Brown’s Biography of Augustine (3): Augustine on Scripture

Augustine’s approach to Scripture also stood out to me from Brown’s biography. Over the course of his life, Augustine’s attitude towards Scripture changes considerably. When he is a Manichee, the Bible appeared to him as unsophisticated and unworthy of his philosophical intelligence. As he put it looking back in Confessions:

“I resolved, therefore, to direct my mind to the Holy Scriptures, that I might see what they were. And behold, I saw something not comprehended by the proud, not disclosed to children, something lowly in the hearing, but sublime in the doing, and veiled in mysteries. Yet I was not of the number of those who could enter into it or bend my neck to follow its steps. For then it was quite different from what I now feel. When I then turned toward the Scriptures, they appeared to me to be quite unworthy to be compared with the dignity of Tully. For my inflated pride was repelled by their style, nor could the sharpness of my wit penetrate their inner meaning. Truly they were of a sort to aid the growth of little ones, but I scorned to be a little one and, swollen with pride, I looked upon myself as fully grown” (Confessions, 3.5).

Over the course of his career, however, Augustine becomes more and more captivated by the simple profundity of Scripture, and more and more closely tied to Scripture in his theological argumentation. One thinks of the way Scriptural quotations are seemingly effortlessly interwoven into his prayer language in Confessions, or statements like this in De Trinitate: “in this matter we have the authority of God’s Scriptures, which our minds should not stray from, the solid foundation of divine utterances which we must not leave, to plunge down the steep slopes of our own guesswork into places where neither our senses can guide us nor the clear reason of truth can enlighten us” (III.22). Throughout the course of his life this movement away from speculation and towards Scripture in Augustine’s methodology becomes more and more apparent. Late in life he would write: “such is the depth of the Christian Scriptures that, even if I were attempting to study them and nothing else, from boyhood to decrepit old age, with the utmost leisure, the most unwearied zeal, and with talents greater than I possess, I would still be making progress in discovering their treasures” (260). Augustine puts this view into practice: at age 72, near the end of his life, Augustine is conducting a study project on the history of the Kings of Israel, making new discoveries as he goes (427, 431-2). Only a new waves of Pelagian pamphlets and books by Julian of Eclanum will distract Augustine from this project.

The Bible also comes to have a central role in Augustine’s understanding of spiritual experience. Augustine does not, as many contemporaries do, seek the beatific vision through mystical contemplation, but approaches Scripture as the primary arena in which we can see God. He refers to it as a bridge crossing over the gulf which stands between the beatific vision and fallen human conscious of God: “a mind that had one hoped to train itself for the vision of God by means of the Liberal Arts, would now come to rest on the solid, intractable mass of the Christian Bible” (259). One can see this play out in Augustine’s own spiritual autobiography. Its interesting that The Confessions, having recounted Augustine’s spiritual journey in 9 chapters, does not conclude but continues on with several more chapters on the creation account of Genesis. Why this discussion, and why here at the end of Confessions? Does it mark a deviation from earlier sections of the book? Brown suggests that Scripture has become so embedded as part of the fabric of Augustine’s spiritual consciousness and outlook that this last section is not a deviation from his story but a natural extension of it: “the last three books of his Confessions are in many ways the most strictly autobiographical part of the whole book” (259).

One can also see the seriousness with which Augustine comes to take Scripture in his letters with Jerome. When Jerome is seeking to move away from an argument and suggests that they “play together harmlessly in the fields of the Scriptures,” Augustine replies: “as for me, I prefer to do things in earnest and not to ‘play’ … as if studying the Scriptures were a matter of romping around on level ground, not puffing and panting up a steep mountain-face” (272).

