Many biographies of St. Augustine exist. James O’Donnell
adds another that is interesting, distinctive, and lively.
Time devoted to reading it is well spent, if for no other reason than
to enjoy O’Donnell’s vivid depiction of the late antique era in
which Augustine lived. It is not a biographical novel, but it is a
novel biography, attempting to break free of the obligatory
veneration of Augustine. To make this break, one has to recognize
that there are two Augustines, “the one who lived and died a long
time ago and the one who lives to be remade by us and is known
from his works. It’s impossible to tell the story of the one without
the other.”” (ANB, 5) As biography, this book volunteers a bold
revisionism on grounds that “”the study of Augustinian chronology,
and thus of all of Augustine’s life, is built on shaky ground.””
(ANB, 34) After all these centuries of research and biography,
there is still a need to “”concentrate first on the Augustine who
lived long ago. He is less well known than his undying alter ego””
(the Augustine “”known from his works””). (ANB, 5)
O’Donnell concentrates anew on Augustine’s life partly under
the inspiration of Pierre-Marie Hombert’s contribution (published
in 2000), Nouvelles recherches de chronologie augustinienne
(“”New Investigations in Augustinian Chronology””).1 This study
takes into account the recent discoveries of Johannes Divjak, who
found in Marseilles, France, dozens of heretofore unknown
letters by St. Augustine, and of Francois Dolbeau, who discovered
in a library in Mainz, Germany, dozens of sermons also
unnoticed in history. Combined, these discoveries “”give us new
light into his world.”” (ANB, 89) These discoveries make revisionism
obligatory.2
On account of this dissent and revisionism, O’Donnell’s book
warrants detailed examination. He aims to break the mold into
which the tradition has poured the sainted Augustine. Once
broken, fragments of his life, times, and writings remain. In
O’Donnell’s worldview fragments are surer signs of truth. If one
determines to read the auguries of these fragments, one makes
authentic biography possible. This sounds like deconstruction, a
charge O’Donnell would not disavow. There is a palpable
postmodernist sensibility in his work. (ANB, 83, 144) “”Breaking
up that framework in order to see pieces of the man himself is a
central task for the book.”” (ANB, 84) I will assess how successfully
O’Donnell accomplishes this task. I will test the soundness of his
interpretations of key elements (dare we say “”pieces””) of
Augustine’s life.
Fun with Biography
I praise O’Donnell for his willingness to amuse us while he
informs. You’ve got to indulge a fellow who makes you laugh. The
good humor in this biography is one of its attractive features. The
ancient Greeks observed that a researcher can bring one of two
states of mind to a subject, a spirit of seriousness (spoudaios) or
an attitude of playfulness (paideia). Johann Huizinga argues that
this distinction is a hallmark of Western civilization. As one of the
architects of Christendom, perhaps Augustine deserves both
kinds of treatment. (Of course, O’Donnell can be somber when he
wants, as we shall see later.) Augustine has been under the
specimen glass of serious examination for centuries. What is the
harm in balancing serious biography with light-heartedness?
Some may accuse O’Donnell of irreverence. True, humor cannot
excuse everything, but one person’s whimsy might be another’s
irreverence. Christian genius involves the mystery of the human
person, which includes the risible and the regard for the comic in
life, even when it touches on religion. As G. K. Chesterton said,
“”It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.””
At any rate, O’Donnell’s presentation bounces occasionally
with humor and even frivolity. He gambols through his text,
sometimes “”saying the darnedest things.”” Let me set the context
for a few droll examples: (1) speaking of the saint’s struggle to
convert: “”Augustine falls back on his old pastimes—sex, drugs,
and rock ‘n’ roll, so to speak”” (ANB, 68); (2) making a curious
comparison: “”As an orthodox Christian, Augustine differed from
many of his contemporaries precisely because he had been a
Manichee and couldn’t let go. Ex-Stalinist neoconservatives are
just as exciting among their new coreligionists, and just as out of
place”” (ANB, 50); (3) likening Augustine’s Confessions to Huckleberry
Finn, and speaking of the latter: “”Perhaps, like me, you
purchased a copy in a high school bookshop long ago because you
had heard it had some salacious things in it. (If they’re there, I
haven’t found them yet)”” (ANB, 35); (4) observing that the
converted Augustine was conscious of the lifestyle he gave up: “”As
bishop and Christian, he was always a man who used to have a very
different future, and made sure that you remembered it”” (ANB,
36; well, it struck me as funny); (5) musing on the relationship
between Augustine and his mother, Monica: “”as she weeps on the
shore at Carthage while her son sails off . . . Augustine suddenly
becoming Aeneas abandoning Dido. We can all connect the dots
of that story”” (ANB, 55); (6) alluding to Donatism: it was “”light on
credibility and heavy on mumbo-jumbo”” (ANB, 56); (7) speaking
of Augustine’s standard for his own baptism: “”Most baptismal
candidates were satisfied to present themselves when they had
acquired the good intention at moral reform that marks New
Year’s resolutions or a decision to quit smoking or go on a diet. As
long as there was no dramatic relapse, a relatively normal future
life was quite in order. But Augustine was more competitive than
most”” (ANB, 60); (8) daring to bring up the Trinity: the “”word
‘person’ was applied to the ‘three-ishness’ of god . . . The word
originally meant ‘mask,’ the thing you wore in a drama . . . but few
now would try to represent Christian theology as being about the
three masks of god or the three stage roles he plays, although it
might be a fresh approach to a difficult subject”” (ANB, 65; I like
to think even Augustine would chuckle at that one.); (9) speaking
of Augustine’s Platonism: he prefers “”a perfect un-world over this
imperfect one”” (ANB, 82); (10) thinking of that blustery day when
the barbarians walked into Rome: “”in 410 he would have been
ready to respond to the news from Rome with an Eeyorish ‘I
thought as much'”” (ANB, 228); (11) doubting whether Augustine
is “”a purveyor of mystic crystal revelations and the mind’s true
liberation (though on some days that language would not have
been foreign to him).”” (ANB, 288)
I could go on. (Note his reference to “”overweight middle-aged
hippies playing bluegrass music,”” that is, “”the Grateful Dead.””)
(ANB, 275) But I’ll stop at the eleventh example. Anyway, I can
appreciate O’Donnell’s occasional excursion into “”hip”” rhetoric.
Still, there can be too much of a good thing. As one reviewer put
it, “”the insouciance and irreverence begin to sound hollow after
a while.””3
The Augustine who Confesses
On to spoudaios. At some point, we seriously have to ask, “”Does
O’Donnell’s postmodernist biography of St. Augustine succeed?””
