmans. 1998.

[13] Plantinga, Alvin. Philosophers respond to Pope John Paul II’s encyclical letter, Fides et Ratio. Books and Culture. July/Aug.  (1999)

[14] It follows that Plantinga accepts a largely perspectival approach to philosophy though in no way does he descend into relativism.  This topic deserves more attention then can be given here.

[15] See Plantinga, Alvin. “Advice to Christian Philosophers”. The Analytic Theist: An Alvin Plantinga Reader. Ed. Sennett, James F. Grand Rapids: Eardmans. 1998

[16] In no way do I assume the Christian philosopher alone can answer these questions.  Scripture is the primary data and as such pastors, theologians, and the Church are often best suited to offer helpful reflection.  Following Plantinga I simply maintain that the Christian philosopher has a role to play here as well.

[17] It’s worth noting that Plantinga does offer middle ground for the Thomist who still maintains that what I propose here is not philosophy proper.  Plantinga proposes conditionals as a way to proceed.  “If the Christian faith is true then…” would use a faith premise only conditionally.  This type of argument proceeds solely by way of reason and is all together common in philosophical reflection.  See Philosophers respond to Pope John Paul II’s encyclical letter, Fides et Ratio.

Commentary on Mike Jones’s Essay by Dr. Victor Salas

Mr. Jones presents a paper that seeks to discern the manner in which one makes an “ascent” to God, paying special attention to the thought of St. Augustine and Hegel on the subject. Jones’ paper begins with the question: “how can one know God?”  At once as central to philosophy as it is to human experience, one need hardly offer any apologia for posing this question, however, I do think that clarifying or rendering more precise just what exactly the question is asking would be helpful.  Is the question epistemic, ontological, or phenomenological in nature, or perhaps all or neither?  Furthermore, by “God” which God is intended?-the Christian God granting peace to Augustine’s restless heart or the culmination of the Absolute spirit that stems from Hegel’s hypostasized rationalism?  (I do not think the one can be reduced to the other.)  Indeed, the intention of the ‘question’ becomes much more complicated, rather than clarified, when the notion of “ascent” is introduced as a kind of explanatory principle.  Jones is quite correct to observe that there are many understandings of ascent, when he says, “The philosophical tradition offers many accounts of ascent to God” (p.1).  Yet the difficulty here is that there are equally as many, if not more, (competing) philosophical traditions, refracting and scattering the notion of ‘ascent’ after the manner of, not just one, but an entire array of prisms.  I have no doubt that Jones appreciates this complexity of traditions since he identifies certain points of disagreement between Augustine and Hegel.  Moreover, he is not without warrant in attempting to find, at the same time, certain areas of “resonance.”  I would like to see, though, a more precise framing or setting up of the question, or, as Heidegger might put it, a Fragestellung.  That much said, Mr. Jones’ paper draws much deserved attention to a matter that is especially crucial to Augustine’s philosophical-theological project, for which any student of the African Doctor must be grateful.

On Restless Hearts:  Augustine, Hegel, Ascent
By Michael Jones, doctoral student, University of Dallas

How can one come to know God?  The philosophical tradition offers many accounts of ascent to God.  Talk of “ascent” might indeed be so common that its status as an image goes unappreciated.  But to speak of ascent is to make us of an image, and the image of ascent seems to tell a story: Whatever else God is, God is above the world-above the earth, above its creatures, and above human beings, their daily affairs, their politics, their wars.  The animals face the earth.  The plants grow out of the earth.  Humans face outward and look out over the earth, or they look out toward each other.  But God looks out across the heavens; God looks to those divine affairs that only God knows fully, or, on a variant telling, God also looks down upon the goings-on of terrestrial beings.  Either way, if human beings are to be freed from the grief and anxiety of terrestrial life, they must look upward to God.  They must ascend toward God, and by ascending to God, they come to know God, and so in a sense they come to be with God, or perhaps God rather comes to be with them, as they go about their terrestrial lives.

