toknowgoda_l6dumtc6

8/11/2019 toknowgoda_l6dumtc6

1/310


2/310

TO KNOW GOD AND THE SO UL


3/310


4/310

Essays on the ought of Saint Augustine

i . , . .

Te Catholic University o America Press

Washington, D.C.


5/310

Copyright Te Catholic University of America Press

All rights reservedTe paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements ofAmerican National Standards for Information SciencePermanence of Paperfor Printed Library Materials, .-.

-- eske, Roland J., o know God and the soul : essays on the thought of Saint Augustine /Roland J. eske.

p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. -: ---- (cloth : alk. paper) -: --- (cloth : alk. paper) . Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo. I. itle.

. '.dc


6/310

or my colleagues in the Department of Philosophy

at Marquette University, past and present


7/310


8/310

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction xi

Abbreviations xvii

:

. Augustine as Philosopher:Te Birth of Christian Metaphysics

. Te Aim of Augustines Proof Tat God ruly Is

. Spirituals and Spiritual Interpretation in Augustine

. Love of Neighbor in Augustine

:

. Properties of God and the Predicaments in De rinitate

. Augustines Use of Substantiain Speaking about God

. Divine Immutability in Augustine

:

. Te Motive for Creation according to Augustine

. Problems with Te Beginning in AugustinesSixth Commentary on Genesis

. Augustines View of the Human Condition inDe Genesi contra Manichaeos

:

. Augustine on the Incorporeality of the Soul in Letter

. Te World-Soul and ime in Augustine

. Vocans temporales, faciens aeternos:Augustine on Liberation from ime


9/310

. Te Heaven of Heaven and the Unity ofAugustines Confessiones

Bibliography Index of Names

viii Contents


10/310

Te previously published articles included in this volume are here listedtogether with their original publication information. I thank the editorsof the various journals for granting permission to reprint the articlesand acknowledge the respective journals as copyright holders.

Saint Augustine as Philosopher: Te Birth of Christian Metaphysics,Augus-tinian Studies (): .

Te Aim of Augustines Proof Tat God ruly Is, International PhilosophicalQuarterly (): .

Spirituals and Spiritual Interpretation in St. Augustine,Augustinian Studies (): .

Love of Neighbor in St. Augustine, Studia Ephemeridis Augustinianum.Congresso Internazionale su S. Agostino nel XVI Centenario della Con-versione. Roma, settembre . Atti III, pp. .

Properties of God and the Predicaments in De rinitateV, Te Modern

Schoolman (): .Augustines Use of Substantia in Speaking about God, Te Modern School-

man (): .Divine Immutability in St. Augustine, Te Modern Schoolman ():

.Te Motive of Creation according to St. Augustine, Te Modern Schoolman

(): .Problems with Te Beginning in Augustines Sixth Commentary on Gen-

esis, University of Dayton Review. (): .St. Augustines View of the Human Condition in De Genesi contra Man-ichaeos,Augustinian Studies (): .

Saint Augustine on the Incorporeality of the Soul in Letter , Te ModernSchoolman (): .

Te World-Soul and ime in St. Augustine,Augustinian Studies ():.

ix


11/310

Vocans emporales, Faciens Aeternos:St. Augustine on Liberation from ime,raditio (): .

Te Heaven of Heaven and the Unity of St. Augustines Confessions,Ameri-can Catholic Philosophical Quarterly (): .

x Acknowledgments


12/310

Tis volume contains fourteen previously published articles on Augus-tine of Hippo written over the past twenty-five years. Te articles aregrouped around four themes that have been my chief topics of interest:

Augustine and Neoplatonism, God and Speaking about God, Creationand Beginnings, and the Soul and ime. My early interest in Augustinewas strongly influenced by the writings of Robert OConnell, S.J., who

awakened me to an awareness of the influence of Plotinus upon Augus-tines thinking, especially in Augustines early works. At times the Plotin-ian influence did not fit well with the Christian faith so that Augustinehad to revise his views on a number of points over the years from theperiod at Cassiciacum in just before his baptism to his latest worksagainst Julian of Eclanum just before his death in . Some scholarswould say, and have said, that Robert OConnell was wrong and has

led me and others into similar errors in reading Augustine, especiallywith regard to the fall of the soul. Ronnie Rombss book, Saint Augustineand the Fall of the Soul: Beyond OConnell and his Critics,1has, I believe,thrown considerable light on the debate and may well get Augustinescholars beyond the current state of the dispute. In any case I wrote thearticles in this volume convinced that Augustine held a real fall of thesoul in his early writings up to and including his Confessiones (hereafterconf.). I could have profited from Rombss distinction between a cosmo-

gonic, a metaphysical, and a moral sense of the souls fall, since I nowsee that Augustine himself in his earliest writings held a fall in all threesenses, but soon abandoned the cosmogonic sense of the fall and even-tually retained only a moral sense of the fall.

xi

. Washington, DC: Te Catholic University of America Press, .


13/310

Scholars approach Augustine from many perspectivesas philolo-gists, as historians, as patrologists, as theologians, and as philosophersto

mention some of the most significant. And the results are correspondinglydiverse. Although I had the usual theological training for the priesthood,my further academic training was in philosophy, and my specializationwas modern philosophy, specifically British Hegelianism and its oppo-nents. I like to think that my exposure to modern philosophy, and espe-cially early analytic philosophy, sharpened my abilities to be able to readthinkers like Augustine with a clarity that others with other backgroundsmay not have. Others, of course, are likely to think that Francis HerbertBradley (on whom I wrote my dissertation) and his ilk have twisted mymind. Exposure to some analytic philosophy also made me somewhatintolerant of philosophers who either banished from philosophy wholebranches of philosophical thought or declared doctrines of Augustine and

Aquinas simply unintelligible nonsense. For better or worse this volumeoffers the readers some of what I regard as my best efforts at understand-ing Augustine, a man and a thinker I have admired and grown in admira-

tion for over the last quarter-century.oward the end of his life Augustine wrote an extraordinary work,

the Revisions (Retractationes),in which he reexamined and commentedon all of his books. Unfortunately he was not able to complete the se-quel, in which he planned also to review his sermons and letters. In theintroduction to each article I too endeavor to revise or review what Ihave written in it, indicating in some cases that I may have overstatedor understated my position or failed to be sufficiently aware of or opento other views. Augustines Revisionswas not a recanting or retractingof what he had saidat least in most cases, although his words abouthis early work, De immortalite animae,which was written shortly afterhis baptism, are disarmingly frank: It is first of all so obscure becauseof its complexity and the brevity of its arguments that it wearies evenmy mind when I read it, and I scarcely understand it myself.2At othertimes Augustine seems to try to put a better spin on what he wrote than

the text itself seems to justify, such as when the Pelagians appealed tosome things that Augustine himself had said on freedom of the will. Ihope that my attempt to offer a retractatioof some of my articles willput them in a better perspective and that I can exhibit the same sort

. Retractationes...

xii Introduction


14/310

of intellectual candor as the bishop of Hippo did. On the other hand,Augustine commented on all of his books, while I have the advantage

of choosing the articles that in retrospect I regard as some of my bestwork.My study of Augustine was in some sense thrust upon me when the

Department of Philosophy at Marquette University needed someone toteach the graduate course on Augustine in the late s. Since I wasat that time quite innocent of much knowledge of Augustine, I beganmy study of him by focusing upon his earliest works and only graduallyworked my way through most of his middle and later works. Hence, Iknew relatively little of his mature works on grace in the controversywith the Pelagians until I read and translated those works in the lates and early s. Had I known the anti-Pelagian works better, someof my earlier articles would have had a different slant, for example, onthe meaning of spiritual person, though what I wrote remains true forthe early works, even if it does not present the whole truth for the later

Augustine.

Etienne Gilson once said that Augustine never changed any of hisbasic views. We have never discovered the slightest philosophical changein any of his essential theses. Saint Augustine fixed his main ideas fromthe time of his conversioneven we believe regarding grace.3Most con-temporary scholars, on the contrary, maintain that Augustine changedon many of his basic views, especially on freedom and grace, and that heshould be read from a genetic or historical point of view. I now believethat Augustinian scholars are still at times insufficiently attentive to thedevelopment of Augustines thought. Te definition of time, for example,which plays such an important role in book of the conf.,is not foundelsewhere in the bishops works. I now suspect that attempts to reconcilethe definition of time from book with what he says about time in hislater works may simply overlook the fact that Augustine had moved on.For, as I saw it and still see it, that definition implies a cosmogonic senseof the fall of the soul, which Augustine had, I now think, already begun

to move away from in the conf.So too, the theory of causal reasons,which is found only in De Genesi ad litteram,may have simply repre-sented a stage in Augustines thought that he soon left behind. Hence,

Introduction xiii

. E. Gilson, Te Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine, trans. L. E. M. Lynch(London: Victor Gollancz, ), n.


15/310

scholars will, I believe, need to give greater attention to the developmentof Augustines thought than had been previously suspected.