To respond, it is natural to begin with the Confessions. How does
O’Donnell help us, if at all, better capture the mind and heart that
Augustine suffers to disclose in his own autobiography?
Before I engage that question and volunteer some criticisms,
I want to commend O’Donnell for one conspicuous success. He
spotlights something that is sometimes not given its due in
treatments of the life and thought of Augustine: the fact that he
was a rhetorician. Rhetoric was no idle curiosity, nor merely a job
that he happened to fall into at Carthage. He aspired and trained
to be a rhetorician from his youth and he remained one throughout
his adult life. Rhetoric was central to Augustine’s identity.
Even before his chapters on the Confessions, O’Donnell brings
this out effectively in his book’s opening pages by asking us to
imagine what it was like to be part of an audience hearing and
witnessing one of Augustine’s “”performances.”” True, these performances
had a spiritual purpose. They were teaching lessons of
a pastor and bishop. But we must not overlook that they were
rhetoric. Rhetoric was a profession and a gift Augustine brought
to his Christian vocation which gave him opportunity to develop
that gift further. It helped him navigate and ascend the intellectual
culture of his day. The Confessions itself is the work of rhetoric.
The centrality of rhetoric enables O’Donnell to explain cleverly
the relationship of Augustine to St. Ambrose. Ambrose
counseled Augustine in his desire for Christian conversion. But
Augustine surely was attracted to Ambrose also because he was
one of the great rhetoricians of the age. He was Augustine’s
mentor in faith and rhetoric. Here was a model for rhetorical
power in service of Christian faith. He also modeled for Augustine
that rhetoric could be a means of exchange to mobilize and
advance a person’s interests and standing in the Mediterranean-
Christian society of the fourth century. Because Ambrose and
Augustine are saints, biographers may be unwilling to emphasize
how well the gift and achievement of rhetoric served as a “”worldly””
tool for them. But men like Ambrose and Augustine were politically
involved in ecclesiastical and social events during their day.
Such men, even if saints, have to be, at least, in the world, if not
of it. It is a positive Christian service to take God’s gift and use it
to persuade others of the Good News. Is it un-Christian that some
personal benefit come from that?
Perhaps in Ambrose, Augustine saw the embodiment of a
Christianized Cicero, whose influence in Augustine’s pilgrimage
the Confessions stresses. Through the work of Ambrose and
Augustine, the tradition of ancient oratory assimilates into Christian
wisdom:
Christian preachers had always known and enacted this Role [as
accomplished rhetoricians]. What was different about Augustine,
Ambrose, and their contemporary in Constantinople, John,
called Chrysostom (“”golden mouth””), and other polished per
formers of the age is that they saw themselves in the tradition of
the ancient orators as well. (ANB, 31)
Rhetoric was a way in which Roman Catholics were truly
Roman, retrieving and applying a traditional Roman value, forensics,
to their Christian calling.
With this salute to O’Donnell now discharged, I return to our
general question: does his postmodernist biography of Augustine
succeed? To repeat the obvious, in order to pursue this question
we must address Augustine’s Confessions. No biography should
ignore a subject’s autobiography. A self-reflective, ipse dixit
record of a life is indispensable for biography. Aware of this,
O’Donnell devotes two early chapters of his biography, chapter
two, “”Augustine Confesses”” and chapter three, “”A Modern Classic,””
to Augustine’s autobiography. When an autobiography comes
down to us as one of the eminent achievements of Western
literature, it requires the biographer to ask: (1) why does the
autobiography still connect with people many generations after
its author has died? (2) does the autobiography indeed reveal the
life of the author? To answer the first question, O’Donnell writes
the third chapter. Autobiography, especially one as private and
intense as Augustine’s, is unique in ancient literature. It is a way
of writing that presages postmedieval concerns with the self.
“”Privacy is a modern invention and depends on conditions of life
and understanding of selfhood that were inaccessible to ancient
people.”” (ANB, 106–7) Hence, it resonates with modern audiences,
with their interests in psychology, subjectivity, and emotions.
In short, the Confessions is ahead of its time.
Presently, I would like to focus on the second question: does
the autobiography (in this case, Augustine’s Confessions) successfully
reveal the life of the author? To answer this question, one
must determine whether the author of the autobiography is really
aware of his or her own personality, character, and motivations.
One of the tasks of O’Donnell’s biography is to show that, as an
exercise in personal psychoanalysis (ANB, 55); Augustine’s autobiography
does not succeed, or at best, only partly succeeds. He
fails the “”Oracle-of-Delphi Test,”” so to speak. He does not know
himself. In other words, O’Donnell’s verdict is that Augustine
thinks he is someone he is not. His self-disclosure in the Confessions
is largely an exercise in rationalization, obfuscation, and
self-aggrandizement. Unconscious motivations explain our saint.
Augustine’s struggle for sincerity does not conceal what O’Donnell
knows that Augustine does not. His sexual appetites may have
been sublimated, but the Augustine of the Confessions is still self
serving and obsessed with worldly interests. It is not just a matter
of unconscious drives; character flaws also abound. “”The intellectual
arrogance that marked his youth had, he believed, also left
him. (That argument is perhaps the most self-serving . . . and some
of his contemporaries would have found it hard to take).”” (ANB,
36) “”The light and obvious thread is the description of a life’s
career meant to impress its readers.”” (ANB, 36) This is to be
expected, since “”Augustine never practiced the humility of the
man who would escape attention. In prostrating himself before
the divine in the Confessions, Augustine performs an astonishing
act of self-presentation and self-justification and, paradoxically,
self-aggrandizement.”” (ANB, 36) According to O’Donnell, people
tried to tell Augustine this at the time, but he did not listen. (ANB,
45–46) The Confessions is a product of self-creation, not selfdisclosure.
The premise for this verdict is a view of enlightened, objective,
or “”scientific”” history that O’Donnell assumes but never actually
justifies. Perhaps he thinks that the Dolbeau and Divjak discoveries
justify it. “”Hombert digs deeper and finds that the foundations
of Augustinian chronology are rotten, badly rotten. The
most abundant texts, the sermons, were assigned a timeline
generations ago by devout but relatively amateurish scholars.””
(ANB, 33). Once we supply a more convincing chronology of
Augustine’s stages on life’s way, we can decipher better who
Augustine is.
There is some substance to this, but not nearly so much as
O’Donnell thinks. O’Donnell thinks radical reinterpretation of
Augustine, the man and saint, follows as soon as scholarship (the
recent discovery of the letters and sermons) demands that we
reject the traditionally accepted view that Augustine began to
acquire notoriety in North Africa as early as 395 and that we
replace it with the judgment that only after 410 “”the great man””
began to emerge. (ANB, 34) Prior to that time, he remained a selfserving
social climber. These vices remained after 410, but they
were not as evident. Once he arrived at his privileged station in
life, he didn’t have to act on his character flaws so much.
