Augustine of Hippo: Selected Writings
INTRODUCTION
At the end of the tenth book of the Confessions Augustine acknowledged that after many years of being a Christian, after ordination to the priesthood and consecration as a bishop, he still needed to be renewed and reconciled with God. Many people, he said, attempt reconciliation by their own powers or seek a wrong mediator.
But the true Mediator whom in your secret mercy you have shown to men and have sent Him so that they, by His example, might learn humility, that Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus, appeared between mortal sinners and the immortal Just One: mortal with men, just with God; so that, because the wages of justice are life and peace, He might, by a justice conjoined with God, make void the death of those sinners who were justified by Him; for He was willing to let that death be common both to Him and to them. He was revealed to the holy men of old so that they might be saved through faith in His passion that was to come, just as we may be saved through faith in His passion now that it is in the past. For insofar as He is man, He is mediator; but insofar as He is the Word, He is not midway between God and man; for He is equal to God, both God with God, and together one God.*"
Ascent to the Supreme
In speaking of dialectic as mediating his union with the One, Plotinus used the language of ascent: "What is the art, what is the method, what is the practice which leads us where we must go? Where must one go? It is to the Good and to the First Principle. This is what we pose as agreed upon and demonstrated in a thousand ways; and the demonstrations given of it are also the means of rising to it."48
The Platonic structure of Augustine's many theories of ascents to the Absolute is well documented by Augustine himself.*° The ecstasies at Milan and Ostia are faithful to the moments of
47. Conf., X.43. 48. Enn., 1.3.1. 49. Conf., VII.17.23.