Reading Augustine’s Confessions, Book XIII: Wisdom and the Image of the Trinity – Discourses on Minerva
Having just examined the first part of Book XIII of the Confessions, along with Chapter 22 which concerns itself with imago Dei and the renewal of the mind to reach the light of creation which calls us in its beauty and wisdom, we can move on to the next part of Augustine’s interpretation of Genesis. Now we will continue to examine a close reading of Chapters 11-21 where Augustine continues his allegorical reading of Genesis. This is important to remember – the entire treatise in Book XIII is an allegorical reading with profound implications for anthropological cosmology and just anthropology in general. Since anthropology is the dominant theme throughout the Confessions, this is why I believe one should actually begin reading Augustine by understanding Book XIII of the Confessions which literally informs all 5 million words he wrote in Latin.
Chapters 11 through 21 continue with the theme of cosmological and anthropological participation as Chapters 5-10 make very clear. At the same time, he is also dealing with other issues which I shall attempt to address, but within the confines of participation.
Chapters 11-14: Humans as Reflections of the Trinity
Come to the beginning of Chapter 11 Augustine begins to dwell on the mystery of the Trinity, “Who can understand the omnipotent Trinity? We all speak of it, thought we may not speak of it as it truly is, for rarely does a soul (mind) know what it is saying when it speak of the Trinity.” This is in line with Augustine’s famous dictum: “faith seeking understanding.” We all seek wisdom and knowledge. Even faith, properly speaking, seeks knowledge. (Fideism, the philosophical doctrine that holds all knowledge comes from special revelation, is a heresy in the Catholic Church; faith is like Plato’s innate ideas in some respect, it whets the mind (the soul) to seek wisdom and propels the soul on that heavenly ascent singing songs of joy as it comes to participate with beauty, truth, love, and wisdom as we examined in the first ten chapters of Book XIII.) Augustine also makes clear that the realm of the Transcendent is not wholly accessible to reason, though reason can come to a somewhat sufficient – even if not whole – understanding of it. “Men wrangle and dispute about it, but it is vision that is given to none unless they are at peace.”
Basically, Augustine says we need to accept our finitude before we can actually proceed to coming to understanding of the immense beauty and majesty that is the creation itself. We cannot know all things, but there’s nothing wrong with this. Like Socrates, acceptance of some form of skepticism is the foundation for actual growth in learning and knowledge (but like Socrates, this is not the nihilistic skepticism of the sophists).
Augustine then turns to explaining the Trinity through explaining humanity. Augustine’s ontological pluralism is on full display here. Like with the Trinity, Augustine claims there are three principal components to being human (which is itself a reflection of the Trinity since humans are imago Dei). “The three things are existence (being), knowledge, and will, for I can say that I am, I know, and I will. I am a being which knows and wills; I know both that I am and that I will; and I will both to be and to know.”
Contra the mechanical philosophers of the 17th and early 18th century (Bacon, Hobbes, La Mettrie, etc.), humans are not automatons or “man machines.” Humans are a pluralistic composition of many things which reflect the reality of pluralistic metaphysics which is itself rooted in the pluralism of the Triune Godhead which metaphysically necessitates pluralism. This is another defense of metaphysical pluralism from the pen of Christianity’s greatest and most important saint and church doctor. We are beings with form (I am existence), we have the ability to know and desire knowledge (Logos), and we are will (phenomenological desire). Since I am being, my being principally seeks wisdom through desire – the two are supposed to go together, which codifies and dignifies formal being (the body). Augustine explains, in Chapter 17, that “all men are united by one purpose, temporal happiness on earth, and all that they do is aimed at this goal.” So our being, our want for knowledge, and our will/desire seek happiness. Happiness is the Natural Law.
Our threefold ontological being is much like Aristotle’s hylmorphism, it is a unity of form (knowledge) with matter (being) with the added composition of will/desire. We cannot negate, or purgate, being, knowledge, and desire from ourselves either. Here is Augustine’s implicit critique of the Stoics (who seek the elimination of desire in order to make our being happy with wisdom), but also his critique of the Epicureans (who claim we are just desire without the need for form or knowledge). Again, Augustine’s portrait of the human is a harmony of all constitutive elements of one’s existence, which includes body and soul/mind, as well as desire (related to both body and mind) and knowledge (principally related to mind but has consequences for the body).
In Chapter 12, Augustine says that one should understand that the earth taking form is like coming to understand knowledge. Through the acquisition of knowledge one’s form comes into codification. One more clearly understands himself and the world he lives in when he begins to understand things about himself and the world in which he inhabits. “Let there be light,” again, is the light of knowledge that dispels ignorance; the turning to light is the beginning of coming to know wisdom and the coming to know oneself. In a sense, the acquisition of knowledge is the highest calling for a human, formless being becomes formed through knowledge, so to speak, because we come to understand who we are from which this understanding is like taking on form or taking on order. (Though we were formed even before we possessed knowledge, but as Augustine said we really didn’t understand our form so it is like we were formless in the darkness of the abyss.)
