Augustine in His Own Words (continued)
The Philosopher
If Plato Were Living Today . . .
In 390, Augustine composed a brilliant early synthesis, On True Religion. If Soliloquies anticipates Confessions, then On True Religion anticipates City of God.59 Like it, On True Religion is an apologia, a defense of Christianity. In the following passage, Augustine describes Christianity as the fulfillment of philosophy's deepest aspirations. This passage illustrates his grandest style of rhetoric, with paragraph-long sentences, with phrase piled upon phrase, steadily ramping up the emotional pitch. From On True Religion:
(3.3) In these Christian times there can be no doubt about which religion should be held onto and which offers the road to truth and to happiness. If Plato were living today and would not spurn my questioning him—or perhaps, suppose one of his own disciples who lived at the same time had questioned him, having been already convinced by him [of these principles]: that truth cannot be seen by the body's eyes, but rather by the pure mind, and that any soul that clings to truth is made happy and perfect; that nothing hinders perceiving the truth more than a life devoted to lusts and the false images of sensory objects, which impress themselves on our minds from the body and which generate various sorts of opinions and errors; that, therefore, the self has to be healed so that it may look upon the unchangeable form of things that always remains the same, preserving its same beauty always and everywhere within itself, not distended in space nor varied in time, but preserving its unity in every aspect; that people do not believe in its very existence while [this form] itself is what truly and supremely exists; that other things are born, die, flow down, dissolve, but insofar as they exist, they exist having been fashioned by the eternal God through His Truth; that it is given to the rational and intellectual soul to enjoy the contemplation of His eternity and [the soul] is influenced by that contemplation and can be rewarded with eternal life; that as long as the soul is wounded both by love of and by grief for things that come to birth and pass away and as long as it is devoted to the customary things of this life and of the bodily senses, it dissipates itself among empty images and mocks those who say there is something that can neither be seen by the eyes nor grasped as some imaginative phantasm, but discerned by the mind and the intellect alone.
So suppose that this disciple had been persuaded about all this by his teacher and asked Plato this question: "What if some great and divine man were to arise, one who would persuade ordinary people that such things
59. Goulven Madec, "Le De civitate Dei comme De vera religione," in Petites Études Augustiniennes, CEASA 142 (Paris: Institut d'Études Augustiniennes, 1994), 189–213.
should at least be believed if they are not strong enough to grasp them; or, if they really were able to grasp them, would persuade them not to smother them in vulgar errors by getting entangled in the misguided opinions of the multitude: Would not such a man be worthy of divine honors?"
Plato, I believe, would have answered: "That could not be done by a human being unless God's Power and Wisdom itself were to exempt him from the ordinary course of nature and from human teaching and instead, by enlightening him from his cradle with some secret inner illumination, were to clothe him with such grace, strengthen him with such steadiness, such stability, and, in the end, lift him up with such majesty that he would despise all that crooked humanity longs for and endure all that horrifies them and do all that they are amazed by, and so with consummate love and authority would convert the human race to such a health-giving faith. As for honors due such a person, it is pointless to consult me since it is easy enough to calculate how great the honors are that are due to the Wisdom of God, with whose bearing and with whose governance such a person, working for the genuine salvation of the human race, would have merited a place all his own, a place above all humanity."
(3.4) What if this has all happened now; if it is being celebrated in books and in monuments; if from one small region of the earth where the one God has been worshiped and where it was appropriate for such a man to be born, where chosen men were sent forth throughout the entire world, and by their virtues and by their words flames of divine love have been enkindled; if the health-instilling teaching of salvation they established has illumined whole countries; and (not to go on speaking just about the past, which someone may feel free to disbelieve) if today there is preached to the nations and to the peoples: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made" (Jn 1:1–3); if, for grasping, loving, enjoying this Word that the soul be healed and the mind's eye convalesce and grow strong to drink in its fill of such brilliant light, the greedy are told: "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and decay destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroy nor thieves break in and steal; for where your treasure is, there also is your heart" (Mt 6:19–21); and the luxury-loving are told: "The one who sows in his flesh will, from the flesh, reap corruption; the one who sows in the spirit will, from the spirit, reap eternal life" (Gal 6:8); and the proud are told: "The one who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted" (Lk 14:11); and the hot-tempered are told: "You received a slap; offer the other cheek" (Mt 5:39); and the quarrelers are told: "Love your enemies" (Mt 5:44); and the superstitious are told: "The Kingdom of God is within you" (Lk 17:21); and the curious are told: "Do not seek what is seen, but what is unseen; for what is seen is temporal, but what is unseen is eternal" (2 Cor 4:18); and finally, all are told: "Do not love the world or the things of the world, for all that is in the world is lust of the flesh and lust of the eyes and worldly ambition" (1 Jn 2:15–16);
(3.5) what if these things are now being read to peoples throughout the whole world and are being listened to with such enjoyment and with veneration; if after so much martyrs' blood, so many burnings, so many crucifixions, churches have sprouted up with such a fertile harvest, with such abundance, as far afield as the barbarian nations; if so many thousands of young men and virgins have turned away from marriage and live in chastity, no one is even surprised (when Plato did this, he was so afraid of the perverse public opinion of his era that he is said to have sacrificed to nature and abolished [celibacy] as a sin); if something [like celibacy] is now so accepted that what before used to be so disputed is now monstrous even to dispute; if throughout all parts of the earth the sacred rites of Christians are handed down to people willing to undertake such commitments and solemn promises; if every day all this is read in churches and expounded by priests; if those who try to fulfill these commitments beat their breasts [in contrition]; if so countless are the numbers undertaking this pathway, abandoning riches and honors of this world, wishing to dedicate their whole life to the one most high God, that islands once deserted and many lands once left in solitude are being filled by people of every kind; if, finally, throughout cities and towns, in castles, villages and the countryside, and even in private estates, there is openly proclaimed and practiced such a renunciation of earthly things and there is such a conversion to the one and true God that daily throughout the whole wide world the human race responds as if with one voice: "We have lifted up our hearts to the Lord,"60 then why would we still gape, hung over from yesterday's drunken bout, and scrutinize the entrails of dead cattle for divine oracles? why, if when it comes to disputation, would we so much more eagerly want to have Plato's name rattling in our mouths than have our chests fill with truth?
(4.6) . . . Let them yield to the One by whom this has taken place, let them not be prevented by empty curiosity and empty boastfulness from acknowledging the gaps between their few timid conjectures and the obvious salvation and reform of whole peoples. For if Plato and these others, whose names these people glory in, were to come to life again and find the churches
60. " 'We have lifted up our hearts . . . ' ": Augustine is citing the dialogue that opens the eucharistic prayer. The phrase is central to his spirituality of eucharist: s. 227 (see Chapter 4).