The Essential Augustine (continued)
people. So much notoriety was then accorded me that, wherever I found myself, I had to speak to the people; rarely could I keep silent and listen to others and be "quick to hear but slow to speak." As a result, I judge myself before the one Master Whose judgment of my offenses I desire to avoid. I think there can be many teachers when there are plural views that are diversified and mutually opposed. But when all say the same thing and speak the truth, they do not depart from the teaching of one true Teacher. They sin, on the other hand, not when they say a good deal in agreement with Him but when they add their own notions. This is how they fall from much speaking into false speaking.
Now I was glad to write this work, so that I might 3. put it in the hands of those men from whom I could not recall and correct the books that I had already produced. Nor, indeed, do I pass over those things that I wrote while still a catechumen, when I had abandoned the earthly expectations that I had formerly held but was still filled with the literary affectations of this world. In fact, these writings did come to the attention of copyists and readers, and they can be read with some profit, provided one is prepared to ignore their several faults, or if one cannot ignore the mistakes at least one can pay no attention to them. So, let all those who will read this work imitate me not in my errors but in my progress toward the better. For, whoever will read my little works in the order in which they were written, will perhaps discover how much progress I made in writing. To enable the reader to do this, I shall take oe in this work to inform him as to this order, as much as can,
II. FAITH AND REASON
Augustine's position on the relation of faith and reason influences all the rest of his thinking; it could be argued that Augustinianism is essentially a certain way of looking at these key notions. Reason (ratio) does not mean discursive thinking, as in Aristotelian logic; instead, the Augustinian reason is (in the psychological usage) the gaze of the mind
(aspectus mentis). The culmination of such "gazing" is a vision, a clear seeing of the object of knowledge. We shall read more about such visions, at the end of Chapter IV.
Faith, on the other hand, is an acceptance of, or assent to, something that is not clearly seen. There is a basis for
- belief in the testimony of others but what is required in the believer is an effort of will. At the beginning of Chapter X, a passage is quoted which describes three kinds of objects of belief: (i) the "facts" of history, which no historian can witness for himself; (ii) the conclusions of mathematics and other such studies, which are understood as soon as they are believed; and (iii) the truths about God, which are believed by many but understood by few men in this life. This illustrates the scope that Augustine assigns to faith.
Actually the source of Augustine's views on faith and reason is a text from Isaias (7:9, Septuagint), which simply says: "Unless you will have believed, you will not understand" (nisi credideritis non intelligetis). The reading has been corrected in later texts ("if you will not believe, you shall not continue"), but this is a case of a fortunate error, more influential than the truth. From this misreading there developed a whole program of Christian intellectualism among the Latin Fathers of the Church and the theologians of the middle ages. It was not by chance that the Proslogion of St. Anselm of Canterbury was subtitled Faith Seeking Understanding (fides quaerens intellectum). Augustine did not say that a person had to be highly educated, or a sophisticated thinker, in order to get to Heaven; simple religious faith is enough for salvation. However, he did insist that those who have an opportunity to develop an understanding of what they believe. are duty bound to make the best possible use of their talents.
If simple faith and a developed understanding are twin roads to knowledge, this does not mean that Augustine equated them with what would today be called theology and philosophy. In his own usage, theologia mostly designates pagan efforts (Varro and Porphyry) to build a system of polytheistic religious teachings. Augustine does not refer to himself as a theologian. Philosophia is usually taken by Augustine in its etymological sense (''the love of wisdom'') and is equated with the finest use of the human mind. As he approvingly reports of Plato: "'he did not doubt that to philosophize is to love God'' [City of God, VIII, 8]. Even prescinding from the peculiarities of early Latin usage and thinking only of the present meanings of the words, we would have to say that Augustine distinguishes faith from both philosophy and theology, because both the philosopher and the theologian work in the area of understanding. Augustine sometimes (On Christian Doctrine, 5, 8) refers to Christian doctrine as the true philosophia.
After his disillusionment with Manicheism, Augustine was momentarily attracted to the sophisticated skepticism of the later Platonic Academy. During his first residence in Rome he felt that it might be better to withhold judgment on all important matters. However, Augustine was too sincere a thinker to remain long in this uncommitted position; he soon decided that the pose of the skeptic is untenable. His first published writing (Against the Academics) is a blunt rejection of academic skepticism. He returns to the problem in later treatises (City of God and The Trinity) and. argues that the immediate presentations of consciousness are bases for unassailable judgments. The most striking of these arguments is the si fallor sum ("if I make a mistake in thinking, I exist") of the third from last selection in this chapter. Many scholars have discussed the resemblance of this insight to Descartes' cogito ergo sum. When Father Arnauld (who knew Augustine's works well) first drew Descartes' attention to the similarity of thought and expression, the French thinker merely said that he was happy to have so great a thinker for his patron.
The distinction between knowledge (scientia) and wisdom (sapientia) is also fundamental in Augustinianism. We shall see in Chapter III how Augustine places the human soul on
FAITH AND REASON 21 a level between God and bodies, where it is able to look upward (radio superior) to consult the divine truths, or downward (ratio inferior) to consider bodily things and events. The disposition, or habit, which enables the human mind to judge in accord with the divine truths is wisdom, while the habit that perfects the lower reason is knowledge. Both are useful, but knowledge depends on wisdom and not the reverse.
In a confrontation theory of knowledge such as Augustine's, where the mind sees knowable things when the two are compresent, there is no possibility of error on the highest level of vision. One either sees that seven plus three equals ten, or one does not and is ignorant. Yet Augustine admits that erroneous judgments are made by men. Error consists in taking one thing for another, by virtue of willing to do, so; error becomes a volitional fault. "Bodies themselves are in no way present within the mind but only their images; and so, when we assent to the latter in place of the former, we err; thus error consists in assenting to one item in place of another" (The Trinity, IX, 11, 16). As a result of this stress on the function of willing, Augustine's explanation of error usually approximates the notion of a moral fault.
These are some of the points to look for in the selections
_ that follow.
BELIEF IS VOLITIONAL CONSENT*
Consider now whether anybody believes, if he be 21.54. unwilling; or whether he believes not, if he shall have willed it. Such a position, indeed, is absurd (for what is believing but consenting to the truth of what is said? and this consent is certainly voluntary): faith, therefore, is in our own power. But, as the Apostle says: "There is no power but comes from God," [Rom. 13:1] what reason then is there why it may not be said to us even of this: "What hast thou which thou hast not received?" [I Cor. 4:7] —for it is God who gave us even to believe. Nowhere, however, in Holy Scripture do we find such an assertion as, There is no volition but comes from God. And rightly is it not so written, because it is not true: otherwise God would be the author even of sins (which Heaven forbid!), if there were no volition except what comes from Him; inasmuch as an evil volition alone is already a sin, even if the effect be wanting....
* On the Spirit and the Letter, 21.54; 34.60; trans. Dods.