The Integrated Self

Augustine, the Bible, and Ancient Thought

Brian Stock

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780812248715
• eBook ISBN:
  9780812293524
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Ancient Religion

Well before his entry into the religious life in the spring of 386 C.E., Augustine had embarked on a lengthy comparison between teachings on the self in the philosophical traditions of Platonism and Neoplatonism and the treatment of the topic in the Psalms, the letters of St. Paul, and other books of the Bible. Brian Stock argues that Augustine, over the course of these reflections, gradually abandoned a dualistic view of the self, in which the mind and the body play different roles, and developed the notion of an integrated self, in which the mind and body function interdependently.Stock identifies two intellectual techniques through which Augustine effected this change in his thought. One, lectio divina, was an early Christian approach to reading that engaged both mind and body. The other was a method of self-examination that consisted of framing an interior Socratic dialogue between Reason and the individual self. Stock investigates practices of writing, reading, and thinking across a range of premodern texts to demonstrate how Augustine builds upon the rhetorical traditions of Cicero and the inner dialogue of Plutarch to create an introspective and autobiographical version of self-study that had little to no precedent. The Integrated Self situates these texts in a broad historical framework while being carefully attuned to what they can tell us about the intersections of mind, body, and medicine in contemporary thought and practice. It is a book in which Stock continues his project of reading Augustine, and one in which he moves forward in new and perhaps unexpected directions.

CHAPTER 1

Reading with the Whole Self

One of the ways in which Christian thinkers attempted to create the sense of an integrated self was by means of ascetic practices in which mind and body could be brought into a harmonious relationship. My purpose in Chapters 1 and 2 of this book is to discuss one of these practices, namely sacred reading, and its relationship to questions of selfhood. In this chapter, I briefly review the principles of sacred reading (lectio divina) in the writings of John Cassian and Benedict of Nursia. In Chapter 2, I outline the way Augustine utilizes this style of reading as a framework for bringing together the contemplative dimension of literary experience and the notion of the creative imagination.

In Augustine’s mature writings, ascetic practices are traced to biblical sources,¹ whereas in his early works they are chiefly associated with Platonism and Pythagoreanism. There is a reminder of the second of these philosophical connections at the end of De Ordine, written in the winter of 386–387, when his young friend Alypius expresses his admiration for the introduction to the classical sources of asceticism that their master has given to the group assembled at Cassiciacum. Among the steps in the direction of the contemplative life that Augustine has recommended is the traditional renunciation of wealth, honors, and the pleasures of the senses.

His inspiration for this advice, Alypius notes, is “the venerable and virtually divine teaching . . . attributed to Pythagoras,” who, searching for “the shrines of truth,” united a set of rules for living an ethical life with the knowledge of how such a life should be lived (uitae regulas et scientiae). As often in the Augustinian dialogues, the student echoes the master’s own thinking. Augustine was convinced that Pythagoreans, Platonists, and Neoplatonists had all advocated ascetic programs in which worldly pleasures were to be abandoned, on the assumption that the soul, in thus purifying itself, would subsequently ascend to unity with higher principles or with God.²

Although he does not draw attention to the techniques of sacred reading in De Ordine or in other philosophical writings in this period, Augustine was by that time aware that Christian ascetics had found a pathway to detachment from the world through concentrated study and reflection on biblical texts.³ After his ordination in 391, it is sacred reading that becomes the major meditative and contemplative discipline in his writings, complementing and in some sense replacing the comparable methods associated with Platonism and Pythagoreanism. Along with the adoption of monastic practices at Hippo, this type of reading assumes an ever increasing role in his implementation of the Christian ascetic life.⁴

Two acknowledged sources of this method of sacred reading in late antiquity are John Cassian and Benedict of Nursia. Taken together, they provide a helpful framework within which to examine Augustine’s highly personal style of lectio divina. Cassian was his near contemporary, and Benedict, who used Cassian’s Conferences as a source in writing the Rule, presented a more detailed and systematic account of the uses to which such reading could be put.

In the Conferences, reading is not isolated in the pursuit of the ascetic life; it is discussed alongside other devotional practices, including prayer, the chanting of psalms, and the divine office. By contrast, in the Rule, sacred reading has a coordinating function in the setup and practice of monasticism.⁵

Both authors speak of the necessity of the monk’s renunciation of an autonomous or independent self. In the prologue to the Rule, Benedict specifically invites a person who is desirous of entering the monastic life to be prepared to give up the willfulness that is associated with the satisfaction of one’s own desires (abrenuntians propriis voluntatibus). In his view, community life consists in a suppression of particular initiatives concerning the self in favor of shared values, which are based on the teachings of the gospels, the church fathers, and the lives of the saints, in particular St. Antony. The desert fathers and early coenobitic communities, such as those that Augustine observed on the outskirts of Milan in 384–385, were emphatic on linking the configuration of the self to the ascetic process of self-denial. The Milanese monks made a deep and lasting impression on him at the very moment when he was attempting to sort out the philosophical and biblical influences on his thinking about the self. As a preface to a discussion of Augustine’s views in Chapter 2, therefore, it may be useful to review the interrelated descriptions of lectio divina that are found in the writings of John Cassian and Benedict.