Despite their deficiencies in some respects, the articles collected inthis volume do represent the core of what I learned in studying Augus-tine over the past quarter-century. All told, I have some forty articles,book chapters, and encyclopedia entries and one book on Augustine aswell as the introductions to my translations of the anti-Pelagian works,the anti-Manichaean works, the Letters,and a volume of works againstvarious heresies.4Due to limitations on this volumes size, I obviouslyhad to omit a good number of articles, including some of my more re-cent articles on more theological topics, to which I turned when workingwith the works on grace. Hence, if one identifies Augustinian thoughtwith the bishop of Hippos doctrine of grace, original sin, and the dam-age to human nature stemming from Adams sin, one will find very littlein these articles that is Augustinian in that sense. On the other hand,because I came to know the later works against the Pelagians and espe-cially the four works against the so-called Semi-Pelagians only somewhat

late in my study of Augustine, I was able to remain in untroubled lovewith his thoughtsomething that has surprised a few of my friends whomore or less identified Augustine with his doctrine of predestination.More recently, in working with Prosper of Aquitaine, I have come to seehow even so ardent an Augustinian as Prosper was in the late s sooncame to a far less rigorous Augustinianism than the elderly bishop ofHippo had himself held in his last years.5In fact, Prospers De vocationeomnium gentium,written around , is characterized by such a markeddeparture from the stricter views of the elderly bishop that many havewrongly, I have argued, attributed the work to someone other than Pros-per.6Te facts of the matter seem rather that, once settled in Rome asa friend and secretary to Leo the Great, Prosper found that he did not

. Te translations are available in the Works of Saint Augustine: A ranslation for thewenty-First Century(Hyde Park, NY: New City Press). Te translations are also avail-able online in the Past Masters Series. For the complete list of my writings on Augustine,

see the Philosophy Department website at www.marquette.edu.. See Letters and , which Prosper and Prospers friend Hilary wrote to Au-

gustine, in which they complain in a rather fawning fashion about the monks of Prov-ince who found the hard-line Augustinian doctrine on grace and predestination a bit toomuch and were, therefore, disloyal to Augustine and his teaching.

. See my Te Augustinianism of Prosper of Aquitaine Revisted, Studia Patristica, ed. F. Young, M. Edwards, and P. Parvis (Leuven: Peeters, ), .

xiv Introduction


16/310

have to be more Augustinian than the pope. Hence, it was perhaps notaltogether bad that I began my work with Augustines earlier works and

focused upon his more philosophical thought and the Plotinian frame-work in which his thought developed. Te earlier Augustine, as I readhim, was an exciting intellectual adventurer who faced immense philo-sophical challenges from the anti-intellectual church of Africa and fromStoic and Manichaean corporealism, who found solutions to many ofhis problems in Plotinian spiritualism, who often enough soon found el-ements of Platonism in conflict with the Christian faith, but who even-tually got things straight, always landing on his feet and squarely withinthe faith of the Catholic Church, of which he stands as the greatest ofthe Western Fathers.

Introduction xv


17/310


18/310

c. Acad. Contra Academicos

c. adv. leg. Contra adversarium legis et prophetarum

an. et or. De anima et ejus origine

quan. De animae quantitate b. vita De beata vita

civ. Dei De civitate Dei conf. Confessiones

con. Max Conlatio cum Maximino Arianorum episcopo

cons. Ev. De consensu Evangelistarum

cont. De continentia

div. quaes. De diversis quaestionibus octoginta tribus

doc. Chr. De doctrina Christiana

duab. an. De duabus animabus en. Ps. Ennarationes in Psalmos

ench. Enchiridion ad Laurentium de fide, spe et caritate

ep. (epp.) Epistulae

ep. Jo. In epistulam Joannis

c. ep. Man. Contra epistulam Manichaei quam vocant fundamenti

c. Fel. Contra Felicem Manichaeum

f. et symb. De fide et symbolo

c. Fort. Acta contra Fortunatum Manichaeum

Gn. litt. De Genesi ad litteram

Gn. litt. imp. De Genesi ad litteram imperfectus liber

Gn. adv. Man. De Genesis adversus Manichaeos

haer. De haeresibus

xvii


19/310

imm. an. De immortalite animae

Jo. ev. tr. In Johannis evangelium tractatus

lib. arb. De libero arbitrio mag. De magistro

c. Max. Contra Maximinum Arianum

mend. De mendacio

c. mend. Contra mendacium

mor. De moribus ecclesiae Catholicae et de moribusManichaeorum

mus. De musica

nat. b. De natura boni ord. De ordine

pecc. merit. De peccatorum meritis et remissione et de baptismoparvulorum

praed. sanc. De praedestinatione sanctorum

c. Prisc. Contra Priscilianistas

qu. Ev. Quaestiones Evangeliorum

retr. Retractationes

c. Sec. Contra Secundinum Manichaeum

s. Sermones

s. Dom. mon. De sermone Domini in monte

Simpl. Ad Simplicianum

sol. Soliloquia

spec. Speculum

spir. et litt. De spiritu et littera

rin. De rinitate util. cred. De utiliate credendi

util. jejun. De utilitate jejunii

vera rel. De vera religione

AS Augustinian Studies

BA Bibliothque augustinienne PL Patrologia Latina

xviii Abbreviations


20/310

ugustine & Neoplatonism


21/310


22/310

Te Birth o Christian Metaphysics

When Allan Fitzgerald, O.S.A., invited me to give the Saint Au-

gustine Lecture at Villanova University, I chose to speak in defense ofan Augustinian philosophy, because I was convinced that Augustinenot only had a philosophy, but also made a very significant contribu-tion to metaphysics in Western thought by introducing the concepts ofincorporeal being and of timeless eternity, concepts that the West hasso successfully absorbed that their source is often forgotten. I perhapsdid not give sufficient credit to Saint Ambrose, whose preaching was

certainly imbued with such Neoplatonic ideas, but I still believe thatthe books of the Platonists provided Augustine with the ability to ar-ticulate such philosophical concepts, which Augustine certainly heardabout in the preaching of the bishop of Milan. But who ever learnedmetaphysics from the homilies of a bishop? I never intended to implythat Augustines philosophy was limited to the two issues that I singledout, but I still believe that they do represent his two most significantcontributions to metaphysics in the sense of the science that transcends

bodily and temporal reality.

A distinguished Augustine scholar, Goulven Madec, has said,Te history of patristic philosophy has only a precarious status.It lacks a principal object; for there is no patristic philosophy.


23/310

ugustine & Neoplationism

. Goulven Madec, La christianisation de lhellenisme. Tme de lhistoire de laphilosophie patristique, in Humanisme et foi chrtienne. Mlanges scientifiques du cen-tenaire de linstitut catholique de Paris(Paris: Beauchesne, ), , here (mytranslation).

. See c. Acad., , ; ord., , ; ep., .

He immediately adds, and the Fathers of the Church are not philos-ophers in the commonly accepted sense.1 Certainly, he is correct in

maintaining that the Fathers of the Church are not philosophers in thesense commonly accepted today. However, it is not nearly so clear thatthe Fathers of the Church were in no sense philosophers or that there isno philosophy to be found in the Fathers of the Church. Regardless ofthe claim about the Fathers of the Church in general, I shall argue that

Augustine of Hippo was a philosopher in some sense and that there isan Augustinian philosophy, even in the sense of philosophy commonlyaccepted today. I shall first examine what Augustine understood by phi-losophy; then I shall ask whether there is in Augustine a philosophy inthe contemporary sense. Finally, I shall suggest what I consider the prin-cipal features of Augustines legacy to Western philosophy.

Augustine provides a nominal definition of philosophy as the love

of wisdom or the pursuit of wisdom.2While a philosopher of the latetwentieth century certainly recognizes and can probably accept such adefinition, if one listens further to what Augustine says about philoso-phy, one finds thephilosophiaof which he speaks to be both somethingfamiliar and also something quite unfamiliar, something much the sameand something quite different from what is today meant by philosophy.I will suggest one reason why at least some today find themselves athome with what Augustine meant by philosophy; then I want to pointout two ways in which what Augustine meant by philosophy differsfrom what most of us take philosophy to be.

I suggest that we find the philosophia of which Augustine speakssomething familiar, because he saw philosophy as a continuation ofclassical Greek philosophy, as something rooted in and carrying on thevery best of Greek philosophy. Augustine began to burn with the loveof wisdom from the time of his reading Ciceros Hortensius,which con-


24/310

. Conf., , . Te Hortensiussurvives only in fragments, many of which are con-tained in the writings of Augustine. Te fragments have been edited by Michel Ruch,LHortensius de Cicron: Histoire et reconstitution(Paris: Belles Lettres, ). See GoulvenMadec, LHortensiusde Cicron dans les livres XIIIXIV du De rinitate, Revue destudes augustiniennes (): , where Madec argues that Augustine may havederived his definition of wisdom as rerum humanarum divinarumque scientia (rin., , ) from the Hortensius,though it is clearly found in other works by Cicero.

. Conf., , : immortalitatem sapientiae concupiscebam aestu cordis incredibili

et surgere coeperam, ut ad te redirem. See also Robert J. OConnell, On AugustinesFirst Conversion Factus Erectior (De beata vita),AS (): .. C. Acad., , . In Verus Philosophus Est Amator Dei: S. Ambroise, s. Augustin

et la philosophie, Revue des sciences philosophiques et thologiques (): , here, Goulven Madec has said, LHortensiusa lanc Augustin dans la qute de la sagesse;il a ouvert son esprit un espace de libert.