Accounts of ascent in the tradition often make use of many steps, e.g., mere existence, vegetative life, animal life, human life, divine life.  Others make use of only a few, e.g., finite being, infinite being.  Accounts of both sorts, furthermore, often appear in the form of an argument: God must be (or God must be so), because of this.  Several examples of ascent by steps appear in St. Augustine’s Confessions: one connected to his reading of the books of the Platonists (VII.17,23; cf. 10,16), one with his mother (IX.10,23-24), an expansive account apparently carried on while he writes (X.6,8-27,38; cf. 40,65), and the recounting of a failed ascent much earlier than these (IV.13,20; 15,24-16,31).  The steps in these various accounts of his do not perfectly coincide.  After reading the books of the Platonists, he ascends by these steps: material things, the soul that perceives them through the body, that inner power of the soul to which the bodily senses report, the power of discursive reason, the source of reason and the fount of the concept of immutability, i.e., That Which Is (In idipsum) or God.  The ascent with Monica is not told linearly.  It also progresses toward That Which Is, but its steps seem redundant: the beginning of their colloquy, that point where bodily pleasure seems unworthy of comparison or remembering beside the joy of the saints, bodily creatures, the heavens, the summit of their minds, the land of never-failing plenty.  The account that he attempts as he writes is even more complicated, but its main steps seem to be these: the faculty by which he is united to a body and animates it, a power that gives the organs of sense their proper activities, memory (which he comes to identify with his mind and his self), that which is beyond his memory in the direction of God.  The failed account proceeds from material forms, and their beauty and harmoniousness, to the nature of the soul, but not entirely, since, finding no shapes nor colors nor distended mass in the soul, he concluded that he was unable to see it-i.e., he does not fully reach the step of the soul and cannot progress beyond it.

These differences among the accounts in the Confessions are alike in one respect: Augustine gives none of them the form of an argument.  They rather seem to be descriptions of elevation that he underwent.  Even of the account carried on as he writes, he says that it is still his constant delight to reflect thus, as a respite from the demands of necessary business (X.40,65).  Boulding insists about this account in particular that it is not an “argument for the existence of God,” since Augustine takes as a premise here that God created the universe, and that Augustine’s interest in the account is a moral one,[1] but what she says of that account seems to hold for all of the accounts.  The absence of argumentative form, however, need in no way be a cause for dismay, as it would be to those who believe that knowledge of God could only come through argument.  Hegel writes that the arguments for the existence of God are subject to a certain “distortion.”[2] The distortion is that they make God, or God’s being (Hegel uses both Dasein and Existenz), seem to be a consequence of the being of those things which I have been calling steps.  But God is “the non-derivative,” he insists, and if the form of demonstration is removed from the argument, so also is the distortion, and what remains is “nothing more than a description of the self-elevation to God.”  Augustine and Hegel therefore partake of a fundamental resonance in this regard: they give preference in their accounts to the form of description of ascent rather than to the form of argumentation.

A wide array of surrounding points can be tallied that add to and detract from this resonance.  A longer study would be necessary if the tally were to attain adequacy.  The fundamental dissonance, however, owes to the difference in how these men conceive of God.  Augustine is adamant that God is immutable (e.g., VII.20,26) and that God created both him, and all of creation (e.g., VII.3,4; 10,16; etc.), freely, i.e., without a need in the divine nature to do so.  Hegel is in agreement when he says that God is eternally complete (immutable), but he adds that God is also eternally completing Himself (mutable); and he is in agreement when he says that God creates freely, but he adds that God also had to create, since it is by creating that God completes Himself.  Along with these differences about God are coupled attendant differences in how Augustine and Hegel conceive of human beings.  These differences should not be minimized.  It is true nonetheless that beyond the dissonance coming from these differences there lies another resonance.  Both men speak of ascent in such a way as to give it a rather intellectual tone.  By ascending to God, one comes to know God.  Augustine learns that God exists, or rather that God is incorporeal (but not therefore nothing), and that he himself is not God (e.g., VII.10,16; IV.15,24; X.25,36).  Hegel holds that the arguments for the existence of God “present” knowledge of God because such knowledge contains mediation within itself-which mediation is religion itself-or the knowledge of God, i.e., knowledge of God is the very mediation, or elevation, itself.[3] The mediation is that the finite is taken as the point of departure,[4] but as the finite it has no truth, because the truth of the finite is the infinite, and so the finite passes over to the infinite, and it does so in such a way that the finite does not abide of itself, distinct from the infinite, but the point of departure is itself sublated.  In this way, mediation, which is the nature of spirit itself, is an elevation.

