Per Caritatem

As Michael Hanby notes, in the Confessions, Augustine teaches that there is a “plenitude of true meanings for a single text” […] The ontological warrant that underlies this insistence throughout the Augustinian corpus derives, in part, from the very nature of truth’s oneness, which defies its circumscription or possession” (Augustine and Modernity, p. 34). For example, in Confessions XII, Augustine writes:

“Having listened to all these divergent opinions and weighed them, I do not wish to bandy words, for that serves no purpose except to ruin those who listen. The law is an excellent thing for building us up provided we use it lawfully, because its object is to promote the charity which springs from a pure heart, a good conscience and unfeigned faith, and I know what were the twin precepts on which our Master made the whole law and prophets depend. If I confess this with burning love, O my God, O secret light of my eyes, what does it matter to me that various interpretations of those words are proffered, as long as they are true? I repeat, what does it matter to me if what I think the author thought is different from what someone else thinks he thought? All of us, his readers, are doing our utmost to search out and understand the writer’s intention, and since we believe him to be truthful, we do not presume to interpret him as making any statement that we either know or suppose to be false. Provided, therefore, that each person tries to ascertain in the holy scriptures the meaning the author intended, what harm is there if a reader holds an opinion which you, the light of all truthful minds, show to be true, even though it is not what was intended by the author, who himself meant something true, but not exactly that?” (Augustine’s Confess. XII.27, pp. 327-328, M. Boulding translation).

Maria Boulding (the translator) adds the following note in regard to the passage above, “Augustine’s recognition that meanings other than those intended by the writer can legitimately be discovered in the sacred text is grounded in his conviction that the God of truth who inspired the writer and guarantees the text abides in the minds of believing readers, and that though God makes use of human words, they are never adequate to fully express his mystery; there is always a ‘plus’ of meaning” (p. 323, note 71).

We definitely have something more than gramatico-historical hermeneutics in place here. (Anachronistically speaking, our apologies to Spinoza and company).

In light of Michael D.’s excellent comments relating to the previous post, I thought I’d offer a few additional thoughts defending my take on Augustine (of course I am not alone in my observations—e.g., Michael Hanby, in his book Augustine and Modernity, argues that that Augustine’s theology must not be separated from his philosophy, lest Augustine be completed misunderstood). I would also add that I am certainly not claiming that Augustine’s thought is without tensions or that he did not “grow” in his knowledge in light of his spiritual growth in Christ (his own “Retractions” seem to indicate this). However, I am suggesting that the dialectal tensions in Augustine’s thought do not lead to the kind of “ultimate” irrationality that e.g., result from the dichotomies in Kant’s thought.

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Perhaps one might object that I am over-emphasizing Augustine’s theology and Christian faith, as after all, it is common knowledge that Augustine was both well-versed in and influenced by Platonic and Neoplatonic thought. This is no doubt the case, as Augustine himself, e.g., in the Confessions, speaks of his indebtedness to the Platonists for helping him to turn from transient to eternal things. So on the one hand, it is uncontested that he was influenced by Platonism and pillaged the intellectual riches of unbelieving philosophers. Yet, on the other hand, one should not ignore or gloss over the significant theological differences between Augustine and the Platonists [1]. For example, in contrast with Plato, Augustine rejects Plato’s doctrine of the soul’s pre-existence, and consequently, denies that the soul “remembers” what it saw in a pre-existent bodiless state. Instead, Augustine’s epistemology is centered in Christ as Illuminator, the one true Teacher who enlightens all who are enlightened [2]. In addition, regarding Augustine’s “inward turn,” we again see formal similarities with Plato and the Neoplatonists. However, there are fundamental differences that must not be ignored [3]. For Augustine, one seeks truth not by turning first to the sensible world; rather, one first turns her gaze inward where the soul can be quiet before God. One of course doesn’t remain inwardly focused, but instead must turn upward to God. Though Augustine doesn’t begin with the senses, he nonetheless does not eschew the sense world in the way that Plato and the Neolatonists tended to do [4]. After all, Augustine is a strong advocate of God’s creation ex nihilo, which God himself proclaimed to be “good.” Consequently, Augustine’s account must include a deeply positive view of the created order. We might summarize Augustine’s rendition as follows: after turning inward and then upward, one casts her gaze back outward to the sense world. Having understood by God’s grace who God is and who you are, the external world becomes intelligible and valued in a new way. That is, the created world is seen as that which imitates or reflects God in its own way (what Augustine and other medievals call, “participation”) and thus has an aesthetic, symbolic and even iconic significance as it ultimately points us to God [5]. Yet, the created order also has value “on its own terms” because it is a gift of God, created freely and given out of fullness of his love.