This image of running up a mountain may communicate something of Augustine’s hermeneutical approach, for he did rely upon an allegorical interpretation which sought to discover hidden meanings and connections within the biblical text. But for him this approach was connected to his entire way of seeing truth. Brown writes: “in interpreting so much of [the Bible] as an allegory, Augustine was finding in it all that he had always valued in his intellectual activity – hard labor, the excitement of discovery, and the prospect of endless movement in a philosopher’s quest for Wisdom” (260). Augustine tied his allegorical approach to Scripture toward the role of images and signs in kindling affection for divine things: “the presentation of truth through signs has great to feed and fan that ardent love, by which, as under some law of gravitation, we flicker upwards, or inwards, to our place of rest. Things presented in this way move and kindle our affection far more than if they were set forth in bald statements” (260). While I do not agree with Augustine’s allegorical approach to Scripture, I think we should be cautious of being dismissive of his use of Scripture for this reason. First of all, almost all of the church fathers approached Scripture in this way. Second, allegory is not always or intrinsically unhelpful. It is its misuse and overuse that causes the problem. And third, one can have a faulty hermeneutical grid and still a commendable approach to Scripture in other respects. One can see this in Augustine’s preaching: even sermons governed by an allegorical interpretation have great spiritual value in their application.

Finally, Augustine’s view of Scripture is frequently touted as anti-sola Scriptura for his statement, “I would not believe the holy Gospels if it were not for the authority of the Holy Catholic Church.” But I think one need interpret this statement in context with Augustine’s life (as a hardened campaigner against Manichaeism, Donatism, and other non-Catholic movements, he was faced with very different questions than the reformers faced), as well as in context with Augustine’s other statements about Scripture. Consider this statement of Augustine’s, for example, as presented here:

As regards our writings, which are not a rule of faith or practice, but only a help to edification, we may suppose that they contain some things falling short of the truth in obscure and recondite matters, and that these mistakes may or may not be corrected in subsequent treatises. For we are of those of whom the apostle says: “And if you be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you.” Such writings are read with the right of judgment, and without any obligation to believe. In order to leave room for such profitable discussions of difficult questions, there is a distinct boundary line separating all productions subsequent to apostolic times from the authoritative canonical books of the Old and New Testaments. The authority of these books has come down to us from the apostles through the successions of bishops and the extension of the Church, and, from a position of lofty supremacy, claims the submission of every faithful and pious mind. If we are perplexed by an apparent contradiction in Scripture, it is not allowable to say, The author of this book is mistaken; but either the manuscript is faulty, or the translation is wrong, or you have not understood. In the innumerable books that have been written latterly we may sometimes find the same truth as in Scripture, but there is not the same authority. Scripture has a sacredness peculiar to itself. In other books the reader may form his own opinion, and perhaps, from not understanding the writer, may differ from him, and may pronounce in favor of what pleases him, or against what he dislikes. In such cases, a man is at liberty to withhold his belief, unless there is some clear demonstration or some canonical authority to show that the doctrine or statement either must or may be true. But in consequence of the distinctive peculiarity of the sacred writings, we are bound to receive as true whatever the canon shows to have been said by even one prophet, or apostle, or evangelist. Otherwise, not a single page will be left for the guidance of human fallibility, if contempt for the wholesome authority of the canonical books either puts an end to that authority altogether, or involves it in hopeless confusion.

Thus it is clear that alongside Augustine’s belief in the authority of church and tradition, he assigns a special authority to Scripture (“sacredness peculiar to itself”), which is distinct from all subsequent writings in the church by being, unlike them, absolutely binding (note his phrase ”distinct boundary line”). Thus, as one of the comments in the blog post linked above suggests, Augustine may not have been a proto-reformer, but he certainly wasn’t a Tridentine Catholic either.

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Brown’s Biography of Augustine (2): Augustine’s Intellectual Development

One of the things that I am fascinated by from Brown’s biography is Augustine’s intellectual development. Like many other dominant figures in church history, Augustine was marked by a dramatic conversion experience. But though the moment of conversion in 386 was acute and decisive, the larger process surrounding this moment was complex and dynamic, involving a back-and-forth interplay between Christianity and various other non-Christian or sub-Christian religions and philosophies. More so than other dominant figures in church history, it seems to me, Augustine is marked by this complicated intellectual development – his struggle towards a distinctly Christian faith amidst competing alternative religions and philosophies on the market. He reminds me a bit of C.S. Lewis in this way (and in other ways). I think this aspect of Augustine’s life provides a helpful window into how Christianity and other religions and philosophies relate, for in Augustine you this struggle working itself out in both a great mind and a great heart.