The intellectual tone of the ascent is only one part of the resonance of which I spoke.  After the account of the ascent itself, the intellectual tone shifts to an ethical one.  Augustine speaks of being unable to maintain his God-filled gaze because of the weight of the body and of carnal habit (e.g., VII.17,23), which he overcame only by finding strength in the mediator between God and human beings (VII.18,24).  Hegel takes the knowledge of God to conclude in a theoretical relationship in which one is immersed in the object, but knows nothing of oneself, and so the relationship lacks the practical element, which element comes to expression in the cultus.  In the cultus, one purifies one’s heart: one now stands over against God and brings forth a union by passing over from being filled with God, in the sense of knowledge, to knowing oneself to be filled, in the sense of feeling and action.[5]

According to these accounts, one come to know God by ascent.  But what causes one to ascend?  Augustine in the first place describes his desire to know what attracts human beings in the things that they love, whether it is anything but beauty, and what beauty itself is (VI.13,20).  He then speaks of being warned by the books of the Platonists to return to himself (VII.10,16) and adds that he desires to understand that power by which he could make sound judgments about changeable matters (VII.17,23).  With his mother, he wonders what the eternal life of the saints would be like (IX.9,22).  Finally, he asks, when he is about to record his ascent presently, what it is that he loves when he loves God (X.6,8 and 7,11; cf. 20,29).  Desires of these sorts are perhaps best summarized as the desire for changeless enjoyment of beauty (cf. X.20,29; 27,38).  But in any case, it does seem as though it is with such desire that finite being arranges itself into steps by which to ascend to infinite being.  It is when a human being longs for something above the mutability of human affairs, the grief and anxiety of terrestrial life, that they look upward and may ascend.  Whatever the steps are in the particular determinations, each one gives itself as not that which one desires.  Even in the case of a single person, e.g., Augustine, the steps need not be the same on every ascent (unless he recounts them quite loosely).  Much less, then, it would seem, need they be the same across many individuals.  Hegel identifies several permutations of the arguments for the existence of God, and while he does favor some more than others, and one most of all (an ontological argument after the manner of St. Anselm), he does not deny others.[6] The essential element of the ascent, if finite beings, terrestrial life, infinite being, and one who is to ascend can be taken as granted, is the desire.  Some people seem to exhibit this desire, others do not; and while some apparently can be given the desire, perhaps not all can.  It is Augustine’s purpose, it seems, to awaken that desire in whomever he can: most of his accounts are addressed to all human beings (II.3,5), although one of them he addresses to all charitable human beings (X.4-4,6), as if any human being could make an ascent of a similar sort or at least understand those underwent by Augustine (and his mother).  If it is true that everyone can come to know God by ascent, then Hegel shares an agreement with Augustine, since Hegel holds that religion, which he holds to coincide with elevation, is “for everyone.”[7] If it is not true, then Confessions comes to appear quite differently: it appears not to be the story that everyone must undergo, but one to which all are invited, but few are chosen.

Notes

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[1]. Augustine, The Confessions, ed. John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., tr. Maria Boulding, O.S.B. (NY City Press, 1997), 244, n. 45.  I will say more about the division of intellectual and ethical interests below.

[2]. G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, ed. Peter C. Hodgson, tr. R.F. Brown, P.C. Hodgson, and J.M. Stewart (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), 167.

[3]. Ibid., 164, 173.

[4]. Hegel allows an ambiguity here.  It is not clear whether by the finite he means a finite being, i.e., a human being, or the idea or representation (Vorstellung) of the finite.  Elsewhere, he defines his method of science as the self-manifestation of a concept.  The first moment of self-manifestation is the concept in itself.  The second moment is the concept in its determinate forms.  In the third moment, the concept returns to itself and reestablishes self.  It is infinite, true, free, and absolute.  “So this is the pattern in philosophy: first the concept of the conceptualizing science-the concept that we have.  But at the end science itself grasps its concept, so that this concept is for itself” (emphasis in original).  The method of philosophy is the nature of spirit-it is our nature-and so it seems that we ourselves are the concept, which, as we learn, we come to be more fully (although, at the same time, it seems that the concept is also God, so that as the concept self-manifests, it is God that is realizing Himself in us).  See, e.g., ibid., 100-03, 391.

[5]. Ibid., 189-90, 193-94, 481.  The three moments of cultus are devotion, sacrament and sacrifice, and remorse and repentance.  Hegel reveals in his section on the consummate religion, Christianity, that the cultus even expresses itself in the form of ethical life, i.e., the ethical bearing of a people (rather than an individual person), e.g., the abolition of slavery and the establishment of private property.  See, e.g., ibid., 482-83.