What can I say to this? True, the scholarship of Dolbeau,
Divjak, and Hombert justifies opening up new investigations into
Augustine. But it does not justify revisionism of the kind O’Donnell
envisions. At some point, it is the content, what Augustine actually
says in those sermons and letters, that dictates whether we accept
O’Donnell’s conclusions. It turns out, unless one reads them with
O’Donnell’s suppositions already in mind, his conclusions do not
follow.
There are revisions and then there is “”revisionist history,””
which, for O’Donnell, means that when one is examining a subject
whose life is complex and ambiguous, responsible history must
prefer dark psychological motivations and social compromises as
the real causes of this subject’s beliefs and behaviors. Augustine
is eventually diced and sliced with this philosophical, or perhaps,
more accurately, ideological conception of biography and history.
Such an assumption is not excused by the discovery of letters and
sermons. For it to stand, O’Donnell must give it independent
demonstration. It is an ideology of debunking and deconstruction.
Of course, it has its ideological pay-off. For if one deconstructs
Augustine, one debunks the Catholic Church as traditionally
understood. This agenda should not be lost on O’Donnell’s
readers.
#page#
O’Donnell detracts and discredits throughout the entire
biography. It is evident in his interpretation of the Confessions. In
his effort to write a biography that humanizes the saint, a
description that includes “”warts and all”” (a description any
genuine saint would endorse), O’Donnell has forgotten the “”all””
and has pretty much left us with the “”warts.”” O’Donnell’s dismissive attitude says “”never mind”” to the thousand-plus years of
biography that recounts Augustine’s life as virtuous and, indeed,
saintly. Those must be the biographies coming from “”the devout
and amateurish.”” In our postmodern age, we have sat too long at
the knee of historical criticism to perpetuate naiveté. We know
that saints are too good to be true. If we study our subject through
the lens of historical science, we will catalogue a different kind of
specimen: a self-aggrandizer, bordering on narcissism, whose
motivations are largely worldly; a figure whose own self-concept
is so tortured by a sense of sin that he dare not face the reality of
who he is. The Confessions provides Augustine the opportunity to
fabricate an image of himself that he can present as respectable
to the world, the image of the pilgrim progressing, while simultaneously
convincing himself that he is someone he is not. Accordingly,
the Confessions is an exercise in “”bad faith.””
All of this adds up to a presumptive cynicism in O’Donnell’s
presentation of Augustine’s Confessions. He turns innuendo and
arbitrary accusation into art forms. Augustine’s “”one-man show,””
his “”virtuouso performance”” is a rationalization for his “”own
future authoritarianism.”” (ANB, 36–37) If we avoid “”the snares he
has laid for his biographers”” (ANB, 37), we can cynically unmask
this social climber and power-seeker.
Motivations and Machinations
O’Donnell details specific ways in which Augustine manipulates
his social circumstances, fabricates his identity for his times and
posterity, and arbitrarily demands his interpretation of Christian
religion over all others. Beyond what I’ve said above, which is
specific to the Confessions, I will point out another way in which
O’Donnell accuses Augustine of less than admirable motives for
his life, work, and influence.
It is fascinating to watch O’Donnell’s studied efforts at
innuendo and accusation, as well as his eccentric use of evidence,
which sometimes is not evidence at all, to make his case. A case
in point is his treatment of the relationship that Augustine
develops with St. Jerome. In chapter four, with the provocative
title “”Augustine Unvarnished,”” O’Donnell alleges that in 394 the
self-seeking Augustine conspired to write Jerome, who resided in
Bethlehem (having been asked to leave several earlier locations),
“”to attract attention.”” (ANB, 92) In his letter, Augustine criticizes
some of Jerome’s views, a risky enterprise for one wanting to
ingratiate himself, since Jerome was known for his volatility. By
accident, Augustine’s letter did not reach Jerome until years later.
In the meantime, the letter went to Rome and circulated as a
pamphlet titled “”Against Jerome.”” Augustine protested that he
never intended the letter to circulate in that fashion. He never
wanted a public attack on Jerome. But suspicion and cynicism are
axiomatic in O’Donnell’s account. Feigning reluctance, he concedes
that “”we should probably accept his protestations,”” and yet
he quickly adds “”while perhaps pausing to wonder why scholars
have been so ready to accept them.”” (ANB, 93; O’Donnell’s italics)
A fair and guarded interpretation would grant that Augustine
surely knew he might benefit from Jerome’s recognition but would
also allow, lack of evidence to the contrary, that it is at best an
accompanying motive and not the primary one for Augustine’s
sending the letter. Surely it is reasonable to think that Augustine’s
powerful mind is champing at the bit to dialogue with the greatest
theologian of the age. That motive is plausible enough as to count
against reducing Augustine to a “”self-seeker”” in his correspondence.
But O’Donnell’s skepticism about Augustine’s motives
automatically trumps such cautions: “”Augustine may have been
distressed that his letter did not make it directly to Jerome, but he
was surely delighted that it had gone into circulation otherwise.””
(ANB, 93) Isn’t this unfair speculation?
This pattern of interpretation persists throughout O’Donnell’s
biography. It seems to offend the norms of careful, objective
biography, suggesting that O’Donnell has an agenda: to make
insinuation and defamation the presumptive judgment of St.
Augustine. In the spirit of this agenda, O’Donnell seems to ignore
how reason ought to judge the facts. He becomes prone to the
fallacy ad ignorantiam (argument from ignorance) in his assessment
of evidence. As a reminder: this fallacy is committed when
one argues that something must be true because it has not been
proven false, or that something must be false because it has not
been proven true. O’Donnell commits this fallacy in the case at
hand when he concludes: “”Nothing Augustine says rules out the
possibility that the rogue copy in circulation in Italy was not the
original gone astray but rather a separate copy somehow put into
play by Augustine himself.”” (ANB, 93) How does O’Donnell’s
inference differ from Joe McCarthy’s argument on the Senate
floor in 1950 that he had at last “”penetrated Truman’s iron curtain
of secrecy””? Pointing to eighty-one “”case histories”” of persons
whom he suspected were communists employed in the State
Department, he singled out Case 40 and said, “”I do not have much
information on this except the general statement of the agency
that there is nothing in the files to disprove his Communist
connections.””4 O’Donnell’s way of inference is the stuff of conspiracy
theories.