[1] For example, though the context has to do with Stephen Menn’s continuity thesis regarding Augustine and Descartes, the passage below illustrates my point rather well, viz., that Augustine’s theology must not be separated from his philosophy, lest superficial or formal similarities become elevated such that the heartbeat of Augustine’s thought becomes dismally faint. Hanby speaks to this concern and points out the theological deficiencies in Menn’s account, “In order to sustain his thesis, he [Menn] must read Confessiones as a whole, treating it simply as an ‘autobiographical report of the process by which [Augustine] came to a true understanding of God.’ This interpretation makes the genre of confession adventitious to its meaning. The latter commitment requires that he overlook what is properly Plotinian in the ‘discipline’ of Confessiones VII.17—that it has been occasioned by ‘the beauty of bodies’—and how this discipline might be consummated christologically beyond Plotinus. Menn’s attempt to clarify this soteriological point magnifies the obscurity by imposing post-Cartesian distinctions onto Augustine’s text which it had been the achievement of Augustine’s Christ to overcome: rigid distinctions between reason and faith, ‘natural theology’ and ‘revealed religion,’ and speculation and practice. Each is underwritten by a hard distinction between via and patria. This not only occludes how Augustine’s Christology and trinitarianism inform his conception of voluntas, but it aids and abets the substitution of a Cartesian voluntarism for the Augustinian notion” (Hanby, Augustine and Modernity, pp. 150-151). Hanby also states in his introduction that this tendency in academia to focus on the “philosophical Augustine” to the exclusion of the “theological Augustine” (a hard and fast distinction that Augustine himself would not make) “reflects the marginal role Christianity now occupies in our culture and its negligible effect in informing our vision and our conception of time, history and what ‘really’ determines them” (p. 1).
[2] On the difference between his teaching and that of Plato, Augustine writes, “Wisdom is the contemplation of those eternal forms or principles of which Plato wrote; though his doctrine that the soul retains a memory of them from a former existence is unsatisfactory. It is better to believe that the mind is enlightened by a spiritual sun, as the eye by the physical” (The Trinity, XII.4, p. 94).
[3] As Hanby observes, for Augustine there is an erotic pull toward the beauty of Wisdom that is manifest both in the soul and in sensibilia, yet it points beyond both and calls us to delight in the beauty and goodness of triniarian love. Moreover, sensiblia for Augustine are likewise revelabilia reflecting God in a replete spectrum of temporal diversity, and crying out in all its many voices that we might recognize our Creator (“Augustine and Descartes,” pp. 469-471).
[4] On this point, one can certainly find passages in Plato that indicate a somewhat positive view of the sense world (e.g., in the Phaedrus, Symposium). However, the overall “feel” of Plato’s view seems to suggest a preference for the world of Forms and in relation to humans, a dis-embodied state. For example in the Phaedrus, Socrates presents a myth that describes the origin of human beings. According to the myth, the soul in its original state is compared to a chariot drawn by two horses, one submissive and the other unruly. The charioteer (reason) drives the chariot and endeavors to guide it properly—i.e., according to reason. In the supra-heavenly realm, the chariot travels through the world of the Forms, which the soul contemplates. The charioteer loses control of the horses and the soul “falls” to the earth, i.e., the soul becomes incarnated. In the dialogue, Phaedo¸ Socrates informs us that goal of the philosophic life (which is said to be the highest life) is to prepare for death. That is, the philosopher is to avoid the trappings of the body and the sense world, only engaging in such lowly things according to necessity. This is in part why the philosopher should not fear death—after all his whole life is spend anticipating a release from this “prison-house” called body in order to contemplate the Forms unhindered. Though one might counter that the sense objects, such as beautiful bodies, serve to draw us to the Forms (e.g., the Form of Beauty) and thus have some positive status, bodies still seem to be relegated to a status of quasi-existence and disembodied existence is certainly to be preferred. Moreover, the notion of resurrected bodies would seem contradictory in light of a Platonist view of reality. For more on the tensions between Platonism and Christianity in relation to embodiment, see James K.A. Smith’s, “Will the Real Plato Stand Up? Participation verses Incarnation,” as found in Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition: Creation, Covenant, and Participation, eds., James K.A. Smith and James H. Olthuis. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), pp. 61-72.
[5] Regarding the aesthetic element of the created order, Hanby explains that for Augustine what we have in the created order are a “series of microcosms which manifest the Father’s love for and delight in the beauty of the Son.” Moreover, because of Augustine’s emphasis on the priority of worship, we must understand the beauty reflected in the creatures and even the soul as “penultimate in relation to the full beauty of the created order and somehow a microcosm of that beauty in its fruition. That beauty was the one Christ, Head and Body, in whose unity and sacrifice the love, gift, and delight of the Father are manifest. Creation is finally realized as it manifests this generosity, which is to say that, for Augustine creation is finally realized in and as Christ. Consequently, any account of Augustinian ‘flight from the world’ that neglects this integral role of created beauty in eliciting desire for the Father and manifesting his joy fails to ascend to the Augustinianism of Augustine” (Augustine and Modernity, p. 134).