4. Clement, Stromata, V1.9.78, quoted in Bouyer, Spirituality, p. 272.
INTRODUCTION
comes firmly founded through charity."* Faith working through love allows one to be nourished by the truths of faith and this increases thé exercise of charity. Faith comes with baptism and it leads to intimacy with God, an intimacy that grows with understanding. The early Greek Fathers spoke of the presence and growth of the Logos in the soul. This is the basis of Christian mystical experience. The human spirit is given a participation in the Divinity, which permits friendship with God, communion and communication by prayer and loving action. For the Christian who shares in the being of God, this union leads to a gradual liberation from the body, not in any sense of separation or denunciation, but of a liberation from all sensible things and actions that interfere with unitive prayer. The motivation for this mystical life as well as for the monastic life, which was formed to liberate the Christian from all bodily interference, was evangelical. The Gospel promoted union with God and sacrifice.
Although Christians were encouraged to say yes to life, the following of a crucified Christ whose kingdom was not of this world entailed the acceptance of the Cross as life-giving. Christian asceticism was not, therefore, a condemnation of the world. It was primarily a choice for union with Christ begun in baptism. The Christian dialectic, like that of Christ, was triadic: dying-—rising-giving the Spirit of Love. The disciples who received the Spirit understood what God had revealed through the Prophets and his Son. One of the first to express what he understood was St. Paul, whose discipleship began by a sudden conversion. An early theologian, he recognized Grace to be the gift of a new Life, a new Being, the Life of the Risen Christ entered into by baptism through the gift of the Spirit. This Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, who raised Jesus from the dead. We are "in Christ Jesus," according to St. Paul, and that is why Christ's Resurrection is ours. This is an early discussion of Christian mystical life (where the mystical life is not understood as an "extraordinary" experience), a union without confusion, which calls Christians to allow the realization of the presence of God to flood their consciousness.
Martyrdom had ensured a direct and immediate union with God; monastic asceticism later replaced it as a means for promot-
4. Clement, Stromata, V1.9.78, quoted in Bouyer, Spirituality, p. 272.
INTRODUCTION
ing union in this life. The pleasurable life was seen as a possible temptation to forsake the reality of the Gospel, the Good News of a God-man whose treasure was in heaven, namely, the Trinity. Only charity admitted one to life in the Trinity. The ascetic life was chosen by Christians to enable them to dominate those passions that might threaten charity.
Whereas it is true that Augustine's reading of the books of the Platonists enabled him to understand philosophically the spirituality of God that was presupposed in the Scriptures, he has told us that they sent him back to the Scriptures. There he began to learn, first from St. Paul and later from St. John, the great differences between Platonic philosophy and the true philosophy of Christianity. The charity and humility of Christ made the great difference. For Plotinus the soul sought to regain its intellectuality in order to resemble the One. For Augustine the soul must seek to love rightly and generously in order to resemble the Blessed Trinity. He found Christian perfection explained in the Gospel as "becoming children of God" who resemble Him by an ever greater growth in wisdom. This wisdom is an awareness that God is Love and that he opens Himself only to those who by his Gift of the Spirit dwelling in their hearts live the life of love in spirit and in truth as did the Son.
The fact that Augustine was influenced by the fourth-century culture of the late Roman Empire to express his spiritual insights through philosophical language and through images drawn from Neoplatonic writings should not blind us to the evangelical origin of his spirituality. We should adopt as a working principle that if an Augustinian insight can be equally well derived from Scripture or from Christian theology or from Platonism/Neoplatonism, there is no justification, in the absence of parallel literary evidence, to conclude that it had been learned only from philosophical writings. This is the case even when the insight under discussion is defended philosophically.
Meditation on the Scriptures in the light of the Logos-madeflesh formed the mind of St. Paul, and also that of St. Augustine. Consider their completely new view of the world as a reality where human freedom encounters divine freedom in the life of the human spirit called to resurrection through baptism in Christ. This new risen life, in the likeness of the Son entered into here and now by faith and baptism, was described by St. Paul in the
INTRODUCTION
following passage. Augustine, who wrote commentaries on the Pauline epistles, was deeply affected by this passage: So, then, my brothers, there is no necessity for us to obey our unspiritual selves or to live unspiritual lives. If you do live in that way you are doomed to die; but if by the Spirit you put an end to the misdeeds of the body you will live.
Everyone moved by the Spirit is a son of God. The Spirit you received is not the spirit of slaves bringing fear into your lives again; it is the spirit of sons, and it makes us cry out, "Abba, Father!" The Spirit himself and our spirit bear united witness that we are children of God. And if we are children we are heirs as well: heirs of God and coheirs with Christ, sharing his sufferings so as to share his glory.
I think that what we suffer in this life can never be compared to the glory as yet unrevealed, which is waiting for us. The whole creation is eagerly waiting for God to reveai His sons. It was not for any fault on the part of creation that it was made unable to attain its purpose, it was made so by God; but creation still retains the hope of being freed, like us, from its slavery to decadence, to enjoy the same freedom and glory as the children of God. From the beginning till now the entire creation, as we know, has been groaning in one great act of giving birth, and not only creation, but all of us who possess the firstfruits of the Spirit, we too groan inwardly as we wait for our bodies to be set free. For we must be content to hope that we shall be saved—our salvation is not in sight, we should not have to be hoping for it if it were—but, as I say, we must hope to be saved since we are not saved yet—it is something we must wait for with patience.
The Spirit too comes to us in our weakness. For when we cannot choose words in order to pray properly, the Spirit expresses our plea in a way that could never be put into words, and God who knows everything in our hearts knows perfectly well what He means, and that the pleas of the saints expressed by the Spirit are according to the mind of God.