Of course, O’Donnell would reply to what I’ve said above by
resorting to a postmodernist account of letter writing. Musing
about a letter Augustine received from his friend Paulinus,
O’Donnell remarks:
Letter-writing is a complex social business, a way of making texts
that pretend to be like speech. People may naively think they
write letters to tell each other things, just as Augustine wrote (in
his book The Teacher) that people use language to convey
information. What we learn in the world of e-mail ought to be
alerting us that the whole business of letter-writing and letterreading
is far more interesting and complicated than most people
assume. Letters like these made Augustine’s name where his
voice could not reach. (ANB, 98)
In this passage, O’Donnell recognizes that, independent of
whether it is convincing or not as a theory of language, knowledge,
and correspondence, this postmodernist view is surely not
Augustine’s. But what O’Donnell fails to see is that, since Augustine
is one of those naïve people (whose naïve ranks would number
people like Plato, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas) who think
language conveys information, it is likely that nobler motives than
self-advancement are behind his correspondence. If Augustine
believes words convey truth, why wouldn’t he write letters to
engage with others the pursuit of truth? The quoted passage then
undermines rather than supports O’Donnell’s own thesis about
Augustine as schemer and self-promoter.
Saint Augustine: Christian Philosopher
One interesting feature of O’Donnell’s biography is his handling
of Augustine the philosopher. O’Donnell recognizes the profundity
of Augustine’s philosophical views. Yet he does not give them
the attention that one might expect. In fairness, it is too much to
ask a biographer to provide a satisfactory, let alone exhaustive,
commentary of his subject’s philosophical views. However, were
Augustine’s principles explored somewhat further, O’Donnell
might better appreciate that ideas and philosophical debate are
arguably more powerful motives in Augustine’s life and work than
self-interest and public visibility. Still, what commentary exists
indicates that O’Donnell does understand Augustine’s basic philosophical
principles and also recognizes some of their problematic
consequences.
Augustine is philosophically a Platonist. Through reading the
Neoplatonist Plotinus, he realized that spiritual realities exist. He
credits this reading as a singular moment toward his conversion.
He put away materialism and eventually Manichaeism. An unequivocal
Platonism endures throughout all of Augustine’s writings.
While Platonism certainly gives Augustine a philosophical
identity, it also creates problems for his philosophical development.
Platonism holds that to be real is to be immutable. Augustine
accepts this metaphysics and adapts it to his philosophy of
God. God is perfect immutable being whose divine mind knows
the perfect immutable intelligibles, the divine ideas, the universal
exemplars of all created things. Hence, along with Plato’s metaphysical
principles, that to be real is to be immutable, Augustine
also absorbs Plato’s essentialism: immutable reality consists of
Platonic Form, except now mutated into a Divine Mind and its
contents.
Under the influence of Neoplatonists like Plotinus and Porphyry,
it is understandable that Augustine would come to this
metaphysics. But it is nonetheless a source of difficulty for
Augustine. If to be real is to be an immutable form, that which is
not a form, matter, is unreal. This causes problems for Augustine’s
account of creation, matter, change, and the human condition.
God’s creation becomes something akin to Plato’s sensible
world. Things are poor imitations of forms. Their reality lies
elsewhere. Needless to say, this diminishes the significance of
God’s creation. God created real creatures. Their reality has to be
more than just the forms in God’s mind that they represent.
The problem is compounded when one considers that physical
things change. Change is part of the nature of physical things.
But change is a sign of unreality and unintelligibility in Platonic
metaphysics. So, changing physical things demonstrate that God’s
creation is unreal. Nor can changing things be the objects of
knowledge. Genuine knowledge requires permanence. Hence
Augustine must resort to divine illumination to explain and secure
knowledge.
All of this combines to make Augustine’s physical cosmos
radically contingent, unstable, and uncertain. At least, Plato’s
matter has the benefit of being eternal. In Augustine’s metaphysics,
matter is a created but changing thing. It is insufficient in its
own existence, existing only by God’s grace, and unreal by virtue
of being changing matter. Material creation is in flux and constituted
by that which is not form. On both accounts, the reality of
creation is compromised. And yet, matter must be good. Augustine
is self-conscious about not repeating the error of
Manichaeism, an issue O’Donnell discusses in depth. (ANB, 47–
54) It appears Augustine doesn’t realize how Platonism and
essentialism have made problematic his Christian metaphysics.
This of course is why Augustine does not have a doctrine of
natural law. How can the instability of nature furnish evidences of
universal scientific and moral principles? The natural order is a
cosmos instead of a chaos only by the continual effort of God’s
grace to conserve things in existence. Each thing exists and
behaves by the unceasing work of divine will. Necessity and law
are not constitutive of it. This is a fact not lost on G. K. Chesterton,
who conveyed effectively the fluid nature of Augustine’s
universe in these terms:
It is possible that God says every morning, “”Do it again”” to the
sun; and every evening, “”Do it again”” to the moon. It may not be
automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God
makes every daisy separately, but has never tired of making them.
. . . The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may
be a theatrical encore. . . . Repetition may go on for millions of
years, by mere choice, And at any instant it may stop.5Of course, the unreality of changing matter leads to difficulties
for Augustine’s view of the human person. The human person,
according to the incarnate theology of Christianity, is an embodied
spirit. So important is the body in human nature that our afterlife
requires the resurrection of our bodies. St. Paul made that
clear in II Corinthians. But if our bodies are unreal, why would
this be necessary? This metaphysics of matter is behind Augustine’s
tendency to describe the body as undesirable. Accordingly,
O’Donnell observes:Augustine is reluctant to go as far as the Platonists in thinking any
contact with a body was itself polluting, but he often uses
(particularly in his earlier career) language that points in that
direction, and he never fully rejects the style. He certainly shares
with them throughout a preference for a perfect un-world over
this imperfect one, for the unseen over the seen. (ANB, 82)Yes, he often uses language suggestive of Plato’s description
of the body in the Phaedo as a source of spiritual corruption.
O’Donnell notes this fact:The body rather will be for him a source of distraction and
defilement: food, drink, sleep (and dreams), sex (even in
dreams), and, most seductive of all, the wandering of the eyes.
All these things are for him not part of himself, not his core inner
self, the real Augustine, but are rather instruments of the bodily
Augustine, the imperfectly spiritual Augustine, and vehicles by
which temptation—and worse—penetrate the person (ANB,
108–109).The debasement of the human body complements the metaphysical
unreality of matter. Could this be the reason that
Augustine principally speaks of immortality in spiritual terms,
while making perfunctory observance to resurrection in Scripture?These are significant and compromising problems in
Augustine’s philosophy. Augustine himself may never have realized
that his own first principles generated these complications.