Several features of Augustine’s intellectual development are worth drawing out. First of all, he was a Manichee for almost ten years before his conversion to catholic Christianity. That’s a long time, long enough to leave a permanent stamp on his expressions of thought, and indeed Brown argues that one can detect the lingering presence of certain features of Manichaeism in Augustine’s writing (such as its dualist frames of thought) even long after his vehement rejection of Manichaeism. But more significantly, it was not orthodox, catholic Christianity per se that led him out of Manichaeism, but a sort of loose conversion to neo-Platonism, which exposed to his mind the errors of the Manichaean view of good and evil. Standing before Augustine’s conversion to Christianity in 386 is a more basic vocational conversion from a literary career in rhetoric to philosophy and the pursuit of truth. Some historians have merged Platonism and Christianity together as one distinct movement in Augustine’s development, but Brown demonstrates that Platonism was an automonous (brief) phase just before his conversion (cf., e.g., 140). While it is an error to view this as the “real” conversion, as some of the revisionist scholarship puts forward in the attempt to muffle the significance of the 386 conversion, it is equally an error to regard this more basic conversion as possessing no significance at all, just as it would be foolish to regard C.S. Lewis’ conversion to theism in 1929 as possessing no significance for his conversion to Christianity in 1931. Augustine’s absorption with Plotinus in the 380′s was as a kind of preparatory stage, an intellectual incubating period, making him ripe for that crucial moment in the garden in 386. Neo-Platonism was a necessary bridge for Augustine along the pathway from Manichaeism to Christianity.

All of this brings up not only the complexity with which God may bring about that moment of regeneration in a human soul, and the influence a non-Christian philosophy may have on a person’s journey to Christianity, but also the continued relation of Christianity and other religions after one’s conversion. For neo-Platonism was not decisively discarded by Augustine when he embraced Christianity, but continued to develop in his thought alongside Christianity, interwoven with it. Only gradually over the next decade does neo-Platonism recede into the background as Augustine drifts away from an intellectualized Christianity, from the Platonic ideal of the “Philosopher” pursuing wisdom, and becomes, by the time of The Confessions in 397, more more distinctively and more simply, Christian. Moreover, more clearly than with Manichaeism, neo-Platonism leaves a lingering influence on his thought and expression, palpable for example in his admiring attitude towards pagan philosophy in The City of God (written between 413-426). One could perhaps say that his neo-Platonism gets absorbed into and transformed by his Christianity, rather than simply replaced by it. But even this is a process, and (again) takes a decade.

The issue that arises in my mind is the effect that a non-Christian philosophy or religion can have in preparing someone for Christianity. Augustine himself testifies in Confessions that Cicero’s Hortensius turned his prayers towards God and awoke in him a love of truth. I think also of the point Tolkien pressed to Lewis about pagan myth in their famous late-night conversation with Hugo Dyson, which Lewis said was the human cause of his conversion. It seems to me that Christians, without softening at all on the uniqueness of Christian revelation, must nevertheless have a humble attitude toward the potentialities within non-Christian thought. For within the categories of common grace and general revelation, there is sufficient revelation for a good deal of apprehension of truth – ample soil in which God to do his “plowing” work.

