Augustine of Hippo: Selected Writings
INTRODUCTION
even when one does not think of it? The memory is father to the mind, united by the will's love. "That is not unreasonably to be called memory, by which the mind is present to itself, so that it can be understood by its own thought, and both can be joined together by the love of itself."?© Because man was made by God as a capacity for God there is in him an unthematized basic knowledge, an unconscious force that activates the psychic longings of man until he raises this knowledge to consciousness. Not by its own light but by a participation in the highest light is the soul wise. This is the creative 'umbilical cord" that is never severed; its reality is in everyone's memory. God is remembered not in the past but in the present; there is no need to posit the preexistence of the human soul. The memory like the Father begets all true knowledge; the begetting is by love, and the knowledge leads to love. This image doctrine, the final one in his theology of the Trinity, is not to be interpreted as a psychological analogy; all his early analogies are but prelude to the true image, the reality of actual intimacy with the Trinity through the gift of the Spirit activating the will to remember God, to understand Him, and to love Him in Himself, in His image, man, and in His Mystical
Christ, the Christian community. This presence of God in the human memory is discussed by Augustine in his interpretation of St. Paul's words: "And indeed 'He is not far from anyone of us,' as the Apostle says, and then adds: 'In Him we live and move and have our being.' 2" "To be without Him without Whom he cannot exist" is then the great misery of man. 'For undoubtedly he is not without Him in whom he is, and yet if he does not remember him or love him, he is not with him."28 Far from being merely a storehouse, the memory holds the possibility for knowing God; it is the natural capacity for knowing God, a capacity actualized only by the conversion of the will touched by grace. So it is that Augustine recalled that "Among other things the ninth Psalm says: 'Let the wicked be turned to hell, all the nations that forget God.'""?° Later, the twenty-first Psalm declares:
26. Ibid. 27. Acts 17:27—-28; Trin., XIV.12.16. 28. Trin, XIV.12.16.