[6]. Ibid., 163-89.  The other permutations are various arguments cosmological and teleological.

[7]. Ibid., 106, 425; cf. 398.  Religion is in contrast to philosophy, which is not for everyone.

Hegel elaborates that religion “is the region of eternal truth and eternal virtue, the region where all the riddles of thought, all contradictions, and all the sorrows of the heart should show themselves to be resolved, and the region of the eternal peace through which the human being is truly human”; “in its concern with this object [God], spirit frees itself from all finitude.  This concern is the true liberation of the human being and is freedom itself, true consciousness of the truth”; and this is so because “all the endless intricacies of human activity and pleasures arise from the determination of human being as implicitly spirit.”  Ibid., 75-76.

Commentary on Ingalls’s Essay by Dave Belcher

First of all, I’d like to thank Jason for his thoughtful reflection, and for the opportunity to offer my own brief questions to Matt Jenson’s thought-provoking book. Matt was an interim teaching pastor at my church for a time, and I had the chance to hear him preach a sermon on Wendell Berry, social justice, and such matters a while back-truly magnificent. It is likely that most of my questions here will be directed at Jenson’s own argument, since that is mostly what Jason has honed in on in his own post, and of that only his reflections on Augustine.

Let me start by saying that I think that the general point Jenson is making, as Jason has assessed it, is correct: that is, that Augustine’s account of sin and the human person is essentially relational and thus has much to offer contemporary theological reflection (a significant corollary being that harmartiology is always intimately linked with soteriology, and is thus only ever manifest in its relation to Christology.

I wonder, however, if Jenson is being sufficiently attentive to the development of Augustine’s thought with respect to sin. Although it is true that Augustine placed heavy emphasis on the respected “autonomy” of the self – on human “freedom” – in the early Pauline commentaries, and thus placed “the origin of evil in the will,” he nonetheless later proposed that the human will is utterly bound to sin – such that concupiscence (though voluntary) gave over to customs that bound the will. It was amidst the controversy with the Donatists – who adhered to a notion of a “pure” communion untainted by wicked bishops – that prompted Augustine to respond that not even in baptism is one freed from all sin. I think that a failure to attend properly to these dynamics – and especially to the ways in which Augustine’s conception of sin (not only grace) was reconceived in terms of caritas battling against flesh in the later controversies beginning with the Donatists – easily lends to a picture of an Augustine who fails to be sufficiently “objectivist” and “extrinsic.” I think this picture is incorrect, however.

I should also say that I am not exactly clear on how “objectivist” is being distinguished from “extrinsic,” since they seem to be performing the same critical function – viz., the suggestion that “the individual” has some sort of sufficiency in its “interiority,” and thus need not look to Christ. As Jason paraphrases Jenson, “A sufficiently objectivist account would focus the human person outside of him- or herself on Christ.” This definition to me seems more so to indicate “extrinsicism” than “objectivism.” Augustine would fail to be objectivist if sin were not a power under which humanity was kept in thrall (i.e., were it merely voluntary), or if the merits of Christ’s death and resurrection somehow did not win victory once and for all over such an objective power. Even the indictment of a failure to focus the individual “outside of him- or herself on Christ,” though, seems somewhat dubious. If the issue is that Christ’s mediatorial status only serves to instrumentalize the incarnation (or “fleshly nature” of the God-man) toward the goal of participation in the divine life, or that it is a “‘short-cut’ to participation in Christ’s divine nature,” it is still the case that the individual is being focused outside of him or herself, and even on Christ (not to do so would be precisely to remain “homo incurvatus in se“!). The issue of course is whether a “Christ” who sloughs off his humanity in the eschaton is truly Christ – or “Christian” enough (a consequence of a line of Origenism, actually). I believe that this tendency is certainly present even in Augustine’s later writings, though it must be properly placed in its Neoplatonic context; Augustine seems to have increasingly understood Christ’s “divine nature” to rule over the “human nature” as the soul rules over the body (this became exceedingly clear in Augustine’s later writings), but whether he ever believed that the hypostatic union would somehow be dissolved in a truly Platonist fashion in the end to me seems to lack evidence – and attention to his later developed thought in controversy with the Pelagians suggests otherwise. It is true that in 11.2 of De civ. Dei Augustine will describe Christ’s humanity as “the way by which we go” to God; but in 21.15, Augustine reveals the true mystery of Christ’s personhood – which can never be separated from his humanity – and the true mystery of our salvation in Christ: “The one who is unique by nature, the Son of God, has in his mercy become, for our sakes, the Son of Man, so that we, who are by nature sons of men and women, might become, by grace, sons and daughters of God through him.”