But to take the thought even further, Brown argues that this great struggle in Augustine had the effect of developing his later thought more concretely into Christian ways: “he had been a Manichee; he had come so close to an ‘autonomous’ Platonism that the experience lived on powerfully in him. He had not written Confessions for nothing. A middle-aged man’s sense of having once wandered, of regret at having found truth so late, will harden Augustine’s attitude” (277). Thus in his later writings, Augustine’s relation to alternative religions and philosophies takes on a different tone. This is evident from a consideration of the historical context of The City of God. It is popular to see it written directly in response to the sack of Rome in 410. Brown argues this is over-blown; the event gave Augustine a new audience by driving educated Romans down into Africa (especially Carthage, which Augustine frequented), but the real cause of the book was Augustine’s growing desire to confront a Pagan philosophy that had been developing and becoming popular in Numidia. Thus it was not merely Manicheism and Donatism against which we can see the development of Augustine’s thought throughout his career; it is also cultured Paganism, and then Pelagianism. But these later confrontations are marked, not as before with the slow emergence of a Christian core from a murky, confused stew of influences, but as a decisive and eloquent Christian critique from the outside, like the fall of a hammer or the pull of a saw. Augustine has passed through his development and become his own. He is no longer emerging from a shell, so to speak, but swooping down to pounce on insects.

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Brown’s Biography of Augustine (1): Initial Thoughts

A major part of my Augustine project over the past few months has been Peter Brown’s biography, which is generally viewed as the definitive longer, critical biography of Augustine. It was first published in 1967 (when Brown was 32!), but was updated in 1999 with an epilogue exploring new evidence about Augustine’s life and new directions of interpretation in the field of Augustine (so its both stood the test of time and not too out-dated). I had very high expectations of this book, but after a careful read, I have to confess that I do not share the glowing admiration of all the Amazon reviews of this book. The book did have many fine qualities. Brown’s writing is skillful (I learned lots of new words, like “coquettish” [196] and “swingeing” [203]). His presentation is sophisticated and his interpretations are insightful and measured. He demonstrates a thorough knowledge of all things Augustine and engages many issues of scholarly interest pertaining to the field of Augustine. The shining strength of the book, in my opinion, is Brown’s knowledge of Augustine’s historical context. He paints a vivid picture of Roman African culture on the eve of the transition from antiquity to the middle ages. This was truly a fascinating world: one in the outer skirts of the more sophisticated regions of southern Europe, but still one with its own intelligentsia and theological trends. Augustine, like Tertullian, was thoroughly African, and its helpful to see a little bit of what this setting was like – the spiritual problems of the people of Hippo, the tensions between African bishops and those in Europe (especially in the East), various events I previously knew nothing about, like the Council of Carthage in 411, and so forth.

All in all, however, I was disappointed. Time after time I would be nearing the end of a chapter, still waiting for the penny to drop, and finish by writing in the margin: “Brown isn’t really saying much.” I kept patiently plodding through, impressed with Brown’s skill and knowledge but wondering when Augustine the theologian would be emerge. It wasn’t until after I read all the way through the epilogue that I realized the problem: Brown is a historian, and his interests are the interests of a historian, not a philosopher or theologian. He himself admits as much in looking back 30 years later: “I prudently skirted Augustine the metaphysican, and limited my consideration of his theology largely to his notions of grace and of the Church” (495). What concerns Brown is to see Augustine in relation to his context, especially how his inner developments dovetail with the external developments of his time. But the book is not anchored in clear, over-arching interpretations that draw out Augustine’s overall significance for today, and it fails to adequately engage Augustine’s theology. There is virtually no treatment of Augustine on the problem of evil, or just war theory, or the nature of pride as the root of sin, and his more speculative works like De Trinitate or De Doctrina Christiana or his commentary of Genesis are neglected. Even his treatment of The City of God and Confessions seems largely driven by a-theological interests, such as Augustine’s internal emotional development and the transition from the classical to the medieval world.