. C. Acad., , : Igitur Plato adiciens lepori subtilitatique Socraticae, quam inmoralibus habuit, natualium divinarumque rerum peritiam, quam ab eis quos memoravidiligenter acceperat, subiungensque quasi formatricem illarum partium iudicemque dia-lecticam, quae aut ipsa esset aut sine qua omnino sapientia esse non posset, perfectam di-

citur composuisse philosophiae disciplinam. See also civ. Dei, , where he again sketch-es in outline the history of philosophy and gives the same central position to Plato. Heclaims that, while Pythagoras excelled in the contemplative part of philosophy, Socratesexcelled in the active part. Proinde Plato utrumque iungendo philosophiam perfecisselaudatur, quam in tres partes distribuit: unam moralem, quae maxime in actione versa-tur, alteram naturalem, quae contemplationi deputata est; tertiam rationalem, qua verumdiscernatur a falso.

tained an exhortation to this love of wisdom.3He tells us that he beganto desire the immortality of wisdom with an incredible ardor of heart

and began to rise up to return to his God.4

Tis conversion to philosophy, begun with the reading of the Hor-tensius,reached a high point in the momentous encounter with the libriPlatonicorumin , when the fire kindled by the Hortensiusflamed outincredibly.5But what was this philosophia that so aroused Augustineslove? In the closing sections of Contra Academicos (hereafter c. Acad.) hepresents a brief history of philosophy, beginning with Socrates and Pla-to, through the later Academy and Plotinus, and continuing down tohis own time. Plato, he tells us, added to the moral teaching of Socratesa knowledge of natural and divine reality, derived from Pythagoras andother wise men, and crowned it with dialectic, which is either itself wis-dom or its indispensable condition. Hence, Augustine adds that Platois said to have put together the complete discipline of philosophy.6

Augustine singles out the features of the Platonic system that are forhis purposes most significant: that there are two worlds: one the intel-

Augustine as Philosopher


25/310

ligible world in which ruth dwells, and this sensible world, which, it isclear, we perceive by sight and touch. Te former is the true world; this

one is similar to it and made in its image. From the intelligible worldthe ruth, so to speak, shines forth and becomes, as it were, clear in thesoul that knows itself. But of this world, not knowledge, but only opin-ion can be generated in the minds of the foolish.7Later in his historyof philosophy, Augustine points out that the doctrine of Plato, whichis purest and brightest, has banished the clouds of error and has shoneforth, especially in Plotinus. Plotinus was so kindred a soul to Platothat he seemed to be Plato come back to life.8By his own time Augus-tine claims that there has all been filtered out one teaching that is thetrue philosophy. It is not the philosophy of this world, which our sacredmysteries rightly detest, but of the other intelligible world.9

Furthermore, in De ordine (hereafter ord.) Augustine makes it quiteclear that Christ himself taught what was for Augustine the core of Pla-tonic philosophy, namely, that there was another intelligible world be-sides this world known to the senses. He says, Christ himself does not

say, My kingdom is not of the world, but My kingdom is not of thisworld, thus indicating that there is another world far removed fromthese eyes.10Trough his brief history of philosophy Augustine clear-

. C. Acad., , : Sat est enim ad id, quod volo, Platonem sensisse duos essemundos, unum intelligibilem, in quo ipsa veritas habitaret, istum autem sensibilem, quemmanifestum est nos visu tactuque sentire; itaque illum verum, hunc veri similem et ad illiusimaginem factum, et ideo de illo in ea quae se cognosceret anima velut expoliri et quasiserenari veritatem, de hoc autem in stultorum animis non scientiam sed opinionem posse

generari.. C. Acad., , : Adeo post illa tempora non longo interuallo, omni pervicaciapertinaciaque demortua os illud Platonis, quod in philosophia purgatissimum est et lu-cidissimum, dimotis nubibus erroris emicuit maxime in Plotino, qui Platonicus philoso-phus ita eius similis iudicatus est, ut simul eos vixisse, tantum autem interest temporis,ut in hoc ille revixisse putandus sit.

. C. Acad., , : sed tamen eliquata est, ut opinor, una verissimae philosophiaedisciplina. Non enim est ista huius mundi philosophia, quam sacra nostra meritissimedetestantur, sed alterius intellegibilis.

. Ord., , : Esse autem alium mundum ab istis oculis remotissimum, quem

paucorum sanorum intellectus intuetur, satis ipse Christus significat, qui non dicit: reg-num meum non est de mundo sed: regnum meum non est de hoc mundo. Later inhis retr., , , Augustine expresses his displeasure at this interpretation of Christs wordsand sees that it would have been better to understand him as referring to the new heavenand new earth. However, he adds: Nec Plato quidem in hoc erravit, quia esse mundumintelligibilem dixit, si non vocabulum, quod ecclesiasticae consuetudini in re illa inusita-tum est, sed ipsam rem velimus attendere. Mundum quippe ille intelligibilem nuncupa-vit ipsam rationem sempiternam atque incommutabilem, qua fecit Deus mundum.



26/310

ly indicated that what he calls the true philosophy, the philosophy ofthe intelligible world, is in continuity with the best in Greek thought,

namely, that of Plato and Plotinus. Later in De civitate Dei(hereafterciv. Dei) Augustines appraisal of the achievements of the Platonic phi-losophers is no less laudatory. Tey recognized, he tells us, that thetrue God is the author of reality, the source of the light of truth and thebestower of beatitude.11Te Platonists saw that God was not a body,and, therefore, transcended all bodies in their search for God. Teysaw that nothing subject to change is the highest God and, therefore,transcended every soul and all spirits subject to change in their searchfor the highest God.12

Plato taught that the wise man imitates, knows, and loves this Godand becomes blessed by participating in him.13Tere is no need to lookat the position of any other philosophers; none of them have comecloser to us than the Platonists.14Most of us, I suspect, can agree with

Augustine that Plato and Aristotle and Plotinus were philosophers andthat we too mean by philosophy the sort of thing that Plato, Aristo-

tle, and Plotinus did.15But what we mean by philosophy also differsfrom what Augustine meant in at least two very important ways. First,philosophy for Augustine meant a whole way of life. When Augustinesaid that a human being has no other reason for philosophizing exceptto be happy,16he meant by philosopharinot the pursuit of a particu-lar academic discipline, but a whole way of life dedicated to the pur-suit of wisdom. With an exaggeration perhaps needed to prevent us


. Civ. Dei, : verum Deum et rerum auctorem et veritatis inlustratorem et beati-tudinis largitorem esse dixerunt.

. Ibid. , : Viderunt ergo isti philosophi, quos ceteris non inmerito fama atquegloria praelatos videmus, nullum corpus esse Deum, et ideo cuncta corpora transcend-erunt quaerentes Deum. Viderunt, quidquid mutabile est, non esse summum Deum, etideo animam omnem mutabilesque omnes spiritus transcenderunt quaerentes summumDeum.

. Ibid. , : Si ergo Plato Dei huius imitatorem cognitorem amatorem dixit essesapientem, cuius participatione sit beatus, quid opus est excutere ceteros?

. Ibid.: Nulli nobis quam isti propius accesserunt.. Augustine knew that some had claimed that Plato and Aristotle held that same

doctrine; see c. Acad., , : non defuerunt acutissimi et solertissimi viri, qui docu-erunt disputationibus suis Aristotelem ac Platonem ita sibi concinere, ut imperitis mi-nusque attentis dissentire videantur. He is perhaps alluding to the lost work of Porphyrythat bore such a title. See Porphyrios, by R. Beutler, in Real-Encyclopdie den classischenAltertumswissenschaft,vol. , pt. (Stuttgart: Metzler, ), cc. .

. Civ. Dei, , : nulla est homini causa philosophandi, nisi ut sit beatus.


27/310

from assuming that we know what the ancients meant by philosohia,one scholar has said that philosophy means something entirely differ-

ent in Graeco-Roman antiquity from what it does today.17

Followingwhat Pierre Hadot has written, A. H. Armstrong has put it this waywith greater balance: [F]or most ancient philosophers, philosophy wasa comprehensive and extremely demanding way of life, requiring, cer-tainly, the intense study of the whole of reality, but designed to lead,not simply to what we should call an intellectual or scientific under-standing of the nature of things, but to the attainment of that humangoodness, including or consisting in wisdom, but a transforming wis-dom, which can alone bring about human well-being.18

With such a view of philosophy in mind, Augustine reminds Roma-nianus of his frequent insistence that he regarded no fortune as favor-able save that which bestowed the leisure to philosophize (otium phi-losophandi),no life as happy save that which is lived in philosophy.19

A life lived in philosophy required otium,which we correctly, but veryinadequately, translate as leisure. Andr Mandouze says that, besides

leisure and the material resources needed to ensure it, otium requiresabove all the interior availability (disponibilit)without which there isneither tranquility of soul nor peace of mind, two things indispensablefor withdrawal into oneself and the recollection of God.20 It was forthe sake of such otiumthat Alypius kept steering Augustine away frommarriage, warning that we could by no means live together a life of se-cure leisure in the love of wisdom, as we had long desired, if Augustinetook a wife.21

Years later, in looking back on the time at Cassiciacum, Augustine


. Ilsetraut Hadot, Te Spiritual Guide, in Classical Mediterranean Spirituality,vol. of World Spirituality: An Encyclopedic History of the Religious Quest (New York:Crossroad, ), , here .

. A. H. Armstrong, Expectations of Immortality in Late Antiquity,Te Aquinas Lec-ture, (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, ), . Armstrong refers to PierreHadots Exercises spirituels et philosophie antique(Paris: tudes augustiniennes, ).

. C. Acad., , : nullam mihi videri prosperam fortunam, nisi quae otium phi-losophandi daret, nullam beatam vitam, nisi qua in philosophia viveretur.. Andr Mandouze, Saint Augustin. Laventure de la raison et de la grce (Paris:

tudes augustiniennes, ), (my translation).. Conf., , : Prohibebat me sane Alypius uxore ducenda cantans nullo modo

nos posse securo otio simul in amore sapientiae viuere, sicut iam diu desideraremus, siid fecissem.


