Visioning Augustine

John C. Cavadini

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781119105749
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Christliche Theologie

The definitive compendium of Cavadini's essays on Augustine

Visioning Augustine offers readers an expertly selected collection of essays exploring the text and history of the theology of Saint Augustine. Prominent scholar and essayist, John Cavadini, offers modern audiences an innovative framework for understanding Augustine, integrating articles and essays on significant texts, historical and contemporary perspectives and insights into Augustine's development as a theologian. Examining themes such as the transformation of the human will in De doctrina Christiana and Augustine's critique of philosophy in City of God, Cavadini provides clear and accessible smaller-size essays that serve as entry points for those interested in Augustinian scholarship.

The author's meditations on Augustinian texts invite readers to re-evaluate their interpretations and learn about the subtle and sophisticated vocabulary of Augustine. An encounter with Augustine the Christian theologian, Cavadini contends, is not a narrowly focused parochial experience, but instead a challenge to enlarge our horizons.

• Written by one of the most prominent Augustinian scholars and essayists in the field
• Addresses ecumenical and cultural issues that weaken contemporary interest in Christian faith
• Offers modern readers historical context on Augustinian theology
• Provides a single-volume collection of Cavadini's essays on Augustine written over the course of more than two decades

Accessible prose and intellectual sensitivity to modern theological problemsmake Visioning Augustine an indispensable volume for graduate students, scholars and professionals in all areas of Christian theology.

1
The Structure and Intention of Augustine's De Trinitate

Augustine often commented on the “extreme difficulty” of his work On the Trinity (trin.), repeatedly remarking that it would be comprehensible only “to few.”¹ This may explain why, while there is a surfeit of modern discussions which draw upon material from the trin., there are virtually no modern treatments of the work as a whole.² Perhaps this is because, of all of Augustine's works, the trin. appears to us to be the most moorless, an intractable mass of speculation floating oddly aloof from foundation in any particular social context. Peter Brown, commenting on the trin. in his biography of Augustine, warns us that we are wrong if we do not think that Augustine was capable of writing a book out of purely speculative motivation.³

But perhaps this too is merely a polite way of suspecting that the work is essentially irrelevant, and indeed Brown immediately drops the work from further consideration, and others have followed suit. In this chapter, I would like to take an exploratory first step toward removing the stigma of pure speculation from this work by suggesting a location for it within a circle of discourse peculiar to Augustine's intellectual milieu, and I would like to propose that the key to such an enterprise will lie in a consideration of the structure of the work as a whole.

Despite Augustine's insistence, in the letter affixed by his design to the beginning of every copy of the work, that “the subsequent books are linked to the preceding ones by a continuous development of the argument,”⁴ a standard interpretation of the unity of the work divides it in half, something like this: A first “half” (usually construed as books 1–7 but sometimes given as 1–4 or 1–8) presents the teaching on the Trinity, which constitutes the Catholic “faith,” while the remaining “half” of the treatise presents an attempt to “understand,” through the use of reason, the faith so presented.⁵ Apart from the fact that Augustine does not divide the treatise this way, but rather conceives of the whole work as an attempt to bring the reader to understanding,⁶ on this interpretation of the structure, there remain in the work masses of material, both large and small, which are not accounted for. The long discussions of redemption in books 4 and 13, the discussion of contemplation in book 1 and in the prologues to books 1–5, the treatment of original sin and human renewal in book 14, as well as the sheer extent of the discussion of the theophanies of Genesis and Exodus in books 2–3, are not easily fit into the standard plan. Those who adhere to it will probably find themselves lamenting, with McKenna (1963), that “the De trinitate of St. Augustine is not as systematically arranged as the medieval or modern studies of this dogma.”⁷ We would probably do well to remember that it actually is not a medieval or modern study of the dogma, if it is a “study” of a “dogma” at all, and is therefore most likely not structured by the understanding of “faith” and “reason” and their relation which may inform these later works.

Nevertheless, we may be forgiven for going astray since we are not among the “few” whom Augustine expected would understand the treatise. These “few” can however be glimpsed in numerous other places in Augustine's writings. Augustine often stops to address specialized remarks to them in the course of his homilies.⁸ We first meet these “few” in the earliest pages of Augustine's first writings, as those accomplished in or invited to the study of “philosophy.” They would include the dedicatees of the early writings – for example, Augustine's patron Romanianus, and the Christian Platonist Manlius Theodorus.⁹ These people, some of whom can be glimpsed by name in the Letters,¹⁰ would know (or, in Augustine's view, be capable of knowing) that “knowledge” or “understanding” of that which is uncreated and eternal consists in a sort of intellectual “seeing” or “vision” of it,¹¹ one which involves a mode of thinking completely free of images or of any mental construct applicable to the creature,¹² much as Augustine himself had learned from his first reading of Plotinus.¹³ The “few” would also realize (or at least be expected to be able to grasp) that the mind could be “exercised”¹⁴ in this image‐free thought through a process of step‐by‐step (“gradatim”) “ascent” from the consideration of physical things, to that of finite spiritual things, to the eventual vision of things eternal. Such an “ascent” would also represent a turning inward as one passes from bodily things to the things of the soul and mind.¹⁵ In short, the “few” whom Augustine expected might understand his treatise would be those familiar with a standard Plotinian and especially Porphyrian characterization of the “return” of the soul to contemplation or noesis.¹⁶

Clearly, the trin. is predicated upon such a notion of understanding. The guided tour of the human mind which we receive in books 9–14 is nothing less than an attempt at a directed “ascent” (with several detours) from the consideration of that which is created to the contemplation – the Plotinian noesis – of the Creator. These books are, in effect, an extended exercise¹⁷ of the mind in the “non‐corporeal” mode of thinking with which the Trinity will ultimately be grasped. Perhaps, as a unit, they could therefore be regarded as one of the finest examples of what could be called Neoplatonic anagogy¹⁸ that remains from the antique world. The question now becomes, what is it doing here in Augustine's trin.?

We can answer this question in part by remembering that the quest for the Neoplatonically conceived direct vision of God is not a new theme in the work of Augustine, and appears with particular strength in the early philosophical dialogues, which Augustine wrote shortly after his conversion. These works are characterized by a frankly Neoplatonic agenda aiming at the contemplation of a Plotinian divine triad.¹⁹ Augustine lavishes praise upon both Plato and Plotinus;²⁰ employs Cicero's Hortensius as his main instrument of the philosophical conversion of the youth attached to him;²¹ and there is everywhere breathed an (almost insufferable) optimism regarding the capacity of “philosophy” to induct those converted to it into the vision of God's eternal light.²² The only function which the Incarnation seems to have in this system is as an authoritative injunction to a faith in the ability of philosophy to lead one back to God – a faith which will serve to purify our minds so that the philosophical ascent may be successfully completed.²³

Du Roy (1966) has characterized this early relation between faith and reason as one in which the philosophical agenda remains definitive, essentially unaffected by a faith which serves only as a sort of extrinsic adjunct helpful to the process but not even, in every case, necessary.²⁴ However, it is more difficult to agree when he (and others echoing him)²⁵ go on to remark that this relation ...