To O’Donnell’s credit, he grasps these difficulties. Moreover, he
appreciates that Augustine wrote for a lifetime trying to overcome
perplexities that his philosophical assumptions spawn.Another aspect of Augustine’s philosophy that O’Donnell
understands is its association with rhetoric. By Augustine’s time,
philosophy had become a subset of the trivium (grammar, logic,
and rhetoric). In particular, it had become subordinate to the
liberal art of rhetoric. Cicero looked upon philosophy in this way.
Since Augustine was inspired to be a philosopher under Cicero’s
influence, it is not surprising that he would regard philosophy as
a kind of rhetoric.6In Augustine’s thought, philosophy plays out as a kind of
rhetoric in connection with divine illumination. Because of the
Fall, human nature is weakened in the exercise of its powers. The
only rescue from this impotence is divine grace. (ANB, 301)
Through the soul’s soliloquy, through its discourse with itself, it
can recognize that it suffers multiple conflicts. These conflicts
cause confusions that impair the soul’s ability under its own
powers to obtain wisdom. The soul cannot acquire knowledge and
wisdom until it turns to God to resolve its conflicts. This turning
to God has epistemological and axiological significance. Truth
and goodness do not come about as our sense powers contact
sensible things in the external world, from which our intellects
abstract information. Such a realist view of knowledge would be
Aristotle’s. For Augustine, knowledge cannot take place with
natural powers that are undermined by sin. Sense experience,
imagination, and intellectual abstraction, judgment, and reasoning
are bankrupted in Augustine’s philosophy of the human
person. Knowledge takes place as a kind of redemption, as God
empowers our intellects to gain truth by glimpsing the contents,
the divine ideas, of his own mind.This is a kind of rhetoric, as the soul must persuade itself to
encourage its conversation with God, as the soul pleads to God its
sincere need for Him, without which it is nothing. The soul converses
with itself and with God. This account of knowledge is modeled
in the Confessions, a running dialogue between self and God.I applaud O’Donnell’s book for seeing these fine points.
However, he overlooks that the inevitable frustrations out of the
application of Augustine’s philosophical principles also impel
Augustine to seek friendship, support, and counsel from his
comrades in faith and wisdom. Accordingly, Augustine’s search
for social connection and communication has surely a more
wholesome inspiration, at least to a significant degree, than the
cynical motives O’Donnell habitually attributes to him.I cannot leave this section of my review without commenting
on O’Donnell’s perception of Augustine’s Just War doctrine. This
doctrine is one of Augustine’s most conspicuous and enduring
philosophical contributions. O’Donnell’s dismissive attitude about
Augustine’s handling of the issue is telling. He seems to think
Augustine really does not take the doctrine seriously. (ANB, 4)
Has O’Donnell prejudged that enlightened Christians know that
pacifism is necessary? Should we presume that Augustine would
never sincerely argue that war could be just? (ANB, 154, 259)
Should we presume that no genuine Christian would ever sincerely
so argue?Without getting into the full debate, I would like to reinforce
the conviction that Just War is unequivocally a serious and
justifiable concern for Augustine. One way of showing this is to
reminisce briefly on why Just War is Christian. First, in my own
research on how various Catholic thinkers have treated the
question of the Just War, I have discovered that there is nobody
who is both a saint and a doctor of the Church who holds the
pacifist position. doctors of the Church, including Augustine,
follow St. Ambrose, who, in his book, De Officiis Ministrorum
(“”On the Duties of Public Officials””), argued that it is one thing for
an individual, in the pursuit of sanctity and self-sacrifice, not to
resist violence and willingly become the victim of it; it is quite
another for an individual to invoke Christian love of peace as an
excuse to stand by and let innocent people be harmed by aggressors.
In other words, for the sake of testifying to higher spiritual
perfection, I may be called to offer myself as a victim of violence,
but it would be unjust and cowardly for me to offer up the welfare
of others for whom I am responsible (as is a parent or a civic
leader) to those who would harm them. To do so is to pervert the
Christian principle of peace-making into something dishonorable.
7 Just War is a subject on which Augustine was mentored by
Ambrose. In turn, Augustine has mentored generations of conscientious
Christians on the issue.8#page#
Accordingly, it is unfair for O’Donnell to remark that
Augustine’s account of history leaves “”the human participants
indistinctly swarming together in a confusing world and left to
bicker until the end of time.”” (ANB, 307) Augustine’s ethics of
Just War is precisely his attempt to mitigate that state of affairs.Secondly, there are reasons against the view that Scripture
prescribes pacifism. Jesus seemed to allow the possibility that
force, but not violence, could be used in a moral way. (On this
distinction, violence, the unjust use of force, is wrong; however,
the use of force, under certain circumstances, may be morally
permissible.) His words to the Centurion (Luke 7:1–10, which
give him a perfect opportunity to condemn all war on principle)
indicate the moral permissibility of being a soldier, not to mention
Jesus’ threat of force to run the money-changers out of the
temple. Peter’s meal at the home of the centurion, Cornelius (Acts
10), shows a willingness to break bread with his host, not a desire
to condemn him. To the soldiers who sought his advice, John the
Baptist told them to restrain from certain activities within their
military service, especially that they do not use violence to
plunder or steal and that they be content with their wages. He did
not tell them that being a soldier in the first place is among the
things they ought not to choose. While our contemporaries often
regard pacifism as obligatory for Christian life, only a handful of
Christians espoused it until the late Middle Ages.9Love of peace ought not to nullify common sense. Gandhi
himself wrote:Even manslaughter may be necessary in certain cases. Suppose
a man runs amuck and goes furiously about sword in hand, and
killing anyone that comes in his way, and no one dares to capture
him alive. Anyone who dispatches this lunatic will earn the
gratitude of the community and be regarded as a benevolent
man.10These kinds of comments O’Donnell’s biography should also
take into account. To O’Donnell’s credit, he does attempt to
nuance the discussion with reference to some of Augustine’s
remarks on peace. (ANB, 259) Still, the subject of just war in
Augustine cries out for more treatment than O’Donnell’s biography
gives it.
Saint Augustine: Polemicist and Artificer of Catholicism
Fascinating passages occur in this biography dealing with
Augustine’s polemics, especially his ambivalence over Manichaeism
and his debate with Donatism. On these subjects Augustine wrote
extensively. O’Donnell’s reaction to Augustine on these themes
makes it clear that he does not share Augustine’s view of Christianity.
Alternatively, O’Donnell prefers a view of Christianity
that I would label “”gnostic.”” This is a fashionable preference.