28/310

described it as Christianae vitae otium:the leisure of Christian life.22Andsoon after his return to Africa, in writing to Nebridius, Augustine used

the marvelous phrase deificari in otio(to become God-like in leisure)23

to describe his aim in withdrawing from the troubled journeys of thisworld in order to think of that one last journey which is called death.24Georges Folliet claims that Augustine speaks as a Christian convert, butthe description of the asceticism he envisages and the expressions he usesmake one suspect that his present ideal for life is much closer to that ofthe wise man presented by the Neoplatonic philosophers than to that ofthe Gospel.25Folliet has perhaps overemphasized the Neoplatonic influ-ence upon Augustines ideal for the life he and his companions were be-ginning to lead at Tagaste, a life that others see as the cradle of Westernmonasticism.26Later in his life Augustine said that the true philosopheris a lover of God,27for the true philosopher loves that Wisdom which,or rather who, is God. We must remember that for Augustine what oneloves necessarily transforms the lover into itself.28Tus in loving God,one is transformed into or becomes God.29Hence, Augustines goal at

Tagaste of becoming God-like is simply the goal of the life of phi-losophy. Te life of philosophy is, after all, a life in love with wisdom,but of a transforming wisdomto use Armstrongs wordsof that

Wisdom that transforms one into God, into a child of the Most High.Certainly, the otiumof Tagaste is Christian and monastic, but it


. Retr., .. Ep., .

. Ibid.: de illa una ultima, quae mors uocatur, cogitantis.. Georges Folliet, Deificari in otio. Augustin, Epistula, , Recherches augusti-niennes (): , here (my translation).

. See Mandouze, Saint Augustin,, where the author emphasizes the ad-vance represented by deificari in otioover the ideal of Cassiciacum and insists that theotium of Tagaste includes the framework of religious life and communal sharing ofgoods. See also George Lawless,Augustine of Hippo and His Monastic Rule(Oxford: Clar-endon Press, ), , where Lawless says of the otiumdescribed in vera rel., that itis a far cry from the leisure of the philosophers.

. Civ. Dei, : verus philosophus est amator Dei.

. Div. quaes., : Et quoniam id quod amatur afficiat ex se amantem necesse est,fit ut sic amatum quod aeternum est aeternitate animum afficiat. Quocirca ea demumvita beata est quae aeterna est. Quid vero aeternum est quod aeternitate animum afficiatnisi Deus?

. Ep. Jo., : quia talis est quisque qualis eius dilectio est. erram diligis? terraeris. Deum diligis? quid dicam? Deus eris? Non audeo dicere ex me, Scripturas audia-mus: Ego dixi, Dii estis, et filii Altissimi. See also s., .


29/310

is also, I believe, clearly in continuity with the dedication to the life ofphilosophy envisioned at Cassiciacum. In any case, to dedicate oneself

to philosophy, in order to become God-like in leisure, was far morelike entering monastic life than selecting a major in college or even aprogram of graduate studies. Tis is the first respect in which thephi-losophiaof Augustine is quite different from the contemporary meaningof philosophy.

Te second way in which what Augustine called philosophy differsfrom what most moderns understand by philosophy has to do with thetask and the content of philosophy. In one passage Augustine tells usthat philosophy has a twofold question: one about the soul, the otherabout God. Te first makes us know ourselves; the other that we knowour origin. Te former is sweeter to us; the latter more precious. Teformer makes us worthy of happiness; the latter makes us happy.30Tat is, as aiming at the happy life, philosophy has no concern with thisworld of bodily things, but only with God as our goal and ourselves asreturning to him.31Philosophy is not the path for everyone, but for the

very few. Philosophy promises reason to these few, setting them free andteaching them not only not to hold those [i.e., the Christian] mysteriesin contempt, but to understand them, and them alone, as they shouldbe understood.32Tus the content that philosophy brings the very fewto understand is identical with the mysteries of the Christian faith. Tetrue and genuine philosophy has, Augustine claims, no other task thanto teach what is the principle without principle of all things and howgreat an intellect remains in it and what has flowed forth from there forour salvation without any lessening of its being.33Augustine explicitly


. Ord., , : Cuius duplex quaestio est, una de anima, altera de deo. Primaefficit, ut nosmet ipsos noverimus, altera, ut originem nostram. Illa nobis dulcior, istacarior, illa nos dignos beata vita, beatos haec facit.

. See c. Acad. , , : Ipsa docet et vere docet nihil omnino colendum esse to-tumque contemni oportere, quidquid mortalibus oculis cernitur, quidquid ullus sensusattingit. Ipsa verissimum et secretissimum Deum perspicue se demonstraturum promit-tit et iam iamque quasi per lucidas nubes ostentare dignatur.

. Ord., , : Philosophia rationem promittit et vix paucissimos liberat, quostamen non modo non contemnere illa mysteria sed sola intellegere, ut intellegendasunt, cogit. Goulven Madec, A propos dune traduction de De ordineII, v, , Revuedes tudes augustiniennes (): , where Madec argues convincingly that solamodifies mysteriarather thanphilosophia.

. Ibid. , , : nullumque aliud habet negotium, quae vera et, ut ita dicam,germana philosophia est, quam ut doceat, quod sit omnium rerum principium sine


30/310

identifies these three with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, which thevenerable mysteries ... proclaim, neither confusing them, as some do,

nor treating them unjustly, as many do.34

Tus, the whole task of phi-losophy is to understand the Christian rinity as the source of being, oftruth, and of salvation. It does not take too much stretching to see inthis early text the rerum auctorem, veritatis inlustratorem et beatitu-dinis largitorem of the civ. Dei.Tus the whole content of philosophyfor Augustine is the triune God of Christianity.

Philosophy is the love of wisdom, and as early as the c. Acad.Au-gustine appeals to Ciceros definition of wisdom as the knowledge ofthings human and divine.35In the De rinitate (hereafter rin.), fol-lowing Saint Paul in Corinthians :, Augustine distinguishes wis-dom and knowledge so that wisdom (sapientia)is knowledge of thingseternal and knowledge (scientia)is knowledge of things temporal. Sci-entiais not knowledge of just anything temporal, but only of that bywhich the saving faith, which leads to true happiness, is born, nour-ished, defended and strengthened.36

Madec has noted that this distinction between sapientiaand scientiais not without analogy with the double function that Cicero assigns tophilosophy in the Hortensius: the practice of the virtues and contem-plative wisdom.37Tus, in c. Acad., , , the knowledge of things


principio quantusque in eo maneat intellectus quidve inde in nostram salutem sine ulladegeneratione manaverit.

. Ibid.: quem unum Deum omnipotentem, cum quo tripotentem patrem et fi-lium et spiritum sanctum, veneranda mysteria, quae fide sincera et inconcussa popu-

los liberant, nec confuse, ut quidam, nec contumeliose, ut multi, praedicant. Here Ifind Madecs argument for following the edition of P. Knll persuasive. I also agree withMadecs claim that confuseand contumelioserefer to the doctrine of the Sabellians andof the Arians respectively; see Madec, A propos dune traduction, . FrederickVan Fleteren, however, suggests that it is Porphyry whom Augustine has in mind; see hisAuthority and Reason, Faith and Understanding in the Tought of St. Augustine, AS (): , here .

. See c. Acad., , : Non enim nunc primum auditis, Sapientiam esse rerumhumanarum divinarumque scientiam. Augustine repeats that definition four or evenfive times in the first book. See Madec, LHortensiusde Cicron, here .

. rin., , : Verum secundum hanc distinctionem qua dixit Apostolus: Aliidatur sermo sapientiae, alii sermo scientiae ( Cor :), ista definitio dividenda est utrerum divinarum scientia proprie sapientia nuncupetur, humanarun autem proprie sci-entiae nomen obtineat ... huic scientiae tribuens, sed illud tantummodo quo fides salu-berrima quae ad veram beatitudinem ducit, gignitur, nutritur, defenditur, roboratur.

. Madec, LHortensiusde Cicon, (my translation). Madec adds, Mais lascientiaaugustinienne assume prcisment la fonction pratique de la philosophie.


31/310

human is that by which one knows the light of prudence, the beautyof temperance, the strength of courage, and the holiness of justice.38

It is, I suggest, Augustinian wisdom in the proper sense, which is thecontent of philosophy, that is, knowledge of the eternal God: Father,Son and Holy Spirit, while knowledge in the proper sense embraces themeans of the souls return to God, the temporal dispensation by whichGod has offered us salvation.39Or, as Augustine has often expressed it,the great Neoplatonists have seen from afar the Fatherland to which wemust return.40Tey have come to know the eternal reality of God, butin their pride they have failed to know the way to attain the Father-land.41Tat way is the humanity of Christ, who as God is also the goal.

As human, he is our knowledge; as divine, he is our wisdom. Whatphilosophy can attain, and what the great Platonists have attained, isthe knowledge of Gods eternal reality; what philosophy cannot attainis the knowledge of the temporal dispensation and the humanity the

Word has assumed, which is also the way, indeed the only way, of re-


. C. Acad., , : Illa est humanarum rerum scientia, qua novit lumen pruden-tiae, temperantiae decus, fortitudinis robur, justitiae sanctitatem.. Madec claims that the true philosophy included the Incarnation of the Word. In

Connaissance de Dieu et action de grce. Essai sur les citations de lEp. aux Romains, dans loeuvre de saint Augustin, Recherches augustiniennes (): , here, he says, Augustin a reconnu dans la doctrine du Verbe incarn la seule doctrinephilosophique parfaitement vraie et la philosophie vritable et authentique qui a pourtche lintelligence des mystres. He refers to c. Acad., , , where Augustine says,referring to the intelligible world: cui animas multiformibus erroris tenebris caecatas etaltissimis a corpore sordibus oblitas numquam ista ratio subtilissima revocaret, nisi sum-

mus Deus populari quadam clementia divini intellectus auctoritatem usque ad ipsumcorpus humanum declinaret atque submitteret, cuius non solum praeceptis sed etiamfactis excitatae animae redire in semet ipsas et resipiscere patriam etiam sine concerta-tione potuissent. I am in complete agreement with Madec that without humble faithin the Incarnate Word, souls could never attain the Fatherland, even if they saw it fromafar. Te Platonists certainly did not know or were too proud to take the way, but faithin the Incarnation belongs to scientiaas opposed to sapientia,to the way as opposed tothe goal. Philosophiaconcerns the aeternalia Dei,not the temporal dispensation. See myTe Link between Faith and ime in St. Augustine, inAugustine: Presbyter Factus Sum,ed. J. Lienhard, E. Muller, and R. eske (New York: Peter Lang, ), .

