By the Renewing of Your Minds by Ellen T. Charry

Author:Ellen T. Charry
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780199880058
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2014-04-03T10:11:03+00:00

THE PRACTICAL TASK OF THE CATHOLIC FAITH

Bochet points out that Augustine’s own experience structured his understanding of the spiritual quest evident in both the Confessions and De Trinitate.8 Yet he did not countenance individual experience as theologically authoritative. On the contrary, he insisted that relying only on one’s experience, thought, and judgment leads one deeper into the mire of blind spots and impure loves, especially when the mind is corrupted by false teachings (Conf. 61–2; IV:x:15).

On the basis of his experience, Augustine concluded, first, that clear thinking requires assistance, in the form of the church’s teaching (94; VI:iv:5). This may account for his explaining church teaching, in books V through VII, before engaging the psychology. Still, his own experience of growing up in the church wandering off into Manichaeism for nearly a decade, and returning to the Church, became the prism through which his teaching on knowing God was refracted. His own life recapitulated the biblical story of a pristine creation and life with God, followed by a fall into sin and spiritual death, and eventual reversal by Christ the Mediator, who carries purified souls back to God to know and enjoy him. The struggle and eventual enlightenment and personal liberation Augustine experienced in re-embracing the Catholic faith modeled his teaching on how others should and could come to enjoy God. The biblical story and his own experience exemplified the Platonic paradigm of separation and reunion. Yet this is no self-conscious Neoplatonizing of Christian faith. The three testimonies merge unself-consciously into a powerful tool of Christian formation.

Second, Augustine’s spiritual journey is at once intellectual and moral: a search for truth and goodness. To sever mind from life would be unthinkable to him, for he trusted that the mind guides action. And he understood that one’s actions are guided by one’s conceptualizations of the world, shaped by norms of thought and behavior. It is no coincidence that the journey home to the Catholic faith created an equal and inverse distress about his sexual behavior (98–103, VI:vii–x:11–6; 111–32, VIII). And it is surely significant that it was scripture, and specifically Paul, that enabled him to break the bonds of addiction to sex, accepting both baptism and celibacy in virtually the same breath. But the way he links receiving the Catholic faith with receiving celibacy is no reason to conclude that he despised sex, as R. A. Markus points out (1990, 61). Augustine’s point is that lusting after sex, or wealth, or power, or fame all distract one from seeking God, a point he felt qualified to speak to. Separating understanding from the spiritual and moral life would render the former pointless and the latter incoherent. The very essence of religion is to hold thought and action together because the human person is whole.

Third, Augustine’s conversion came after he had lost hope that he could think his way out of his spiritual quagmire. And while he never denied a continuing role for reason in knowing God, he concluded that the Incarnation starts the process of amendment for life with God.

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