John Cassian

John Cassian’s dates are roughly 365–435. His Collationes Patrum in Scetica Eremo, in which his reflections on reading are chiefly found, was edited and published around 426. This work records a series of interviews touching on the topics of prayer, reading, and other aspects of the ascetic life that took place sometime after 399 between himself, his traveling companion Germanus, and some fifteen Christian ascetics, otherwise unknown, who were living in different localities in the desert near Alexandria. In his characterization of these remote communities, Cuthbert Butler notes,

every man was left very much to himself and his own discretion: “they have different practices, each as he is able and as he wishes” (Palladius). There was no rule of life. The elders exercised an authority; but it was mainly personal . . . The society appears to have been a sort of spiritual democracy, guided by the personal influence of the leading ascetics . . . The monks used to visit one another frequently and discourse, two or three or more together, on Holy Scripture or the spiritual life.⁶

It is within this style of life that Cassian speaks of the uses of reading and prayer by individuals and groups of ascetics. The themes touched upon in the conversations include the specific topics found in the biblical texts under scrutiny as well as the spiritual principles they are thought to entail. The latter are occasionally expanded into more general statements on questions relating to the interior life. The view among infrequent visitors such as Cassian to the region’s scattered monastic enclaves was that “the holy men were believed to have merited a peculiar indwelling of the Holy Spirit which guided their moral perception and lent authority to their words.”⁷

In interpreting their statements on the power of reading and prayer, John attempted to create an image of an ideal Christian community in which monks were living in accord with the norms of the apostolic life. As portrayed in the Conferences, this style of life was based on a simple, uncluttered faith in Christ and was maintained, as far as possible, without possessions, even without books, which were frequently looked on with suspicion. In order to present a convincing picture of the pursuit of these ideals in the desert communities he visited, Cassian selected, modified, and interpreted much of the material he and Germanus recorded. The result was a distinctive literary genre among the writings of early Christian thinkers, namely the collatio, in a period that saw the appearance of diverse reflections on monastic experience. These included the Historia Monachorum, the Lausiac History of Palladius, the Dialogues of Sulpicius Severus, and the Cassiciacum dialogues of Augustine.

Like Augustine, Cassian’s writings on this theme are the product of training in rhetoric and philosophy. To the student of ancient traditions in these fields, the work’s title would seem to echo, if not the notion of a philosophical banquet, as in the Symposium, at least one of those many spontaneous occasions for dining and serious conversation that are made familiar to ancient and modern readers by narrators between Petronius and Augustine. An acquaintance with philosophy is likewise suggested by the background of Cassian’s thinking, which consists in a generalized Platonic view of the soul’s upward movement toward the One, in whose unity and perfection is thought to reside the world’s permanent foundation.

His interpretation of this principle is chiefly grounded in the teachings of Origen of Alexandria, whose commentaries were instrumental in bringing Plato’s theory of forms into the orbit of Christian theology, despite this writer’s troubled status in traditional theological circles after 399. Cassian was deaconin Constantinople between 400 and 403 and is thought to have been favorable to the Origenist viewpoint. This may have been the reason for his apparently involuntary departure from the city in 405. He was also influenced by the idealistic spiritual writings of Evagrius Ponticus. Here, as in Cassian, emphasis is placed on an ascetic life based on faith and charity and characterized philosophically by the absence of passion (apatheia). Silent prayer is conceived meditatively as a way of emptying the mind and preparing for the individual’s spiritual ascent. In both Evagrius and Cassian, this is looked upon as a process of mental purification set in motion by the combined activities of reading and prayer, even though its ultimate source is thought to be divine.⁸

The view of the self that is implied in the theology of Evagrius and Cassian is one in which a person’s inner forces are constantly in battle. It is an epic and heroic struggle. Decisive victory can only be brought about by an effort of will. Thus, while the monk renounces one type of willfulness, which is a source of pride and potential individualism, he engages another, more exacting, in search of his soul’s purification. The view of the ascetic life in Evagrius and Cassian is rigorous and uncompromising. Surrender to a single vice is considered to be the equivalent of surrender to them all. Negative behavior must be abandoned in all its forms; only afterward can the contemplative experience a type of gnosis and hope for eventual enlightenment. In Cassian’s view, his most powerful enemy is his personal indifference to his fate. For, when he is not battling against vice, he is most vulnerable to giving in to temptation. In such moments he may be under the illusion that his mind is at rest, but in reality it is besieged by evil forces arising from the outside and from within the mind itself.