.Jo. Ev. tr., : Viderunt quo veniendum esset.... Illud potuerunt videre quodest, sed viderunt de longe. rin., , : nonnulli eorum potuerunt aciem mentisultra omnem creaturam transmittere et lucem incommutabilis veritatis quantulacumqueex parte contingere ... de longinquo prospicere patriam transmarinam.

. rin., , : Sed quid prodest superbienti et ob hoc erubescenti lignum con-scendere de longinquo prospicere patriam transmarinam? Aut quid obest humili de tantointervallo non eam videre in illo ligno ad eam venienti quod dedignatur ille portari?


32/310

turn.42Tus from his earliest writings Augustine saw the need for theIncarnation of the Word if soulsblinded by the abundant darkness

of error and stained with the deepest filth of the body, were to be ableto return to themselves and see again their fatherland.43

We have seen thatphilosophiafor Augustine was a wisdom in conti-nuity with the best in classical Greek thought, but that it differed fromwhat it means for us in the twentieth-first century insofar as it involveda whole way of life aimed at true happiness and embraced as its contentonly the Christian mysteries. On the other hand, Augustine is quiteclear that, if philosophy can know the eternal God as the source of ourbeing, knowledge, and beatitude, philosophy cannot provide the way ofattaining God. For that we need faith in Christ, our knowledge, who isalso our wisdom.

Te most serious objections to the claim that there is such philoso-

phy in Augustine stem from Augustines clear claim that one must firstbelieve in order to understand.44Etienne Gilson has made the strongclaim that we know of no single instance where Augustine allowed rea-son to dispense with faith as its starting point.... Tis is the reasonwhy belief in God precedes even proof of His existence.45Augustinesinsistence that one must first believe in order to understand would seem

. See conf., , , where Augustine contrasts what he found in the libri Pla-tonicorumand what he did not find there. What he found there were the aeternalia Dei;what he did not find there was the temporal dispensation by which we are saved. Seealso cons. Eu., , : Ipse est nobis fides in rebus ortis qui est ueritas in aeternis. rin., , : Scientia ergo nostra Christus est, sapientia quoque nostra idem Christus est.Ipse nobis fidem de rebus temporalibus inserit; ipse de sempiternis exhibet ueritatem.Per ipsum pergimus ad ipsum, tendimus per scientiam ad sapientiam; ab uno tameneodemque Christo non recedimus, in quo sunt omnes thesauri sapientiae et scientiaeabsconditi (Col :).

. C. Acad., , ; see above note .

. Augustine read in Is :: Nisi credideritis, non intellegetis. He cites the text forthe first time in lib. arb., , and then again in lib. arb., , and mag., .. Gilson, Te Christian Philosophy of St. Augustine, . Gilson points to mor. ,

, , , where he claims Augustine uses the faulty method of beginning withreasona method that Gilson oddly views as Manichaean. Gilson comments, He onlyresigns himself to stoop to the madness of the Manichaeans by provisorily adopting theirmethod, even as Jesus Christ submitted to death to save us (ibid., n).



33/310

to prejudice the case against anything like an autonomous philosophywithin his thought. Faith seeking understanding is, after all, the clas-

sical description of the movement of theology rather than of philoso-phy. Moreover, the case for an independent philosophy is aggravated byan important change in Augustines thought. Scholars frequently speakof Augustines conversions in the plural.46

Besides the momentous events of that led to his being bap-tized and becoming a servant of God, there is Augustines conversion toManichaeism in . But there is another turning point in Augustineslife that has been described as his final conversion.47In , while writ-ing to Simplicianus, Augustine came to realize that faith is a gift of God.Much later, in writing to the monks of Provence, Augustine admits thathe had other thoughts on this question and that God revealed to methe means of solving the problem, when ... I was writing to bishopSimplician.48Prior to the time of Ad Simplicianum (hereafter Simpl.),


. See Jean-Marie Le Blond, Les conversions de saint Augustin(Paris: Aubier, );Franois Masai, Les conversions de saint Augustin et les dbuts du spiritualisme en Oc-

cident, Le Moyen ge (): ; Leo C. Ferrari, Te Conversions of Saint Augustine(Villanova: Villanova University Press, ).

. See Ferrari, Te Conversions,ff. A. Pegis refers to this conversion as Augustinessecond. See Anton C. Pegis, Te Second Conversion of St Augustine, in Gesellschaft,Kultur, Literatur: Rezeption und Originalitt im Wachsen einer europisschen Literatur undGeistigkeit(Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, ), .

. Praed. sanc. , . Ferrari takes Augustines use of revelare in this passage in astrong sense. He speaks of the revelation as a tremendous transformation in the veryfoundations of Augustines thought. Furthermore, it was no conclusion reached on thebasis of mere human reasoning. Indeed, as Augustine tells us, it was a veritable revelation

to him from God Himself, as he struggled to answer the question of Simplicianus (Fer-rari, Te Conversions,). However, Augustine uses revelarein the preceding paragraphsofpraed. sanc.,and he does so in dependence upon Pauls words, And if on some pointyou think otherwise, God will reveal this to you as well; only, let us walk in the truththat we have already attained (Phil :). Augustine applies this text to the monksof Provence, saying that, if they cling to the truths they already hold that separate themfrom the Pelagians, if they think otherwise with regard to predestination, God will re-veal this to them as well (praed. sanc. , ). Surely Augustine is not promising thesemonks an exceptional revelation from God, but simply the intellectual clarification thatcomes from prayerful pursuit of the truth, which is always for Augustine a divine gift.

See as well Augustines use of this text in ep., , , where Augustine can hardly bepromising Consentius an exceptional revelation of the doctrine of the rinity. On theother hand, Peter Browns statement, when Augustine speaks of an idea having been re-vealed to him, he means only that he has reached the inevitable conclusion of a series ofcertainties ... an experience not unknown to speculative thinkers today (Augustineof Hippo: A Biography[Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, ],n) seems to offer a too naturalistic interpretation that overlooks the fact that for

Augustine it is God who gives understanding (seepraed. sanc., ).


34/310

he thought that the faith by which we believe in God is not a gift ofGod, but something that we have from ourselves.49

At that time he thought that we needed grace in the sense that weneeded to have the Gospel preached to us, but I thought that it wasentirely up to us that we should consent to the Gospel preached to us,and that we had it from ourselves.50Hence, from on Augustineregarded the assent of faith to the Gospel as a gift of God, while priorto that time he thought of the assent as merely a reasonable act of hu-man practical reason. Prior to Augustine had distinguished humanauthority and divine authority as grounds for belief, and he had distin-guished divine and human objects of belief.51But he had not distin-guished the assent of belief that is a gift of God from the assent that ismerely a reasonable human act.

What then is the relevance of this final conversion to my topic? Priorto believing was, in Augustines eyes, a matter of reasonable humanassent, whether one relied upon divine or human authority, whetherwhat one believed was what God spoke or what another human spoke.

Hence, believing in order to understand was a method open to everyreasonable human being and, for that reason, a philosophical method.Masai describes Augustines pre- position as a philosophical fide-ism in the sense that one must begin with faith, albeit a philosophicalfaith.52Masai sees in the revelation of the birth of theology andrefers to Augustines position after as a theological fideism, becauseone begins with faith, but a faith that is a gift of God and not, there-fore, something that is entirely up to us or that we have from ourselvesas human beings. Masai concludes, Beginning in , Augustine ac-knowledged in the act of faith as well as in its object a divine originand nature. But ipso facto the philosophical character of Augustinianthought is found to be compromised. As it rests entirely upon the foun-dation of a light freely given by God, it cannot keep the pretense of


. Praed. sanc., : errarem, putans fidem qua in Deum credimus, non esse do-num Dei, sed a nobis esse in nobis.

. Ibid. , : ut autem praedicato nobis evangelio consentiremus, nostrum esseproprium, et nobis ex nobis esse arbitrabar.

. See ord., , : Auctoritas autem partim divina est, partim humana, sed verafirma summa est, quae divina nominatur.

. Te term fideism is, I believe, unfortunate; like the term ontologism, it car-ries misleading historical overtones and recalls the fideism of Huet () or thetraditionalism of Bonald () and of Lamennais (), in accord withwhich all knowledge had to begin with an act of faith.


35/310

addressing human reason as such; it becomes necessarily a knowledgereserved for the faithful alone. In brief, the philosophy of Augustine

has from that time been transformed into theology.53

Obviously thequestion of whether there can be an Augustinian philosophy becomesmore difficult once the act of believing is seen to be a free gift of Godand not something entirely up to us so that we can believe if we want todo so. It is not merely that prior to Augustine did not consider thequestion of our beginning to believe as a grace; rather, he tells us that hehad regarded beginning to believe as something within our power. In afootnote Masai wonders whether it is conceivable to restore within thestrictly Augustinian perspective a Christian philosophy alongside theol-ogy.54He dodges an answer, while noting that an answer to this ques-tion depends upon the solution of other problems raised by divine illu-mination and, more generally, the relation between nature and grace.

