Augustine of Hippo: Selected Writings
INTRODUCTION
centric orientation contributed to Western Christianity a valid interest in human experience. It also promoted the interiorization of Christianity, which ensured that for centuries the Church would be marked by the mystical element of religion accented by Baron Von Hugel as of supreme importance for authentic religion.
Because of the universal influence of Augustinian spirituality with its emphasis on the self, it has been said that the Latin West was deprived of Greek spirituality's direct approach to the Christian Mystery, a gnosis set forth at Alexandria and developed by the Greek Fathers of the Church.22 Christians in the West, it was said, tended to see asceticism as the implication of Augustinian introspection instead of as the actualization of the baptismal union with Christ crucified, which it really is. Augustine also rejected the Alexandrian identification of the image with the divine Word according to which man was created, a position his Western predecessor, Marius Victorinus, had accepted. For Augustine, man was made to the image of the Trinity because Scripture described him as made "'to our image."
Although there was more emphasis in the East on the Incarnate Christ than is found with Augustine, his encounter with the Trinity in the depths of the human soul did not prevent an interest in history and the temporal world, as the above criticism might suggest. The mind that becomes conscious of itself as an image of God does not cease to be aware of the objective world it judges and to which it relates itself. Augustine's interest did not remain within the mind alone but focused on the ceaseless task of judging the realities that belong to the human world. The norm of judgment is the Interior Word, but realities are in need of this judgment. The greater temptation is to remain with the visible realities and the dogmatic formulas rather than to experience the invisible reality of the self as image of God, whose Trinitarian life can be enjoyed. Such enjoyment implies the sharing of the external missions of the divine Persons as well. Although the Greek Fathers focused on the Mystery that is Christ and his Cross seen as "fulfilling the Scriptures,' Augustine's concern with interiority was a concern with the Mystery of Christ living in us, which he recognized as opening us to Trinitarian life.
22. Ibid.