Yet this war between flesh and spirit, while potentially destructive of self, lays the foundation for a structured and integrated self. No miracles or divine interventions are needed; no natural forces acting from the outside. As Socrates and ancient Stoics taught, it is only necessary to believe that one can win victory over oneself. The desert monks are convinced that self-conquest cannot be imposed from above, even though, in the final analysis, it is conceived as a gift of God. The battle must be waged in open combat, day by day. The struggle is continuous. The only weapons at the monk’s disposal are ascetic exercises, such as fasting, self-vigilance, and mortification. Chief among these techniques is prayer, which includes both liturgical devotions and sacred reading, for it is during prayer that the warring elements of flesh and spirit are most easily reconciled, proceeding toward equilibrium in stages, by means of meditation. This involves both mental and physical exertion, since prayer and reading take place through the voice as well as the eyes and ears. The road upward is steep: advance is slow, and proceeds step by step. The making of a self-perfected self may take years, even a lifetime.

As noted, in his reflections on these issues, it is not easy to separate what Cassian is reporting from his conversations with the desert monks from the moral and ethical ideas he himself wishes to implant into the Conferences (especially in conference 13, where he attacks Augustine’s teaching on grace and helps to set in motion the debate on semi-Pelagianism, which erupted in 426–427). However, we can be reasonably sure that he is faithfully reporting the manner in which the desert fathers carried on meditative reading and prayer. In analyzing this type of ascetic activity we must remember that

lectio divina . . . begins in the state of mind of the reader, who prepares himself for the Word of God, to read and to savour it, to pray, and to engage it in practice. It is not a question of exegesis, even monastic, nor hermeneutics, nor of the theological or pastoral utilization of Scripture, but simply of a type of reading that is free and peaceful, but which nonetheless requires an effort of reflection, meditatio, issuing in prayer, oratio, in which the monks always liked to converse.⁹

It follows that there can be no single formula for describing all versions of this type of experience, since it differs in minor ways from one devoted person to another. On occasion Cassian records statements by the desert monks with whom he conversed in which reading appears to be a quasiindependent form of ascetic practice. This is the impression created, for example, at conference 14.10, where abbot Nestoros tells Cassian and Germanus:

If you wish to arrive at true knowledge of scripture you must first make haste to establish an unmovable humility of heart. . . . However, take care that, in your eagerness for reading (per studium lectionis) . . . you do not find instruments of perdition (instrumenta perditionis) rather than the light of knowledge (scientiae lumen). . . . When all earthly cares and thoughts have been put aside, devote yourself constantly to sacred reading (sacrae lectioni) in order that continuous meditation (continua meditatio) may fill your mind.

The principles involved in this type of prayer are summed up by abbot Isaac in conferences 9 and 10, the one outlining general principles of prayer and the other providing illustrations of these principles from the life of Christ and the lives of saints. Cassian’s thinking is well illustrated by conference 9, in which the subject is the frequently reiterated theme of an enduring spiritual “edifice” in the mind of each monk.¹⁰ The most important element in this construction is continual and uninterrupted prayer: in Isaac’s view, this is the source and final objective of the perfecting of the heart.¹¹ It is a labor of both mind and body, whose combined efforts are ultimately directed toward maintaining an immobile tranquility of soul (ad immobilem tranquillitatem mentis).

The training may only proceed as it should if the monk’s personal health and constitution permit, since it is necessary for him to keep his body as well as his mind in a permanent state of purity (perpetuam . . . puritatem, 9.2). The ascetic life, as thus conceived, consists in a combination of physical labor and untiring contrition of the spirit or heart (tam laborem corporis quam contritionem spiritus indefesse quaeritur, 9.2). These elements are united in a “reciprocal and indissoluble relationship,”¹² preparing the way for the mental and physical edifice that they subsequently represent.¹³ This is a process of both thought and action, in which the monks attempt to rid themselves of habitual vices as well as the accumulated debris of their negative emotions. Only then, in Isaac’s view, will they be able to lay a foundation for their spiritual lives on the solid ground of the heart, which, freed from outside influences, can become a source of ongoing simplicity and humility.

The plan that Isaac puts forward is an intentional design, inasmuch as the necessary elements have to be in place before mental and physical construction begins. How this comes about is the second topic of conference 9, and it is here that reading, or one should say, pre-reading, plays a central role. This phase begins with the liberation of the mind from a number of potential distractions, such as the needs of the body, the problems of everyday life, and unnecessary conversation. Also, as noted, involuntary emotions are to be kept under control, especially those expressing anger, anxiety, or depression. And, needless to say, there is no place for sexual or monetary concerns. Thus isolated from malevolent influences, the mind may show less inclination to wander from its chosen path.

However, there is one formidable impediment to the individual’s spiritual progress, even if these preventive measures are in place. ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Reading with the Whole Self
• Chapter 2. The Contemplative Imagination
• Chapter 3. The Philosophical Soliloquy
• Chapter 4. Self and Soul
• Chapter 5. Rhythms of Time
• Chapter 6. Loss and Recovery
• Notes
• Index
• Acknowledgments