On the other hand, the existence of philosophy in Augustine hasalso had its defenders. In the second BA edition of De magistro (here-after mag.) and De libero arbitrio (hereafter lib. arb.), F. J. Tonnard,

while admitting that Augustine did not formally create a philosophicalsystem, holds that it is possible to make explicit Augustines philosophy.He points to three conditions of an Augustinian philosophy that werearticulated by Fulbert Cayr:

if the philosophical questions that Saint Augustine has dealt with were studiedby him in a rational manner and not merely from the perspective of faith; )if these questions include all the major problems posed by every philosophy

worthy of the name; ) if the solutions that he brings to them are tied togetherby common principles capable of giving to the whole a solid coherence. If theseare fulfilled, there is in Saint Augustine a true philosophy that can be separatedfrom his theology, even if he himself has not separated them.55

I agree with Cayr that the three conditions for the existence of phi-losophy are sufficient and sufficiently met in the works of Augustine forone to speak of an Augustinian philosophy. But I think one can go fur-

ther and say that there has to be within Augustines strictly theological. Masai, Les conversions de saint Augustin, .. Ibid., .. See the note: La philosophie augustinienne, in the second edition of BA ,

, here . In the third edition by G. Madec, this note is omitted, perhaps be-cause of Madecs conviction that there is no patristic philosophy.



36/310

thought an autonomous philosophy that is an indispensable conditionof the possibility of his theology. Masai is surely correct that a proper

solution to the question of whether there can be an Augustinian phi-losophy depends upon the wider questions of nature and grace, or ofreason and faith.

Tere was a time in the not so distant past when in Catholic circlesphilosophy and theology were sharply distinguished, so much so thatphilosophical ethics, for example, was said to be the sort of moral guid-ance that would have been applicable if we were living in a state of purenature, that hypothetical state which has never existed, but would haveexisted if human beings were not destined for a supernatural end. Teo-logians such as Karl Rahner and Henri de Lubac have done much tocorrect the view that revelation and grace are purely extrinsic additionsto nature.56

Rahner has argued that the possibility of revelation requires thatman, as the hearer of the word of God, have a natural self-understandingindependent of special revelation in order to be able to hear and under-

stand Gods word. He claims that theology necessarily implies philoso-phy, i.e., a previous ... self-comprehension of the man who hears thehistorical revelation of God.57

Furthermore, he maintains that that self-clarification of mans exis-tence which we call philosophy can certainly be pure philosophy in thesense that it does not take any of its material contents and norms from... revelation.58But even apart from such a transcendental deductionof the necessity of a philosophy for understanding the revealed word ofGod, one can, I believe, argue that in Augustine there are philosophicaltruths that human reason can know independently of accepting in faithGods revelation of those truths. Tese truths would be analogous towhat Tomas Aquinas called thepraeambula fidei.Let me briefly sketchmy reasons for this claim. First, even after , when God revealed to

Augustine that the act of believing is a gift of God and not somethingwithin simply human power, it does not seem to be the case that every

act of believing is a gift of God. Indeed Augustine implies that faith


. See my Rahner on the Relation of Nature and Grace, Philosophy and Teology,disk supplement , (): .

. Karl Rahner, Philosophy and Teology, in Teological Investigations, vol. (Baltimore: Helicon, ), p. .

. Ibid., p. .


37/310

need precede reason only in certain things pertaining to the doctrineof salvation which we cannot yet perceive by reason.59

Second, Augustine groups the objects of belief (credibilia)into threeclasses. He speaks of things that must always be believed and can neverbe understood, of things that are understood as soon as they are be-lieved, and of things that are first believed and later understood. Tefirst class of objects of belief includes all historical events of which wewere not ourselves witnesses. Te second class includes all human rea-sonings either in mathematics or in any of the disciplines. Te thirdclass of objects of belief includes truths about the divine realities thatcan only be understood by the pure of heart.60Augustine thought thatone might, for example, understand a theorem in geometry as soon asone accepted it as true. Certainly, the second class of credibiliaare su-pernatural in terms neither of the object believed nor of the authorityone believes nor of the act of believing as a special gift of God.61

Tird, Augustine credited the great Greek philosophers with hav-ing come to a knowledge of God and of human destiny. Tough at one

point he entertained the idea that Plato had come into contact withGods revelation to the Jewish people, he clearly stated that they cameto a knowledge of the eternal reality of God from the things God hadmade.62 Hence, I believe that one can maintain that there is in Au-gustineand indeed there must be in Augustinea philosophy, anda philosophy that can be recognized as philosophy even in the sense inwhich we speak of philosophy today. One could, of course, so definephilosophy that Augustines thought is automatically excluded. But anysuch definition could, I fear, banish from the realm of philosophy theworks of Hegel and Aquinas, Kierkegaard, and even Descartes as well.

. Ep., , : Ut ergo in quibusdam rebus ad doctrinam salutarem pertinenti-bus, quas ratione nondum percipere valemus, sed aliquando valebimus, fides praecedatrationem.

. Div. quaes.: alia quae mox ut creduntur intelleguntur, sicut sunt omnes ra-tiones humanae vel de numeris vel de quibuslibet disciplinis; tertium quae primo cre-duntur et postea intelliguntur qualia sunt ea quae de divinis rebus non possum intelligi

nisi ab his qui mundo sunt corde.. Tus in ep. , , , Augustine seems to say that there are some truths that

we know to be true and cannot believe once an account has been given. Sunt autemquaedam, quae cum audierimus, non eis accommodamus fidem et ratione nobis redditavera esse cognoscimus, quae credere non valemus.

. Civ. Dei, : Sed undecumque ista ille [Plato] didicerit, sive praecedentibuseum veterum libris siue potius, quo modo dicit Apostolus, quia quod notum est Deimanifestum est in illis.



38/310

Any attempt to sum up the core of Augustines legacy to Westernphilosophy is bound to be incomplete and perspectival. I intend totouch upon three topics, one an attitude, the other two matters of doc-trine. Te attitude that I want to single out is a deep appreciation forhuman intelligence. Prior to Augustine, at least in the African Church,the spirit of ertullian was still regnantertullian who asked what

Athens has to do with Jerusalem, what the Academy has to do with theChurch, ertullian who claimed that we have no need for a curiositygoing beyond Christ Jesus or for inquiry going beyond the Gospel.63

When Augustine warns of bishops and priests who avoid unveiling themysteries or, content with simple faith, have no care to know more pro-found truths, he indicates the anti-intellectual atmosphere within theCatholicathat helped push him into the Manichaean fold.64From hisown conversion to Manichaeism Augustine learned how dangerous itcould be to meet the human desire to know with ridicule instead of

respect.65In his Gn. litt.he again and again indicates his respect for theinquiring mind by refusing rashly to claim knowledge or to give up onits pursuit.66

Let me offer two examples of Augustines respect for the human intel-lects desire to know. First, years after Augustines ordination to the epis-copacy, Consentius wrote to Augustine that he thought that the truthabout Gods reality ought to be grasped by faith rather than by reason.67


. ertullian, De praescriptione haereticorum: Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosoly-mis? Quid academiae et ecclesiae? ... Nobis curiositate opus non est post ChristumIesum nec inquisitione post evangelium.

.Mor., , : Nec, si ea discere cupiens, in aliquos forte inciderit vel episcopos velpresbyteros, vel cujuscemodi Ecclesiae catholicae antistites et ministros, qui aut passim ca-veant nudare mysteria, aut contenti simplici fide, altiora cognoscere non curarint, desper-et ibi scientiam esse veritatis, ubi neque omnes a quibus quaeritur docere possunt, nequeomnes qui quaerunt discere digni sunt. See util. cred., , , for Augustines claim that itwas the demand for belief prior to understanding that lured him into Manichaeism.

. We perhaps have a reflection of such ridicule in Augustines refusal to give the

answer that someone gave to the question about what God was doing before he createdthe world, namely, that he was preparing hell for people who ask profound questions;see conf., , : Alta, inquit, scrutantibus gehennas parabat. Aliud est videre, aliudridere. Haec non respondeo.

. See the note: Le charactre aportique du De Genesi ad litteram, in BA ,.

. Ep., : ego igitur cum apud memet ipsum prorsus definerim veritatem reidivinae ex fide magis quam ex ratione percipi oportere.


39/310

Otherwise, Consentius suggests, only the likes of philosophers wouldattain beatitude, and he argues that we should not so much require a

rational account of God as follow the authority of the saints.68

In re-sponse Augustine warns with regard to the rinity against following theauthority of the saints alone without making any effort to understand.Correct your position, he says, not so that you reject faith, but sothat what you already hold by solid faith, you may also see by the lightof reason.69Augustine adds, Heaven forbid that God should hate inus that by which he made us more excellent than the animals. Heavenforbid, I say, that we believe so that we do not accept or seek a rationalaccount, since we could not believe unless we had rational souls.70Hecites Saint Peters warning that we should be ready to give an accountof our faith and urges Consentius to a love of intelligence (ad amoremintelligentiae).His words, Intellectum uero valde ama:Have a great lovefor the intellect, echo down the centuries as a charter for Christiandedication to intellectual pursuits, first of all, in theology, but also inwhat we today identify as philosophy and the sciences.71

Second, no one would claim that Augustine was a philosopher ofscience, but his care to interpret Scripture in such a way as to avoida contradiction with what has been scientifically proven has been ad-mired by a scientist as great as Galileo. In Gn. litt.,while dealing withthe shape of the heavens, Augustine manages to ask a question that can-not on the surface fail to strike us, who live in the age of space explo-ration, as naive. What does it matter to me, he asks, whether theheaven encloses the earth like a sphere ... or only covers it from abovelike a lid?72Yet he worries that someone might find in the Scripture

. Ibid.; si enim fides sanctae ecclesiae ex disputationis ratione, non ex credulitatispietate adprehenderetur, nemo praeter philosophos atque oratores beatitudinem possid-eret.