Much more could be said here, but I think that a truly relational account of sin in Augustine must pay explicit attention to Augustine’s developing thought in the controversies with the Donatists and the Pelagians, and specifically the ways that participation in Christ comes by way of the “vinculum amoris,” the Holy Spirit who is the bond of charity and who inspires struggle against the flesh and concupiscence. Perhaps a relational account of sin and its destruction in Christ in Augustine is still quite “insufficient” if it fails to be sufficiently pneumatological…but I’m already way over my quota here.

Some Contemporary Reflections on Sin:
Matt Jenson’s use of St. Augustine in The Gravity of Sin

By Jason Ingalls, M.Div. Princeton Theological Seminary

Matt Jenson’s recent book The Gravity of Sin: Augustine, Luther, and Barth on Homo Incurvatus in Se (London: T&T Clark, 2006) contributes to contemporary Augustinian scholarship and hamartiology.  Perhaps most interesting is that Jenson attempts to resuscitate contemporary use of Augustine’s theology for the purpose of talking about sin (a brave feat!).  In this post, I will summarize Jenson’s argument, describe how Jenson appropriates and critiques Augustine for his project, and trace the line through Jenson’s remaining interlocutors before briefly concluding with some thoughts on Jenson’s contribution to the way we talk about sin.

In brief, Jenson argues that the metaphor homo incurvatus in se (“humanity ‘curved in on itself’”), coupled with a relational anthropology, is the best way to construe the human person and sin (Jenson 2, 4).  He claims the coupling does not fall into the traps linked to substance and existential ontologies, is true to Scripture and tradition, and provides a way to appreciate and appropriate feminist theological critiques.  His argument starts with Augustine, moves through Luther, considers Hampson’s critique of Luther, and ends with Barth, to show that incurvatus in se can, in fact, do the theological work that he claims for it.

Jenson is quick to use Augustine for his project since Augustine already offers a relational account of sin.  Jenson explains that Augustine sees our prelapsarian state as necessarily relational and social in character, and that Augustine’s ideas of “participation” in God through Christ shows that this participation is basic to human beings qua human beings (Jenson 8).  Even Augustine’s explication of St. Paul’s “in Adam all sinned” is basically relational in character (16), the origin of evil is placed squarely in the human will (cf. 20), and evil is described as a privation of the will, a turning away from the will’s proper object, in other words, a break in relationship.  Jenson summarizes: “Self-love and love of God are simply incompatible” (15).

The problem for Jenson is that Augustine has not reflected on this account as systematically as Jenson would like, and Jenson is particularly worried about Augustine’s telos for humanity: the beatific vision of a fleshless God.  This is not yet “sufficiently Christian,” and Jenson will look to Luther (and eventually Barth) to fill in this gap.  Jenson’s treatment of Augustine seems tentative at points, as if he feels like he is addressing an audience that is predisposed against St. Augustine for any number of reasons.  In some ways, this account of Augustine’s doctrine of sin is meant to rescue the saint from theology’s dustbin.  This should be noted and applauded, I think.  But, for now, we will look at Jenson’s specific objections.

In the end, then, the Christian tradition seems to have been convinced that Jesus really does offer the best remedy for sin, the ‘medicine of immortality’, as many Fathers described the Eucharist.  If our sin involved us more than anything in a parasitic love affair with ourselves, what more fitting counter could there be than to look outside ourselves to one who is not ourselves?  Despite the legacy of his inward turn, Augustine was himself aware of this; and his call for humility suggests a move in this direction.  Nevertheless, while the features of a relational understanding of sin were set up by Augustine, he did not follow them through to a sufficiently objectivist, extrinsic, and materially mediated account of the Christian life (Jenson 45-46, emphasis mine).

First, Jenson believes that Augustine’s account is insufficiently objectivist.  A sufficiently objectivist account would focus the human person outside of him- or herself on Christ, the unceasing advocate and Lord.  But, Augustine pushes the individual, especially in The Trinity, to look beyond Christ, even after all of Augustine’s stress on Christ’s mediatorial role.  “Christ’s humanity seems ultimately instrumental and of only temporary importance. . . . [O]ur hope is in the day when his office of mediator will cease and we will participate in the divine life directly” (Jenson 35; cf. The Trinity I.iii.20.80).  This bothers Jenson because to be insufficiently objectivist is to be insufficiently Christological and therefore insufficiently Christian.

