St Augustine's Contribution to ere
A. J. APPASAMY
to ourselves.
We can't help it; it is a normal action in the realm of moral beings..
As you cannot know a man unless you know his heart, so you cannot know God unless you know His heart, that heart is seen in this Cry; the sins of his persecutors and of all men, and their final doom and their agony as they face God's .judgement are vividly before him.
He hears them crying: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
But they are all his own.
He loves them; therefore their agony and cry become his, and he cries out: "My.God, my God, why hast thou forsaken Me." '
'When we parted company, the Hindu gentleman thanked me heartily for what I had said and added: "It is providential that I have met you today." '
ST AUGUSTINE'S CONTRIBUTION
TO PHILOSOPHY
When I was teaching in Bishop's College, Calcutta we had come together for a meeting of our College Theological Society.
I happened to comment that St Augustine's use of Neo-platonic philosophy was full of significance for us here in India.
Father Noel Hall, who later became the Bishop of Chota-Nagpur, took strong objection to this view.
He was a fine scholar and was often consulted on account of his wide and exact knowledge of Church History.
He held that St Augustine was certainly a great thinker but unfortunately in this matter he went astray.
He was great not because he had assimilated Neo-Platonism in his Christian life and thought but in spite of it. The meeting became a theological debate.
Our students, who filled the room, listened to the debate intently.
This was a matter of deep concern in a country like India with its many religions and philosophies and they were eager to find out what we two thought of our theological task.
My interest in St Augustine, always deep, became even deeper because I now wanted to find out for myself how far Bishop
Hall's view was correct.' The opportunity for this further study of St Augustine came some years later.
The Government of India decided to publish a History of Philosophy, Eastern and Western.
Dr S. 'Radhakrishnan was
ST AUGUSTINE'S CONTRIBUTION TO PHILOSOPHY
the Chairman of the Editorial Board.
He held that while there were many excellent histories of European Philosophy and of Indian Philosophy, there was no single book in which the main schools of Eastern and Western thought were described and their interactions one upon the other were assessed.
In these days of intimate contact between East and West it is necessary to show how through the ages they have influenced each other.
The immediate aim was to show what contribution Indian philosophy had made to world-thought as a whole. When asked in the Indian
Parliament why the Government should launch on such a project as this, the Minister for Education, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, explained that the Government felt that no private publisher, whether in India or abroad, would be prepared to sink money on an undertaking of this kind.
I received an invitation from Mr Humayun Kabir to write the article on St Augustine for this book.
Mr Humayun Kabir was at that time the Joint Educational Adviser to the Government of India.
I met him while I was in New Delhi.
Educated at Oxford, in his time he was a leading member of the Oxford Union.
For several years he was on the staff of the University of Calcutta.
A Muslim, he had identified himself completely with the Congress and had always stood for the whole-hearted co-operation of Hindu and Muslim.
As a member of the Bengal Legislative Assembly and as a Muslim youth leader he had exerted considerable influence in the cause of Hindu-Muslim unity.
For some time he was the Education Minister of the Central Government.
He was a man of versatile gifts and had written, both in English and in Bengali, many stories and poems which had aroused much interest.
He explained to me in some detail the scope and purpose of this new History of Philosophy.
St Augustine's earnest search for truth, his close acquaintance with the philosophy and culture of his day, and his clear insight into the deepest aspects of the Christian religion had fascinated me.
Though he lived from a.p. 354 to 430, his thought and experience were determined by influences which came from such widely scattered lands as Africa, Persia, Greece, Rome and Palestine.
He was born in Tagaste in Africa and was a citizen of the farflung Roman Empire.
Semitic influences affected him through the Phoenicians, with whose language and ideas he was familiar.
For a period of nine years he was an ardent follower of the
A. J. APPASAMY
doctrines of Manicheism, which had originated in Persia.
He was brought up on Latin and Greek classics, though he was far more familiar with Latin than with Greek.
As a Christian he was deeply rooted in the Bible.
After St Paul there is no greater Christian thinker than St Augustine.
His influence in the Christian Church has been both profound and continuous.
That an early Christian thinker of such spiritual and intellectual stature should have been helped by schools of thought from such widely scattered lands is certainly a matter of great significance.
St Augustine is particularly important for the way in which he has woven into the texture of his thought the nobler elements in Neo-Platonism.
For several years he studied carefully the writings of Plotinus, and when he was converted to the Christian religion he brought into a living synthesis in his own thought and experience all that was best in Neo-Platonism and Christianity.
The account in his Confessions of his conversation with his mother at Ostia is perhaps the finest expression of this living synthesis.
A brilliant young man, his moral life had been in a chaotic state, and his mother Monica had prayed night and day with tears for his conversion, which took place when he was thirty-two years old.
A year after his conversion mother and son, who were devoted to each other, were standing by a window in a house at Ostia gazing on the garden and talking about the things of eternity.
As she died soon after, this conversation has a poignant interest:
We were saying then: If to any the tumult of the flesh were hushed, hushed the images of earth and waters and air, hushed also the poles of heaven, yea the very soul be hushed to herself, and by not thinking on self, surmount self, hushed all dreams and imaginary revelations, every tongue and every sign, and whatsoever exists only in transition, since if any could hear all these say, we made not ourselves, but he made us that abideth for ever—If then having uttered this, they too should be hushed, having roused only our ears to him who made them, and he alone speak, not by them, but by himself, that we may hear his word, not through any tongue of flesh, nor angel's voice, nor sound of thunder, nor in the dark riddle of a similitude, but might hear him whom in these things we love, might hear his very self without these (as we two now strained our-
ST AUGUSTINE'S CONTRIBUTION TO PHILOSOPHY
selves, and in swift thought touched on that Eternal wisdom, which abideth over all)—could this be continued on, and other visions of kind far unlike be withdrawn, and this one ravish, and absorb, and wrap up its beholder amid these inward joys, so that life might be for ever like that one moment of understanding which now we sighed after; were not this, Enter into thy Master's Joy?
And when shall that be?
When we shall all rise again, though we shall not all be changed (Confessions, p. 195).
Here St Augustine is very much under the influence of NeoPlatonism.
The tumult of the flesh is hushed; the distractions which come to us through the eye and the ear are subdued; the world of nature with its loveliness ceases to speak.
The direct communion of God with the soul cannot be expressed in words; even images of words are quite inadequate to convey it.
'The human spirit and the Divine Spirit meet together on a lofty range and rouse in us the deepest joy.
It is difficult for us to understand what the Master's joy (Matthew 25:21, 23) will be like. In this passage St Augustine suggests that it will be like the blissful experience here and now in our direct contact with God, the profound difference being that here our fellowship with God is imperfect and short-lived, whereas in the hereafter it will be continuous and permanent.
From this brief account of the teaching of St Augustine, it is evident that he owed a heavy debt to Neo-platonism.
But he was emphatic and clear in recognizing its final inadequacy.
Contrasting the Platonic books and the Bible he writes that the former teach 'that He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not.
But, that He came unto His own, and His own received Him not; but as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, as many as believed His name; this I read not there.
Again I read there, that God the Word was born not of flesh nor of blood, nor of the will of man, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God.
But that the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, I read not there'
(Confessions, p. 131).
The projected volume, Philosophy:
Eastern and Western, was published in London by George Allen and Unwin in two volumes in 1953.