. Ep., , : corrige definitionem tuam, non ut fidem respuas, sed ut ea, quaefidei firmitate iam tenes, etiam rationis luce conspicias.

. Ibid. , : Absit namque, ut hoc in nobis Deus oderit, in quo nos reliquis ani-mantibus excellentiores creavit absit, inquam, ut ideo credamus, ne rationem accipiamus

sive quaeramus, cum etiam credere non possemus, nisi rationales animas haberemus.. Ibid. , and , . It is important to bear in mind that Consentiuss principal

difficulty was purely philosophical, namely, to conceive of God as an incorporeal being,as we shall see shortly.

. Gn. litt., , : Quid enim ad me pertinet, utrum caelum sicut sphaera un-dique concludat terram in media mundi mole libratam, an eam ex una parte desupervelut discus operiat?



40/310

what seems opposed to clearly seen rational arguments and, as a result,give up all belief in the Scriptures. He warns that the Holy Spirit who

spoke through the [authors of Scripture] did not intend to teach humanbeings matters of no use for their salvation.73He faces the Psalm textthat God has stretched out the heaven like a skin (Ps :), whichseems contrary to the view that the heaven is spherical. Augustine evenenvisages the case in which some are able to prove with indubitablearguments that the heaven is spherical and says, Ten we must provethat what our books say about the skin is not contrary to those rationaltruths; otherwise, there will be another contradiction between this textand the other passage of Scripture in which it says that the heaven washung as a vault (see Is :).74 In writing to Christine of Lorraine,Galileo cites the text from Augustine and adds, From this text we seethat we need no less care to show how a passage of Scripture is in agree-ment with a proposition demonstrated by natural reason than to showhow one passage of Scripture agrees with another contrary to it....One must admire the circumspection of this saint who manifests such

great reserve in dealing with obscure conclusions or those of which onecan have a demonstration by human means.75

Let me, then, turn to two points of philosophical doctrine. In writ-ing to Caelestinus in or , Augustine offers a brief, but importantsummary of his worldview: Accept this priceless, but tiny gem (quid-dam grande, sed breve).Tere is a nature changeable in places and times,such as the body, and there is a nature not changeable in place at all,but changeable only in time, such as the soul, and there is a naturewhich cannot change either in place or in time. Tis is God.76

Robert OConnell has pointed to this three-tiered view of reality

. Ibid.: sed spiritum Dei, qui per eos loquebatur; noluisse ista docere hominesnulli saluti profutura.

. Ibid. , , : demonstrandum est hoc, quod apud nos de pelle dictum est, verisillis rationibus non esse contrarium; alioquin contrarium erit etiam ipsis in alio locoscripturis nostris, ubi caelum dicitur velut camera esse suspensum.

. Galileo Galilei, Lettre Christine de Lorraine, Grand-Duchesse de oscane

(), traduction et prsentation par Franois Russo, Revue dhistoire des sciences et deleurs applications (): ; cited from BA , n (my translation). Galileoalso cites Gn. litt., , ; , , , ; , , ; , , ; , , .

. Ep., : Sane quoniam te novi, accipe hoc quiddam grande et breve: est na-tura per locos et tempora mutabilis, ut corpus, et est natura per locos nullo modo, sedtantum per tempora etiam ipsa mutabilis, ut anima, et est natura, quae nec per locos necper tempora mutari potest, hoc Deus est.



41/310

with the utterly immutable God at the top and souls mutable only intime in the middle and bodies mutable in both time and place at the

bottom as the controlling idea in Vernon Bourkes presentation of Au-gustines view of reality.77Contained in that quiddam grande et brevethatAugustine offered to Caelestinus are two doctrines that lie, I suggest, atthe heart of Augustines philosophical legacy to the Western world: hisconcept of nonbodily realities, such as the soul and God, and his con-cept of nontemporal reality, such as the utterly unchanging reality ofGod. As a nature that is immutable in place must be free from any spa-tial extension, so a nature that is immutable in time must be free fromany temporal distension. Prior to Augustine, at least in Western Christi-anity, there was no philosophical concept of incorporeal being, of beingthat is whole wherever it is (totus ubique).Once again the philosophicalviews of ertullian and the corporealism of the Stoics were the commonphilosophical patrimony of the West.78In the West prior to Augustine,the term spirit was, of course, used in the Bible, in medicine, and inphilosophy. But when the meaning of spirit was spelled out, it seems

to have meant a subtle kind of body, not something nonbodily. So too,we use spirits to refer to a beverage, and pneumatic tires are certainlybodily.79In holding that God and the soul were bodily, the Manichees

. Robert J. OConnell, S.J., Imagination and Metaphysics in St. Augustine (Mil-waukee: Marquette University Press, ). OConnell is referring to BourkesAugustinesView of Reality(Villanova: Villanova University Press, ).

. See Grard Verbeke, Lvolution de la doctrine du pneuma, du stocisme s. Au-gustin(Paris: Descle de Brouwer; and Louvain: Institut suprieur de philosophie, ).

Verbeke attributes the concept of spirit as incorporeal to the influence of Scripture. F.Masai more correctly, I believe, recognizes the term as biblical, but attributes the con-cept to Neoplatonism. See Masai, Les conversions de saint Augustin, . For the Stoicview that whatever is, is a body, see E. Weil, Remarques sur le matrialisme des Sto-iciens, inMlanges Alexandre Koyr, vol. ,Laventure de lesprit(Paris: Hermann, ),. Weil argues that corporealism more accurately describes the Stoic position thanmaterialism. With Augustine too, the term materialism should be used with care, sincematter is present in everything changeable, such as souls, though souls are not bodily.See conf., , .

. See Masai, Les conversions de saint Augustin, , for his account of the

spiritualization of spirit. Just as most of us who are believers do not require a philosophi-cal concept of nonbodily reality when we pray to God, so the Christians of the first cen-turies had no need for such a concept of God or of the soul in their lives. So too, priorto the Arian controversy, there was no need for a concept such as the consubstantialityof the Father and the Son, but once the question arose whether or not the Son was acreature, the technical term and concept were needed. In Augustines case, it was theproblem of evil that necessitated a concept of God as nonbodily. After all, if all that is, isbodily, then either God is an infinite body and evil is in God, or God is finite and evil is



42/310

were not being singular, but rather were in full accord with the com-mon philosophical view of the age.80

Even the Arians whom Augustine encountered seem to have thoughtof God as corporeal.81 From Consentiuss letter to Augustine alreadymentioned, we can see that even this budding theologian could not quitesee how God was bodiless.82We also know that Augustine encountered inthe young layman Vincentius Victor, a convert from Donatism, a thinkerwho explicitly held that the soul was corporeal.83Even after Augustinestime the doctrine of the incorporeal nature of the soul was not univer-sally accepted. Tomas Smith points to Faustus of Riez and Cassian asexamples in fifth-century Gaul of thinkers who held the corporealist po-sition on the nature of the soul.84Augustines spiritualist understandingof God and the soul, however, became the dominant view in the Westfor centuries to come. Indeed, the Augustinian revolution was so effec-tive that many anachronistically suppose that the concept of spiritualreality is biblical and explicitly contained in the Christian revelation.85


another body. Te former view means that God is not all good; the latter approximatesthe Manichaean position.

. Masai says, La vrit est quavant Augustin, il est vain de chercher dans lAfriquechrtienne un spiritualisme au sens moderne du terme: le Stocisme de Zenon y rgnasans contest ... (Les conversions de saint Augustin, p. ). For the Manichaean posi-tion, see c. ep. Man., , where Augustine calls the Manichees carnal minds, quinaturam incorpoream et spiritualem cogitando persequi vel non audent vel nondum va-lent. So too, he admits in conf., , , that he himself had thought of God as a brightand immense body and that he himself was a part of that body.

. See, for example, c. Max., , , where Augustine accuses Maximinus of a carnalinterpretation of in sinu Patris (Jn :): Sinum quippe tibi fingis, ut video, aliquam

capacitatem majoris Patris, qua Filium minorem capiat atque contineat: sicut hominemcorporaliter capit domus, aut sicut sinus nutricis capit infantem. See my paper, Heresyand Imagination in St. Augustine, Studia Patristica , ed. Elizabeth A. Livingstone, (Leuven: Peeters, ).

. See ep., , where Consentius writes to Augustine, ais non tamquam aliquodcorpus debere cogitare Deum ... sed sicut iustitiam vel pietatem corpoream cogitarenon possumus ... ita et Deum sine aliqua phantasiae simulatione, in quantum possu-mus, cogitandum. See also Robert J. OConnell, Te Origin of the Soul in St. AugustinesLater Works(New York: Fordham University Press, ), p. .

. See an. et or., , , . See also the notes to the text, which show the

linkage to ertullians position, as well as the note: Une thorie stocienne de lme,BA , .

. See Tomas A. Smith, Augustine in wo Gallic Controversies: Use or Abuse?inAugustine: Presbyter Factus Sum(New York: Peter Lang, ), . See also ErnestFortin, Christianisme et culture philosophique au cinquime sicle: La querelle de lme hu-maine en Occident(Paris: tudes augustiniennes, ).