Knowing this, O’Donnell seems more willing to presuppose this
worldview than to actually argue for it. He assumes, probably with
good reason, that many of his readers would prefer a gnostic
conception of Christianity, a conception which is not Augustine’s.“”Gnosticism”” can mean many things. In the past, it commonly
signified that, if one could but discover his or her true self, one
would realize he or she is divine. In a compelling article, “”A New
Gnosticism: An Old Threat to the Church,”” Timothy Luke Johnson
argues that today gnosticism shows up as a combination of this
belief about the self with a kind of religious universalism.11 An
enlightened mind knows (recall the Greek, gnosis) that salvation
can be sought and attained in any religion. In keeping with this
attitude, today’s genuine Christian ought to regard his or her
religion as just one interpretation of the divine and just one of
many ways to salvation.Exclusivists (those who believe salvation exists only through
Christianity) like Augustine are party-poopers who have soured
Christianity, turning it from open pluralism to narrow particularism.
Augustine’s authority worked this ill effect by reducing
Christianity (1) to the only way of salvation, (2) to a body of
doctrine, called “”orthodoxy,”” that rejects a priori alternative
interpretations of Christian belief and experience (principally,
interpretations that disagree with Augustine’s), and (3) to a
chronic state of doubt and anxiety about our spiritual destinies, so
that we fail to find divinity within ourselves. All these failures
O’Donnell lays on Augustine’s doorstep. In his chapter “”Augustine
and the Invention of Christianity,”” O’Donnell argues that
Augustine took a fledgling faith, one that was the model of
diversity and that had the potential to liberate us from our fears
and anxieties, and turned it into an onerous worldview. Augustine
worked “”obsessively, and dangerously . . . to advance the cause of
his sect against that of the majority.”” (ANB, 14)Augustine’s so-called “”theological maturation”” toward “”true,””
particular religion could be interpreted as a kind of regression. To
protest this so-called “”maturation”” and to show solidarity with
diverse creeds, O’Donnell refuses to use “”God”” in the uppercase.Augustine’s world still knew lots of different kinds of gods, and
ardent devotees of any one of them knew perfectly well what the
competition was like and perhaps even sampled other religious
products from time to time. Only the highest-minded had any
idea of the identity of a single divine principle crossing all
religions. Augustine was not so high-minded . . . . (By leaving
the word “”god”” in lowercase, I hope to remind readers of this
danger throughout this book). (ANB, 7)If one escapes this implicit gnosticism, one can speak on
Augustine’s behalf, defending the requirements of Christianity
against an uncritical universalism. I say “”uncritical”” because
Augustine certainly was a universalist in the sense that he was
Catholic, a word taken from the Greek (katholon), meaning
universal. St. Augustine enthusiastically supported and advanced
St. Ignatius of Antioch’s vision of the Christian Church as
“”catholic.”” This fact O’Donnell himself recognizes:To be “”catholic”” for Augustine meant to be in communion with
people he had never seen, people who lived across seas one
would never dare to cross. The idea was not original with
Augustine . . . . But what an idea it was. The Christianities of
Augustine’s time had an intuition of universality, an idea that
they could claim to be true for all places and all times. “”Catholicism””
in the Latin west made that intuition concrete, and by 600
that notion of “”catholicism”” had undoubtedly prevailed. (ANB,
313)“”Catholic”” means desire for a universal, but distinctly Christian,
communion. Where Augustine was not universalist (and on
this matter, the Catholic Church has agreed with him) is in the
belief that salvation can be achieved outside Christian faith. That
is to say, Augustine is not a pluralist on salvation: salvation is
achieved through Jesus Christ alone. “”No one comes to the
Father except through me”” (John 14:6). Salvation through diverse
faiths—a view I have called “”gnostic,”” following Timothy
Luke Johnson—was certainly not acceptable to Augustine. To the
gnosticsChristianity is . . . part of a more universal scheme of revelation
and salvation. What is true within it is universally available, with
or without Jesus, for it is spirit. What is particular about Jesus is
false, for the particular is always material. In a very real sense,
Gnosticism was an argument for spirituality over religion.12On issues not related to salvation, there could be truth and
goodness in other faiths, Augustine surely would admit. But the
truths of non-Christian faiths could not include teachings about
salvation. Nor could a Christian consistently accept non-
Christian beliefs that contradicted Christian teachings, what
Johnson refers to above as “”revelation.”” Hence, logic would force
Augustine to reject gnostic universalism (or pluralism) because it
believes (1) that salvation can come through any faith or interpretation
of faith without Jesus, and (2) that doctrinal disagreements
are not significant.One may not like that this is Augustine’s view. One may, like
O’Donnell, prefer pluralism. But it is wrong to suggest that
Augustine arbitrarily particularized and discriminated against
versions of Christianity he did not like. Augustine had reasons for
separating “”orthodox”” Christianity from alternative creeds and
interpretations, interpretations he would regard as troubling.
One may or may not accept his reasons, but he sincerely advanced
them, and wrote and wrote about them. O’Donnell sometimes
engages Augustine’s arguments with some thoroughness, as in the
case of his interesting treatment of traducianism and original sin.
(ANB, 299) But even here O’Donnell doesn’t consider how later
scholastics will follow Augustine’s lead, amend his position, and
provide a more convincing solution.Too often O’Donnell asserts what he thinks Augustine ought
to believe without recognizing why Augustine may be reluctant to
believe it. Consider his treatment of Manichaeism, the sect
(founded by the third century Persian, Mani) to which Augustine
belonged in youth, which holds a dualism of spirit and matter,
teaching the release of the spirit from matter by heroic and
ascetic efforts. Augustine would have grounds to disagree when
O’Donnell says: “”They [the Manichees] were outlaws to Christians,
but Christians in some sense they certainly were. They
shared ideas that have been attributed variously to the Gnostics
of Egypt, the Zoroastrians of Persia, and to Mani’s native
Mesopotamia itself.”” (ANB, 39)Augustine would object, arguing that to expand Christianity
to accommodate such views turns the Christian faith into something
incoherent and doctrinally anarchical. In other words, the
pluralist interpretation of Christianity requires justification.
Augustine argues that Christianity consists in a non-negotiable
core of doctrines. One cannot abolish or ignore these doctrines
just to satisfy the climate of opinion that religion ought to be
universalist. Augustine spent his life’s work as a theologian
arguing that Christianity is not so indefinite as to embrace
anything. He didn’t “”invent”” Christianity, he argued for it. He
convinced others by his arguments. One may not like his conclusions;
one may disagree with his arguments. But when those
arguments are assessed, one sees why Augustine makes his case,
a case one has to take seriously.Consider again O’Donnell’s remark above, referring to “”the
Gnostics of Egypt, the Zoroastrians of Persia, and to Mani.””
