Augustine of Hippo

Qu'est-ce que l'Absolu ? Dieu existe-t-il ?

God is immutable, triune Being, more inward than one's inmost self

Un Dieu personnelIl le dit expressément

Augustine reaches God by a double path: that of Platonist philosophy, which teaches him to think of God as immutable, incorporeal being and eternal truth (Confessions VII), and that of Scripture, which reveals him as creator, Father and Trinity. This Being is also someone: the Confessions are written entirely in the second person and open by declaring that the heart is restless until it rests in him. God is more inward than the soul's inmost part and higher than its highest. In On the Trinity he seeks in the human mind —memory, understanding and will— an image of the three Persons. And he warns that a God who is comprehended is no longer God: the Absolute is personal, yet exceeds every concept.

Qui suis-je ? Existe-t-il un vrai soi ?

I am a riddle to myself; I know myself by turning inward

Une âme créée et immortelleIl le dit expressément

Augustine made the self a philosophical problem: in the Confessions he says he had become a great question to himself. His answer is the soul: a spiritual substance, created, distinct from the body and destined for immortality, to which he devoted early works such as On the Immortality of the Soul. Against the sceptics he formulates a certainty prior to Descartes: if I am mistaken, I exist. In On the Trinity he analyses the mind that remembers, understands and loves itself, an image of the three Persons. But the self is not self-sufficient: the God it seeks is more inward than its inmost part. To know oneself is to discover a creature made for God and restless without him.

Pourquoi souffrons-nous ?

Evil is privation of good; we suffer from disordered love

La séparation d'avec DieuIl le dit expressément

Augustine spent nine years among the Manichaeans, who explained evil as a substance opposed to good. His mature answer, in the Confessions and On the Nature of the Good, is that everything that exists is good and that evil is not a thing, but a privation of good. Moral evil arises from the will that turns away from the immutable Good toward lesser goods: it is disordered love. Human suffering —mortality, ignorance, concupiscence— is for him a consequence of original sin, which humanity inherits from Adam. But the restless heart is also a sign of its origin: it suffers because it is made for God.

Que se passe-t-il après la mort ?

The end without end: we shall see, love and praise

Vie éternelle et résurrectionIl le dit expressément

Augustine awaits the resurrection of the flesh and eternal life. The City of God ends, in its book XXII, by describing that rest: there we shall rest and see, see and love, love and praise, in the end that has no end. He upholds the resurrection of bodies against the Platonists who despised the flesh, and also the eternal damnation of those not saved, which he defends harshly in book XXI. Book IX of the Confessions recounts the vision shared with his mother at Ostia, days before her death, as a foretaste of that life. On the Care of the Dead justifies prayer for the departed.

Comment atteint-on la libération ou le salut ?

Give what you command and command what you will

Par la grâce et l'amourIl le dit expressément

Augustine is the doctor of grace. His own conversion, narrated in book VIII of the Confessions, shows a divided will that cannot wholly will what it wills until a reading of Paul in the garden at Milan sets it free. Hence the prayer of book X: give what you command and command what you will, which scandalised Pelagius. In the Pelagian controversy he maintains that, after original sin, the human will cannot do the saving good without the grace of Christ, which precedes it, heals it and sustains it to the end; in his last works he speaks of predestination and of the gift of perseverance. The human being cooperates, but because he has first been moved.

Faut-il un maître ?

The only Teacher is Christ, who teaches in the inner man

Le maître est à l'intérieurIl le dit expressément

In On the Teacher, a dialogue with his son Adeodatus, Augustine reaches a radical conclusion: human words teach nothing by themselves; at most they prompt and refer. The one who truly teaches is the Truth that dwells in the inner man, Christ, whom each person consults within. Hence, in On True Religion, the watchword is not to go outside, but to return to oneself, for truth dwells in the inner man. Yet Augustine is no individualist: he himself was a teacher and bishop, and upheld the Church's authority, to the point of writing that he would not believe the Gospel unless the authority of the Catholic Church moved him to do so.