. Masai, for example, points to M. estard who, in speaking of the young Augustine,mentions that he totally lacked certain beliefs fundamental to the Christian faith, such as


43/310

Te second philosophical doctrine that Augustine bequeathed tothe West is the concept of eternity as timelessness, as a mode of exis-

tence that is whole all at once (tota simul),without past and withoutfuture.86Once again, as in the case of spirit, there is in the Bible thelanguage of eternity in the sense of a duration that is everlasting, a dura-tion without beginning or, at least, without end. So too, there was inearlier Greek philosophy the concept of a world without beginning orend.87Only with Plotinus do we find a philosophically articulated con-cept of eternity as timeless duration.88But prior to Augustine, at leastin the West, there does not seem to have been in any Christian authora philosophically articulated concept of eternity as a timeless present.89Even if Gregory of Nyssa did anticipate Augustine in adopting the Plo-tinian concept of eternity into Christian thought, Augustine certainlyremains the source of the concept for the Christian West.

Just as Augustine needed the philosophical concept of incorporealreality if he was going to be able to deal with the Manichaean questionsabout the ontological status of evil, so he needed the concept of time-

less eternity to handle their questions about what God was doing beforehe created the world.90Unless one has a concept of God as a reality

the spiritual nature of God and the soul (Maurice estard, Saint Augustin et Cicron[Paris:tudes augustiniennes, ], :; Masai, Les conversions de saint Augustin, ).

. For the texts on eternity in Augustine, see my Vocans temporales, faciens aeter-nos:St. Augustine on Liberation from ime, raditio (): .

. See Aristotle, De caelo, , b.. For the Plotinian source of the concept of timeless eternity, see W. Beierwaltes,

Plotin ber Ewigkeit und Zeit(Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, ), , andalso my Vocans temporales,.. Te only Christian thinker prior to Augustine to have used the Plotinian con-

cept of eternity in his speculative thought seems to have been Gregory of Nyssa. SeeDavid L. Bals, Eternity and ime in Gregory of Nyssas Contra Eunomium, in Gregorvon Nyssa und die Philosophie, ed. Heinrich Drrie, Margarete Altenburger, and UtaSchramm (Leiden: E. J. Brill, ), . Bals concludes, Most historians of phi-losophy would consider St. Augustine as the first Christian thinker who adopted [thestrict notion of eternity]. Priority surely belongs to Gregory of Nyssa. In fact the famousdefinition of Boethius: interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio could easily

be put together from Gregorys texts (). Te Contra Eunomium is dated between and , but a direct influence of Gregory upon Augustine seems less likely than thedependence of Augustine upon Plotinus and the Neoplatonic Christians of Milan. B.

Altaner concludes that Augustine knew no work of Gregory of Nyssa; see his Augusti-nus und Gregor von Nazianz, Gregor von Nyssa, in Kleine Patristische Schriften,ed. G.Glockmann (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, ), p. .

. E. Peters, What Was God Doing before He Created the Heavens and theEarth?Augustiniana (): .



44/310

. Brown,Augustine of Hippo,p. .. Ibid.

not extended in length, breadth, and depth, one cannot maintain thatGod is infinite and that evil is not in God, unless, of course, one takes

the radical option of denying the reality of evil. So too, unless one canthink of Gods eternity as a duration not extended beyond the presentinto past and future, one is faced with the prospect of an idle or sleep-ing God who wakes up and in a burst of energy creates the world. PeterBrown speaks of Augustines discovery of spiritual reality in reading thelibri Platonicorumas the evolution of a metaphysician.91

Brown adds, [A]nd his final conversion to the idea of a purely spir-itual reality, as held by the sophisticated Christians in Milan, is a decisiveand fateful step in the evolution of our ideas on spirit and matter.92Itwas certainly that, but I suggest that it was also the birth of Christianmetaphysics in the West, if one may use such an Aristotelian term for soPlatonic an offspring. It was the philosophical doctrine of Augustine onthe spirituality of God and the soul and on the eternity of God that per-vaded Western Christian thought for centuries to come. Both of thesedoctrines were found in Neoplatonism prior to being taught by any

Christian thinker, and the Christian faith was proclaimed and taughtfor the better part of four centuries before there emerged a clear conceptof God and the soul as nonbodily and of God as timeless. Hence, thesedoctrines cannot have been derived from the Christian revelation; theymust rather be philosophical doctrines independent of revelation, how-ever useful they may have come to appear as means for articulating theword of God. Just as the desire to know, or the love for intelligence, ispart of the nature of human beings, so the doctrine of the incorporealnature of the human soul and of God and the doctrine of the eternity ofGod are matters of philosophical, not revealed, knowledge.

I have tried to show what Augustine meant by philosophy and haveargued that there is in Augustine philosophy even in the contemporary

sense. Finally, I have tried to show that Augustines philosophical legacyto the West has been very rich, though there is, of course, much, muchmore in Augustine than philosophy and he is much more than a phi-losopher.



45/310

Augustines proof of the existence of God in lib. arb.has met with a

variety of interpretations, but no matter how one looks at it, it is afar cry from the sort of demonstration found in Saint Tomass Sum-ma of Teology,where the influence of Aristotle and Aristotelianscience is clearly seen. In this article I argue that Augustines purposewas not so much to prove that there is a God, as to lead his readers tounderstand what sort of God there is, namely, one who is nonbodilyand nontemporal. I wrote another article, which was published inthe Proceedings of the Jesuit Philosophical Association,in which

I argued less successfully that Augustine could not have intended toprove the existence of God in lib. arb.at all. In recent years I haveturned some of my attention to Henry of Ghent, a Neoaugustinianof the thirteenth century, and I have found in Henry a defense of

Augustines arguments for the existence of God that is, I think, quitecompatible with my interpretation in the present article of what Au-

gustine was doing in lib. arb. Although Henry, unlike Augustine,

knew a great deal about Aristotelian science and accepted Aristotlesarguments for the existence of God, his own metaphysical proof israther a guiding of the student to an intellectual insight into theexistence and nature of God than an Aristotelian demonstration ofGods existence.


46/310

Te heart of book of lib. arb.aims to show how it is manifest thatGod is.1All the commentaries that I have been able to consult speak of

this section as a proof for the existence of God or even as theAugustin-ian proof for the existence of God, though they differ considerably intheir assessment of the success of the proof.2Yet how it is manifest thatGod exists seems a strange way to refer to a conclusion arrived at bymediate reasoning many pages long. And the conclusion that God isand truly is suggests that the is in question may be a far richer notionthan that expressed in the proposition that God is.3What I shall argue

Te Aim of Augustines Proof

. Te Latin, quomodo manifestum est Deum esse, is translated in a varietyof ways, some emphasizing the idea of proof, others the evidence of the existence ofGod. In BA F. J. Tonnard translates the words as comment prouver avec videncelexistence de Dieu? On the Free Choice of the Will,trans. by Anna S. Benjamin and L.H. Hackstaff (Indianapolis: Library of the Liberal Arts, ), translates it as how it isproved (manifestum)that God exists. In St. Augustine: Te Problem of Free Choice(West-minster, Md.: Newman Press, ), Mark Pontifex says, how it is clear that God exists.

And in Die frhen Werke des heiligen Augustinus(Paderborn, ), Carl Perl translates itas wie wird das Dasein Gottes offenbar. Tough I have consulted, of course, various

translations, especially those in the BA edition of Augustines works, the translationsthroughout are my own, except in the case of the conf.,where I have used John K. Ryanstranslation (Garden City, N.Y., ), though with occasional emendations.

. For example, BA introduces subtitles, such as Demonstratur Dei existentiaand Dmonstration de lexistence de Dieu (). Yet in the notes Tonnard ob-serves that there is a lack of rigor in the proof such as one finds in the five ways of SaintTomas (). And he also points out that there is a lengthy digression in the midstof the argument. Mark Pontifex speaks of St. Augustines argument for the existenceof God and notes that Augustines argument is not systematic in the sense that theTomist proofs are systematic, and a number of questions are left unanswered ().

Etienne Gilson, in Christian Philosophy,also speaks of Augustines proof, which he callsa demonstration (). However, he notes that Augustines method unquestionably givesthe impression of being slow and tortuous, but the numerous intermediate steps it placesbetween its starting point and conclusion are not indispensable to the mind that hasonce mastered it (). Charles Boyer, S.J., deals with the lib. arb. argument in Lidede vrit dans la philosophie de saint Augustin(Paris: Beauchesne, ), where he callsit une dmonstration en rgle de lexistence de Dieu (). See also his La preuve deDieu Augustinienne,Archives de philosophie (): , where he argues againstan ontologist interpretation of lib. arb.In Dieu prsent dans la vie de lesprit(Paris: DeBrouwer, ), F. Cayr devotes the fifth chapter to explaining the Augustinian proofand limits himself to

lib. arb. and the parallel texts in

vera rel.. Tough in many ways Augustine seems here to offer a proof for the existenceof God very much along the lines of the Tomistic proofs, there are serious reasons, Ibelieve, to read the Augustinian argument in a quite different sense. Gilson, for example,warns that Augustines proofs of Gods existence proceed entirely on the level of essencerather than on the level of existence properly so-called (Christian Philosophy,). Headds, Faithful to the tradition of Plato, St. Augustine thinks less about existence than


47/310

here is that to hold that the central section of lib. arb. is concernedmerely with proving that there is a God is to miss a great deal. For I be-

lieve that an equally important, if not the most important, goal of thissection is to lead the reader to conceive of God as a spiritual substance,immutable and eternal.4Tere are a number of reasons that, I believe,can be urged in favor of this thesis. Tough perhaps no one of them isof itself sufficient, the cumulative effect is, I believe, highly persuasive.

In this s

Documents

toknowgoda_l6dumtc6