For someone like me who is drawn to Augustine primarily for his theology, this book simply failed to intersect with my interests. Of course, the book is still a very helpful resource for what it does aim to do, but I find it difficult to view it as “the standard account of Augustine’s life and teaching,” as claimed on the back cover, and reiterated through many of the 33 Amazon reviews. How can it be the standard account of Augustine’s life and teaching when its discussion of the latter is so filled with gaps? Instead, I would suggest that this book should be seen as a great resource for the understanding Augustine’s life, and especially the historical context in which he lived. That is my main benefit from this book. I now have a working knowledge of the basic details of Augustine’s life, and a sense of what it would have been like to live in Roman North Africa between the 380′s and 420′s, as the Roman Empire was beginning to crumble. But this is not the best book for someone wanting to engage with Augustine’s thought as well as his life.

The other benefit I received from reading this book is that the way Brown looks back on his biography during the epilogue gave me insight into the nature of scholarship. I’ve never read a book where you have something like this – an old, established scholar openly critiquing major aspects of the book that put him on the academic map as a young man. Browns’ self-criticisms are not on minor points – several times he admits he got it completely backwards, and advocates an opposite view to the one he advocated before. Whereas formerly, for example, Brown had portrayed Augustine’s as harsh and authoritarian in the ecclesiastical disputes of his middle and later years, Brown now seems eager to vindicate Augustine – he sees more continuity in his development, and is no longer willing to interpret his doctrines of predestination and grace in terms of an alleged hardening during his bishopric. Whereas formerly Brown could treat Augustine’s view of sexuality dismissively and with some disdain, he now argues, against popular conception, that it was moderate and humane. He compares him favorably to contemporaries like Jerome, Gregory of Nyssa, and Ambrose, whose views were even harsher (they had no place for sexuality as a good part of life in the Garden before the fall), and suggests that the very vehemence of Augustine’s later writings against sexuality was to some extent the result of being accused of being too moderate (500ff.).

I admire Brown for his honesty and for his passion for his subject. It was fascinating to see his life’s journey with Augustine, and it made me long to have a similar journey in my studies in Anselm. It also reminded me of how subjective and partial the basis is for so much scholarship: if so much change can happen in one person from the beginning to the end of his scholarly career, how much more can it happen on an entire topic, or in an entire field, over the course of time? And if a life-long Augustine scholar can still be changing his mind and learning new things at the end of his career, how much more – in Augustine and elsewhere – is there room for new discovery and insight? There is so much truth out there still to explore.

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Who Will Deliver Us?

I am taking the youth staff through Paul Zahl’s Who Will Deliver Us? (Wipf and Stock, 1983). Its a great book, honest and vivid and courageous in applying the gospel to our deepest emotional struggles. The great strength of the book, as I see it, is that Zahl takes classic atonement theology and translates it into modern psychological categories of experience. He argues in chapter 1 that a deep-seated fear of ultimate judgment stands underneath our feelings of stress, depression, and anger, and that we tend to respond to deep fear with either escape, open resistance, or appeasement. In chapter 2 he explores the universal human need for atonement as a response to this fear, looking at both religious and secular expressions of this need. In chapter 3, which I read today in preparation for our staff meeting tomorrow, he presents Christ’s death on the cross as the answer to this human need for atonement in light of our deep, inner fear of judgment and condemnation. I found this chapter a refreshing reminder of the infinite value of the death of Christ for me, each moment afresh. Here’s a good sample quote:

“What is the present value of the death of Christ? How can something that happened long ago meet the judgment that afflicts us now? We have proposed that the problem of being human is essentially a factor of fear. We live our lives under judgment. Whether it is for wrongdoing in a conscious mode or the pervasive, irrational, multiform fear that we are worthless and no good, we live our lives under judgment…. I believe in the atonement of Jesus Christ because it disarms the law and frees me from the fear of judgment. This judgment would use as evidence against me not only the deliberate sins and conscious moral failures of which I feel most painfully aware, but also the compulsive patterns and imprisoning proclivities the origin of which I scarcely know except they feel like the flesh of my flesh. I have often felt judgment not as the condemnation of things about me I can help, but condemnation of my very self and character…. I believe in the atonement. The law is powerless: Christ’s death has disarmed it. ‘Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!’” (38-43).

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