Le monde est-il réel ?

Everything that exists is good, because God made it from nothing

Une création bonne et réelleIl le dit expressément

Against the Manichaeans, who saw matter as the work of an evil principle, Augustine defends the goodness of all creation: in the Confessions he concludes that all things that exist are good, and On the Nature of the Good develops the view that every nature, as nature, is good. God created the world from nothing, not from his own substance: hence the world is real, distinct from God and changeable. Augustine also meditates on time, created with the world, in book XI of the Confessions. Creatures, when questioned, answer that they are not God, but that he made them; their beauty is a voice pointing to their author.

Qu'est-ce que l'amour ?

My weight is my love: it carries me wherever I go

Le désir ardent et l'unionIl le dit expressément

Augustine thinks of love as a force that moves the soul toward its place, as weight moves bodies: my weight is my love, he writes in the Confessions. Every human being loves; the question is what one loves and in what order. Charity is ordered love, which loves God for his own sake and everything else in God; cupidity is love that stops at creatures. Hence two loves found two cities: love of self to the contempt of God and love of God to the contempt of self. And hence too his boldest formula: love and do what you will, because from the root of love nothing but good can come.

Sommes-nous libres ou tout est-il déterminé ?

The will is free, but only grace frees it for the good

Un libre arbitre réelIl le dit expressément

Augustine wrote On Free Choice of the Will against the Manichaeans, to show that evil comes from free will and not from an evil substance: God gave the human being free will as a good, and sin is its misuse. Years later, in the controversy with Pelagius, he stressed that after the fall that will, though it still chooses, cannot effectively will the saving good without grace, which sets it free. In On Grace and Free Will he holds that both exist and do not cancel each other out. In his last works he radicalises the doctrine of predestination. Freedom is real, but full freedom is that of one who can no longer sin.

Pourquoi méditer ou prier ?

Return to yourself, and then transcend yourself

Revenir à la source du jeIl le dit expressément

Augustine describes the path to God as a movement inward. In On True Religion he puts it thus: do not go outside, return to yourself, truth dwells in the inner man; and if you find your nature changeable, transcend yourself as well. Book X of the Confessions roams the «vast palaces of memory» looking for where God is, and discovers that he was within while Augustine sought him outside. Prayer, moreover, is desire: in the Expositions of the Psalms he writes that desire itself is prayer, and that if desire is continuous, prayer is continuous. In the letter to Proba he teaches above all to ask for the happy life.

La raison peut-elle connaître l'ultime ?

Believe in order to understand, understand in order to believe

La foi et la raison s'entraidentIl le dit expressément

Augustine came to faith after passing through academic scepticism and Neoplatonism, and never stopped thinking. His formula, in sermon 43, unites the two movements: understand in order to believe, my word; believe in order to understand, the word of God. Reason prepares faith, showing that it is reasonable to believe; faith, in turn, purifies the mind and enables it to understand what it previously only accepted. Against the Academics he refutes the claim that nothing can be known with certainty. But Augustine also knows there is a limit: if you comprehend it, it is not God. On the Trinity ends by acknowledging that he has said much without reaching what he seeks.

Se retirer du monde ou le transformer ?

Never so idle as to neglect others, nor so busy as to forget God

La contemplation dans l'actionIl le dit expressément

Augustine dreamed of a retired life of study and prayer —he lived it at Cassiciacum and Thagaste— but was ordained priest against his will and spent more than thirty years as bishop of Hippo, preaching, judging lawsuits and engaging in controversy. In book XIX of the City of God he formulates the balance: no one should be so idle that in his leisure he does not think of his neighbour's benefit, nor so busy that he does not seek the contemplation of God; love of truth seeks holy leisure, and the necessity of charity accepts righteous work. The city of God coexists with the earthly city and makes use of its peace, though it is a pilgrim toward another homeland.