(ANB, 39) To these creeds, Augustine would reply concisely: (1)
gnosticism does not account for the infinite gulf between Creator
and creature, a gulf only bridged by divine grace. The gnostic
bridges the gulf by making the creature divine, which the gnostic
votary discovers in gnosis. (2) Zoroastrianism errs by making the
diabolical a co-eternal principle with God. There can be only one
infinite being; hence there is only one deity. Zoroastrian dualism,
making the evil-deity equivalent in power to God, is unconvincing.
(3) Manichaeism fails to grasp that evil can be real without
being a substantial thing. Evil is a privation, not a thing, but a
disorder or deficiency within a thing. Things, substantial entities,
are created by God. Hence, they are good. This distinction
preserves the significance of evil in the human condition (allowing
us to make sense of Old and New Testament) but avoids the dire
theological consequences of Manichaeism. Moreover, Manichaeism
is thrice problematic, since, as O’Donnell himself admits
in the above quotation, it shares the claims of the gnostics and the
Zoroastrians as well.At any rate, this kind of argumentation reflects Augustine’s
approach to alternative interpretations of Christianity. It’s not
whether one wants to be pluralistic, but whether pluralism can
conform to Christian truth. It may be that to some people
Christianity would be a sweeter, gentler, and less demanding
religion if Augustine “”hadn’t messed things up.”” But Augustine is
a philosopher; he’s taking the argument to whatever conclusion it
leads.O’Donnell faults him because he “”insists that his way and his
way alone shall prevail.”” (ANB, 4) But Augustine’s “”insistence”” is
a philosophical one, which removes arbitrariness from his polemical
work. This is one of the most serious oversights in
O’Donnell’s book. The word “”insists”” may mean an emotional
demand that another accept one’s views, regardless of the rational
basis for one’s views. This seems to be the way O’Donnell
understands the verb. But this use of “”insists”” is not Augustine’s.
In spite of the fact that Augustine’s philosophy is very rhetorical,
he is still too good a philosopher to be tarred with that brush. It
is fairer and more in keeping with Augustine’s writings that he
“”insists”” on his viewpoints over others because he believes he can
vindicate them by reason and evidence. This is a judicious and
moral insistence.Moreover, it is logically compulsory. If someone’s views are
justified, it follows that his views are more reasonable than the
views of those who contradict him. It is a matter of logic, of
consistency. If someone has attained the truth, it follows that he
must hold that it is not just true for him but for another rational
mind. If reason and evidence objectively persuade, they persuade
all rational minds.Furthermore, for Augustine, truth is ultimately anchored in
divine illumination; it exists eternally in the mind of God. In light
of this, a rational mind must insist on the truth of his views for
others, if he believes they are really defensible. Others may
disagree, but he cannot say their disagreement consists of a truth
that is equivalent to his understanding of the truth. To think of
such equivalence is contradictory. They may disagree, fair enough,
but they must bear the burden to prove him wrong. They cannot
hide behind pluralistic slogans to absolve themselves of that
debate.Accordingly, adherence to one’s position, combined with
polemics and justification, are not signs of a flawed character
aiming to “”impose one’s views”” on others. Such a person is just
expressing the logical requirements of justification. Once a person
has justified a judgment of truth, logic requires that those who
disagree with him or her have mistaken views. This is not a matter
of being narrow-minded or of being a bully. This is the nature of
philosophical-theological debate, classically understood. It is a
matter of the logic of truth as it applies to the consequences of
making and justifying truth-claims.One might wish that Augustine had a different, say, postmodern,
relativist, subjective view of truth, a view of truth that O’Donnell
seems to prefer. But Augustine did not subscribe to such a view
of truth. He wrote a book, Contra Academicos (“”Against the
Academic Skeptics””), to overturn such skepticism. By “”truth”” he
meant what most ancient thinkers meant. Indeed, he meant by
“”truth”” what most people always mean: the agreement of our
intellectual judgments with the facts, with what is the case, even
if for Augustine, in this fallen world, such truth in the end is
secured only by God’s grace.To be saddened that this is Augustine’s view, and to judge him
morally because it is ancient and objective, not postmodern and
relativist, is anachronistic and unfair. It is anachronistic in that it
obscures Augustine’s objective conception of truth anchored in
reason and divine illumination, unfair in that it takes what are
natural logical outcomes of his argument and transforms them
into dishonorable motives in debate.Similarly, Augustine takes up his polemic with the Donatists
and Pelagius. With the former, Augustine disputed whether
sanctity was necessary for the administration of sacraments and
for church membership. With the latter, he disputed whether our
free will saves us. O’Donnell thinks that Christendom would have
been a happier place (1) if Augustine had followed his mother’s
original religious affiliation with the Donatists, and (2) if he had
listened to Pelagius. Instead, he returned from Europe a “”belligerent
Caecilianist,”” (the North African sect that took him as its
bishop), and battled Pelagius for a less comfortable, more worrisome
kind of Christianity. Whether Christendom would be “”happier””
is an interesting question of “”what if”” history. But Augustine
would remind us that it’s not about what we want. It’s about what
God wants and what doctrine requires. Perhaps Christendom
would be happier but at what price?Besides, one has to be careful when the word “”happiness””
(beatitudo, in Augustine’s lexicon) is being tossed about. Many
church fathers, doctors of the church, and saints have argued that
Christianity is not about happiness in the commonly accepted
sense of the term. Our ordinary conception of happiness is too
shallow to adapt to the supernatural depths of Christian happiness.
Yet it is this baser sense of the word, to be “”comfortable”” or
“”worry-free,”” that O’Donnell presupposes. This coarser sense of
the word lends easily to the therapeutic view of happiness,
freedom from fear and anxiety, that O’Donnell anachronistically
uses as his standard to criticize, if not condemn, Augustine.Augustine, on the other hand, would disabuse us of such a
casual definition, reminding us that the ultimate standard of
happiness is the beatific vision. Happiness in this life is always
qualified by sin, challenge, and doubt. Even St. Thomas Aquinas,
who had a more optimistic view of happiness in this life than
Augustine, recognized that our earthly happiness is imperfect
because it consists of goods that can be lost at any moment. This
realism about happiness may be disagreeable, but it is nevertheless
entailed, Augustine believes, by Christian truth. Additionally,
how we feel about happiness, even which definition of happiness
we prefer, is beside the point where doctrinal disputes are
concerned.Having said this, I should add that some of Augustine’s own
admirers, such as the above-mentioned Thomas Aquinas, might
disagree with him about the extent to which the Fall has sabotaged
our natural inclination to happiness. But this is a debate about
human ends that must be taken up in full before one dismisses
Augustine’s account of the human condition, which account is
crucial to his treatment of Donatism and Pelagianism. It is not
enough to do what O’Donnell does: dismiss Augustine’s view of
happiness because it is unpalatable to contemporary tastes for
therapeutic happiness.Once these observations are in place, then one can better
appreciate, even if one in the end disagrees with him, why
Augustine argues against Donatism and Pelagianism. One can
better understand why Augustine is so concerned with original
sin, infant baptism, and problems of free will, salvation, and
Predestination. If we have better solutions than Augustine to
these problems, we’re obligated to show why. We cannot toss his
theology aside because we have an agenda.