Second, Jenson believes that Augustine’s account is insufficiently extrinsic.  While Augustine shows human beings to be relationally constituted, this is again a soteriologically-focused Christological problem.  Instead of asking the human person to look to Christ, the counsel of The Trinity is to look in, then up.  The problem lies in looking for the imago dei within when The Imago Dei already comes to meet us without in the pages of the apostolic witness and in the life of the Church.  “Instead, the fleshly Christ is merely the way to the ‘homeland of peace’ [Augustine] has caught a glimpse of from ‘a wooded summit’, a land also glimpsed by the Platonists” (43).  Augustine’s “ambiguous inwardness” (37) focuses attention within rather than without, and thereby misplaces emphasis which should be reserved for the Christ.

Third, Jenson believes that Augustine’s account is insufficiently materially mediated.  It is St. Augustine’s use of the humanity of Christ that causes Jenson’s worries.  City of God, Book XIV, according to Jenson, contains healthy reflection on humanity’s participation in God but holds back from talking about its “mechanics.”  Jenson is disappointed.  For him, “that Augustine can speak directly of deification without reference to Christ is indicative of a wider concern,” probably, an “insufficient Christology” (Jenson 11, cf. Jenson 11, n. 24).  The incarnation is a kind of “short-cut” to participation in Christ’s divine nature (Jenson 12; cf. Augustine, City of God, IX.xv).  Once the way is paved, then Christ’s humanity (and his office as mediator) is no longer eschatologically needed to mediate the glory of God.  Jenson: “But in the end, Christ remains a glorious via rather than the redefinition of Augustine’s God” (Jenson 43).  This Christological lack is sufficient reason to move on to Luther and, ultimately, Barth.

Martin Luther radicalized and reorganized Augustine’s insights Christologically around the guiding metaphor of homo incurvatus in se.  Accepting Augustine’s basic emphasis on pride and humility, Luther applies incurvature not only to the totus homo but also to homo religiosus, thereby rejecting any type of incremental growth in righteousness that remained in Augustine’s thought.  Luther also radicalizes Augustine’s ideas about the order of loves in which the soul climbs higher and higher through desire until it finds its rest in God.  Since even the religious person is curved in on itself, desire has no place.  Pride is the paradigmatic sin, as it was in Augustine, and the prideful person can desire nothing but themselves.  Our desires cannot take us to God. Only faith can do that.  In radicalizing incurvature, however, Luther retains the basic structure of ascent in Augustine’s thought while replacing desire with faith and grounding it in the mediation of Christ in a way that Augustine did not.  According to Jenson’s reading of Luther’s famous dictum simul iustus et peccator, we are all – even the most pious among us – completely trapped and curved in on ourselves while simultaneously being turned out from ourselves by our faith in Christ.  This account begins correcting some of the problems that Jenson spotted in Augustine.  Luther’s account is objectivist by being grounded in the completed work of Christ.  It is extrinsic in that what Christ opens for us is a radical type of outward focus first on Christ and (then only subsequently) on the other.  It continues to be materially mediated.  The reason Jenson moves beyond Luther is less Christological than it is practical.

Pride is the paradigmatic sin for both Augustine and Luther, but Jenson does not think this account is adequate. This leads him to interact with feminist theologian Daphne Hampson’s post-Christian critique of Luther in order to complicate the pride-as-sin paradigm.  Hampson critiques the Augustinian tradition’s understanding of incurvature by arguing that considering pride to be the paradigmatic sin does not account for women’s experience of sinfulness.  Hampson argues that women’s cardinal sin is not pride, but is rather a lack of self-assertion, a falling back into oneself that she names self-diffusion or sloth.  It is here that Jenson does his best work in applying Hampson’s insight that the pride-as-sin paradigm is insufficient while offering a substantial critique of her post-Christian feminism.  Challenging Hampson’s implied gender essentialism, Jenson acknowledges that he himself needs the grammar of sloth and self-diffusion to speak of his own sinfulness and that it would be a tragic waste if we were to deny women and men the ability to speak of their sinfulness as either pride or sloth, for they are “complementary aspects of the same pathology” (129, quoting McFadyen, Bound to Sin, 156).  Whether, to follow Kierkegaard, the sin is “in despair willing to be oneself” (pride) or is “in despair not willing to be oneself” (sloth), the basic pathology is still an incurvature, either in activity or passivity.

