Augustine in His Own Words (continued)
wandering pilgrims who could not live happily except in our native land, and that we, feeling miserable from wandering and yearning to end this homesickness, decided to go back home: we would need vehicles of some sort, to go either by land or by sea, that we would use to reach our homeland, where we could find true enjoyment.32 But suppose we ended up enjoying the pleasures of the journey, even the delights of the vehicles themselves, getting sidetracked, enjoying what we should be using, and unwilling to finish our journey home quickly, having become ensnared in wrong-turned pleasures, and so alienating ourselves from a homeland whose savory sweetness could make us truly happy. So it is that we are "wanderers from the Lord" (2 Cor 5:6) on the road of this mortal life. If we wish to return to our homeland, where we can be truly happy, we must use this world, not enjoy it, in a such way that the "invisible attributes of God may be clearly seen, being understood through the things that were made" (Rom 1:20), in other words, so that we may grasp what is eternal and spiritual through what is bodily and temporal.
(5.5) The thing to be enjoyed is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit—at once, Trinity and the one highest reality shared and enjoyed in common by all. . . . (10.10) Since we are to enjoy fully Truth itself, who lives unchangeably, and since that Truth—God the Trinity, the Author and Founder of the universe—takes good care of those things that He has created, the self must be purified that it may be able to look upon that light and cling to it. Let us consider this process of cleansing as a sort of journeying or sailing to our homeland. We are not brought any closer to the One who is ever present by moving from place to place, but by good desire and a good lifestyle.
(11.11) This we would not be able to do unless Wisdom Himself deigned to share such a great weakness as ours and to put forward for us a paradigm for living, not being anything other than completely human, since we ourselves are human. Now when we come to Him, we act wisely; but when He came to us, he was thought to have acted foolishly by people full of pride. But "the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of human beings, and the weakness of God is stronger than the strength of human beings" (1 Cor 1:25). So though He Himself is our homeland, He made Himself the highway to that homeland.33
32. "Our homeland": This whole passage echoes Plotinus, Enneads 1.6.8. 33. Doc. Chr. 1.3.3–11.11 (Green, 14-22); my trans. "Highway . . . homeland" (viam . . . patriam): This theme is central to Augustine's Christology: see s. 123.3; en. Ps. 123.2. For a survey, see Goulven Madec, La patrie et la voie: Le Christ dans la vie et la pensée de saint Augustin, Collection 'Jésus et Jésus-Christ' 36 (Paris: Desclée, 1989).
The Exegete 169
The Love Command
As the argument of Book 1 unfolds, Augustine edges toward the problem of biblical interpretation. This distinction between enjoyment and use, as well as this journey analogy, are meant to situate how we should understand human life and, by implication, how we understand the Bible's function within Christian living. As we journey the road of life, we need to get oriented, get turned the right way. The Bible makes that possible. It is like a compass whose needle points in one direction: to love. The entire meaning of the Bible, Augustine insists, lies in Christ's double commandment of love of God and love of neighbor. This core message orients not only Christian life, but also orients how any specific biblical text is interpreted. If one's interpretation contradicts this, then, according to Augustine, one has not understood the text. From On Christian Teaching, Book 1:
(26.27) There is no need to command us to love ourselves and our own bodies, because we love who we are—and also what is below us, yet belongs to us—by an unshakeable law of nature. (It extends even to brute beasts, for even animals love themselves and their own bodies.) It remained only to impose commandments upon us concerning God, who is above us, and our neighbor, who is beside us. "You shall love the Lord your God," He said, "with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with your whole mind, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets" (Mt 22:37–40). Now the aim of this commandment is a twofold love of God and neighbor. . . . (28.29) Of all who can enjoy God with us, we love some whom we help and some by whom we are helped; some whose assistance we stand in need of and some whose wants we relieve; some on whom we neither bestow any benefit nor expect that they bestow any upon us. Nevertheless, we ought to desire that they all love God with us, and all the help that we either give them or receive from them must be directed to that one purpose. . . .
(35.39) Therefore, the summary of all that has been said since we began our discussion of things34 is to understand that the fulfillment and the end of the law and of all divine Scriptures is the love of the Thing to be enjoyed [that is, God] and the love of the one who can enjoy that First Thing with us [that is, the neighbor] (since there is no need for a commandment that one love oneself) (Rom 13:9–10). In order that we might know this and might be able to do it, divine Providence created for our salvation the whole temporal dispensation. This we ought to use, but not with any permanent love or enjoyment. Our loves should be like transitory pleasures felt towards being on the
34. "Summary of . . . discussion of things": Augustine is referring to his outline of Doc. Chr.: Bk. 1 focuses on "things," "realities"; Bks. 2 and 3 (cited below) focus on "signs."