The Perennial Augustine
Among the many achievements of O’Donnell’s biography is the
message that, whether we like Augustine or not, we live in a world
of his making. Augustine speaks to modern peoples because their
civilization continues to work out, or perhaps work away at, his
assumptions, first principles, and beliefs. O’Donnell addresses
this fact in two interesting closing chapters: chapter 11, “”Augustine
The Theologians,”” and chapter 12, “”Who Was Augustine?””
Augustine fashioned an Augustinian world. We live in that world,
or at least, the vestiges of that world. That is why he still has the
power to move us across the centuries.In a compelling study, Peter A. Redpath argues that modern
culture is “”secularized Augustinianism.””13 Two hallmarks of modern
thought are (1) that the universe is contingent and (2) that the
knower must transcend the interior limits of consciousness, if he
or she is to achieve real knowledge. These are foundational to
Augustine’s worldview as well. God is the sine qua non in Augustine’s
ontology and epistemology. God provides stability in a created or
contingent, mutable world. God supplies knowledge since our
own cognitive powers are too impaired by sin to assure knowledge.
Sense perception and intellectual abstraction cannot function
reliably so as to acquaint us with extramental things.Modern thought likewise struggles with instability and skepticism.
Many prominent modern philosophers tend to be Augustinian
in the way they inherit, set up, and articulate the problems
of being and knowledge. But they cannot enjoy Augustine’s
solutions. As God has become increasingly marginalized, ignored,
or even eliminated from modern worldviews, modernists have
had to seek solutions suitable for an atheistic worldview. As
Redpath puts it, their obligatory solutions are “”secularized.”” Even
when atheism has been avoided (for there are indeed theistic
currents in modern and postmodern thought; O’Donnell himself
still rides such a current), the result is a fideistic view of religion,
according to which reason has little, if any, role to play in
defending religious beliefs. Religious discourse becomes noncognitive:
emotive, private, and non-rational.Modern philosophies of knowledge tend toward anti-realism,
the belief that the mind does not directly know real, extramental
things. On account of this tendency, skepticism beleaguers modernists.
There is no rescue from their skepticism because (1) they
have ruled out divine illumination and (2) they have discounted
cognitive contact with actual extramental things as the contentdetermining
cause of information in the human mind. Augustine
himself arguably ruled out the second solution: reliance on
extramental things. But he could resort to the former: divine
illumination. For modern epistemologies, neither is regarded as
a live option. Postmodernism is the malaise (or despair) that
results from the recognition of the inescapability of the modernist’s
plight. The postmodernist is an Augustinian whose epistemic
heart cannot rest. He is left with atheism, agnosticism, or fideism.Materialist science was the modernist’s great hope. But such
science is compromised by skepticism, hence all the noise about
constructivism today (even science is a “”cultural”” construction to
the postmodernists). The contents of the mind irreducibly shape
knowledge by virtue of their being shaped by psychology or
language or economics or culture.Even if postmodern minds weren’t so compromised, the
postmodern world would never give up knowledge. The epistemological
compromises are compounded by ontology. The
postmodernist’s epistemic heart cannot rest; nor can its ontological
yearning find satisfaction. The universe is radically contingent,
where all that exists is matter in motion. In such a world,
there are not abiding objects to give us genuine knowledge. It is
a world that Sartre described as “”gelatinous slither.”” Ironically,
postmodernists come full circle back to Plato’s time. They, as did
he, have to confront Heraclitus’s worldview. O’Donnell is operating
in this worldview (although he has pursued the fideist’s
option), trying to assay Augustine in its light. It is an interesting
thought experiment, if nothing else.In the last chapter of his book, O’Donnell reflects on
Augustine’s influence and speculates in a fashion reminiscent of
Sigmund Freud. In Future of an Illusion and in Civilization and Its
Discontents, Freud wonders about the future of the West once
atheism is the consensus. Once people become sufficiently enlightened
to recognize what Freud recognizes, that there is no
God, civilization as we have known it will change. Freud puzzles
and even worries over these inevitable consequences. O’Donnell
has a similar reverie in his closing chapters, although it concern
the human person, not God (as I stated, O’Donnell applies the
fideist’s option).#page#
Since Augustinian anthropology has underpinned Western
civilization, does the future of civilization as we know it hinge on
the fate of Augustine’s philosophy of the human person? Will it be
that as Augustine’s Christian anthropology goes, so goes his
civilization? Of course, his philosophy of the human person is his
philosophy of soul. “”Augustine writes and worries at length about
the nature of the human soul because that soul is central to his
understanding of himself, of humankind, and indeed of his god. If
‘heart’ was always metaphor, ‘soul’ was regularly insisted on as
standing for something quite real.”” (ANB, 326)O’Donnell sees that it is on Augustine’s view of the soul that
those who envision a new philosophy of the human person and a
new society and politics that follow upon it engage in a great
debate. “”If his view of the human person and his narrative account
of the inner life is supplanted by better science, then all that he has
been to centuries of devout and not so devout heirs could crumble
very quickly into irrelevance.”” (ANB, 327) In practice, this
“”better science”” goes by the name “”cognitive science.”” In short, it
is the attempt to reduce the human person to an organic machine.
This is an anthropology that conforms to the physicalist monism
of the scientific materialist’s worldview. O’Donnell is correct to
draw our attention to it and to indicate that Augustine’s philosophy
is still influential and at issue. His philosophy of soul is on trial
in the scientific laboratory and in the philosopher’s lecture hall.But if there is no soul? If there is no soul substitute called “”mind””
or “”personality””? Contemporary cognitive science challenges our
deepest western assumptions about human beings and what they
are. Attempt after attempt to locate a mental or spiritual unity in
some convincing relation with the brain and body of a mortal
human fails, fails increasingly often in our times, to be replaced
by a series of competing hypotheses about the loosely coupled
functioning of multiple systems distributed throughout the
body. (ANB, 326–27)Yet it must be said that the death of Augustine’s philosophy
of soul is greatly exaggerated. Cognitive science is not the threat
O’Donnell thinks it is. Once one engages the arguments, cognitive
science is more a body of assertions and hypotheses than