It is in conversation with Karl Barth that Jenson finally develops the “sufficiently objectivist, extrinsic and materially mediated account of the Christian life” that he wanted from Augustine (46).  Barth defines human sinfulness by means of Christology and plots his three forms of sinfulness (falsehood, pride, and sloth) along a Christological grid.  The first sin, and the covering for the other two, is falsehood in which the human being denies the knowledge that the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ includes them and was for them by grace.  But once human beings become aware of this claim, their reaction is characterized by the other two forms of sinfulness: pride or sloth.  In pride, we deny our participation in Jesus Christ’s servant humility, thus trying to establish our own being.  In sloth, we deny our participation in Jesus’ royal resurrection and ascension where we are set in him at the right hand of God the Father.  In pride, we amplify our being in order to deny the call to humility.  In sloth, we subsume our being in order to deny the call to victory.  Whether by self-assertion or self-diffusion, we try to deny what is basically true of us in Barth’s account: we are established from all eternity in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

In conclusion, Jenson offers contemporary theological thinkers something of great worth.  First, he sets about to rescue Augustine for contemporary reflection.  For some, Augustine never needed saving, but for others the saint has been coupled with degrading and oppressive ideas of sin and humanity.  When Jenson argues that St. Augustine’s account of the human person and sin is itself relational in character and thus in harmony with many contemporary concerns, he gives the latter group the opportunity to reread Augustine with fresh eyes.  Second, Jenson’s argument is strongly Christological.  While the book is ordered historically, it draws its material circle around Christ.  Granted, his account of Christ is strongly influenced by Barth and Luther, but its strong theological grounding allows for its profound pragmatic, personal, and pastoral value.  Which brings me to the last part of Jenson’s contribution, he provides a grammar for sin.  The grammar is Christologically grounded (and therefore objectivist, extrinsic, and materially mediated), and this concreteness saves it from the navel-gazing that might come from a similar, contemporary account.  I personally have been helped by his description of homo incurvatus in se and his dipolar exposition of sin as pride and sloth, and I have seen this vocabulary ignite people’s eyes as they, in a number of situations, came to understand a part of themselves for which they had struggled for words.  While ordered very differently, Jenson shares Augustine’s concern that our theological language be useful in some way, that it not only bear witness to God but also to who we are in relationship to the Holy Trinity.  For as critical as Jenson is of Augustine’s legacy, Jenson has done us a great service by drawing him back into our conversation about sin and allowing him to again speak words of grace.  I cannot help but think that somewhere the old saint from Tagaste smiles.

Commentary on Dr. Cary’s Essay
by Dr. Joel Garver,
Professor of Philosophy,
LaSalle University

Professor Cary’s paper helpfully explains the relationship of Luther to Augustine, particularly Luther’s notion of the Gospel as an efficacious promise, communicating what it signifies and offers.  As Cary notes, this marks a shift away from Augustine for whom the alternative to the Law’s condemnation is faith’s working to receive the grace to seek righteousness.  Moreover, according to Cary, Augustine has no notion of an external sign that gives what it signifies.  But this raises a couple questions in my mind.

First, is Augustine so monolithic concerning signs as Cary suggests?  Perhaps Cary’s recent book addresses this in greater detail, but it seems to me that Augustine’s view of signs shifts some from De Magistro to his later writings.  Moreover, there are places where Augustine’s language suggests to me something more like the instrumentality of signs in conferring what they signify.  I think here of his discussion of baptism, especially of infants (e.g., In euangelium Ioannis tractatus 80.3) or his eucharistic doctrine with its notion of the sacrament’s virtus for those who receive it rightly.

At least, I imagine Augustine could be read and received that way, whatever Augustine himself actually intended.  The medieval period leading up to Luther was far from monolithic.  In seeing sacraments as disposing the subject towards grace and as occasions for granting inward grace, Bonaventure arguably held to a doctrine of signs more closely aligned with the one that Cary attributes to Augustine.  Yet other sorts of sacramental theories developed, likewise appealing to Augustine, but with a strong tendency toward affirming the instrumental efficacy of the sacramental signs themselves.  If Cary is correct that Luther’s notion of signs is closer to Aquinas than Augustine, then what are we to make of the reception history of Augustine that allowed both Aquinas and Luther to see themselves as fundamentally Augustinian?