Moving into Chapter 13, Augustine begins a brief commentary on natural theology – which is very prominent in Catholic theological circles. Natural theology is the doctrine which says reason alone is capable to understanding truths of God, and that this requires empirical observation then rational contemplation as to what one has observed. He draws on the Apostle Paul from the first epistle to the Corinthians, where Paul explains God’s wisdom and beauty through natural thought.
Despite this, Augustine again shifts to the voice of God, and seeks to understand what the voice of God truly is. (Again, it’s not some man up in the clouds actually talking to you in a literal sense.) “It is your voice that calls to us, for you have sent your Spirit from on high, through Christ, who ascended into heaven and opened the floodgates of his bounty, so that flowing waters might enrich your city.” It is important to remember that Christ is the Logos. Christ is Reason incarnate. The voice of God, which is also the voice of Christ, is the voice of reason within you, calling you to the knowledge that you seek (as Augustine just explained knowledge is an integral component to what it means to be human), and also calling you to participate in beauty, light, and life. We long for knowledge, we seek knowledge through the reason of our soul (which, again, Augustine defined as “the intellect and the rational” in De Trinitate), we seek beauty through an understanding of beauty – we chase after the light that is Christ as Augustine explains.
The seeking of beauty, light, knowledge, and wisdom is a purely natural and rational endeavor – it is who we are. The problem is, of course, we would rather stay stooped in the abyss of darkness indulging in the sensual pleasures of concupiscence detached from Logos. Like Cicero, Augustine sees the dignity of man in his pursuit of knowledge, truth, and wisdom – which lifts up the body.
Chapter 14 deals explicitly with this. Augustine sees, already in Genesis 1, a prefiguration of the Resurrection. Our bodies constantly fall back into the abyss because “my soul is still sad because it falls back again and becomes an abyss, or rather, it realizes that it is still a deep abyss,” because our minds are not oriented to the highest Good (wisdom, love, truth, and beauty, etc.). In sticking with the attempt to understand what it means for the Spirit to be calling us over the face of the Deep (which is what Augustine is still commenting on in Chapters 11-14), he concludes that we “shall see [our] champion and [our] God, who will give life to our perishable bodies too, for the sake of his Spirit who dwells in us, because in his mercy he moved over the dark waters of our souls.” Yep, Genesis 1 is still a giant commentary about anthropology and the pursuit of light, life, beauty, wisdom, and truth. Here is a prefiguration of resurrection – the lifting up of the body out from the abyss through the call of the light of day. Knowledge, and the coming to know knowledge, which is part of what the pursuit of wisdom which is the light of creation, is what elevates and dignifies man from the abyss as he puts on new life.
Chapters 15-18: The Eternal Immutability of Wisdom and why all can Partake in Wisdom
Chapters 15-18 have a concurrent theme uniting them: the eternal immutability of Wisdom. Because Logos is the alpha and omega, which is to say Wisdom is the beginning and the end, Augustine understands Wisdom as immutable and being accessible to all at any given moment in time. He is not a “Whig” who sees History as the unfolding from darkness to light – even though philosophically literate people know that the “Whig View of History” is an idiosyncratic and “secularized” Christian ideal (from a largely Protestant perspective). After all, we’ve just been looking at all of this talk of light (knowledge) and darkness (ignorance) and how the humanity is called to the light of truth rather than the dark abyss of ignorance. But this is purely individual in Augustine’s account; it does not take on cosmic and universal pretensions as from the Whig historians and intellectuals.
He is also keeping to the theme of natural theology that he had just laid out, “O Lord, let us look up at those heavens of yours, the work of your hands. Clear away from our eyes the cloud with which you have covered your firmament. There in the heavens, in your Book, we read your unchallengeable decrees. Which make the simple learned.” Augustine is arguing here that the beauty and radiance of the Cosmos is awe-inspiring, and because it is beautiful and we have a yearning for beauty and beauty is a gateway to truth, by looking up into the heavens and coming to understand the beauty and order of the stars we begin to understand Transcendent Wisdom and its rational order for the Cosmos. (In fact, Augustine claims in his commentary over Matthew 2 that this is how the three magi understood Christ’s birth as incarnate Wisdom and charted their journey to Bethlehem.)
The magnificence and splendid expanse of the heavens erases our pride – for Augustine, overcoming pride is the acceptance of the natural order decreed by Wisdom in its infinite glory. Much like how we must first be at peace with ourselves before we can begin to acquire true knowledge, we must also brush off our bashful pride before we come to understand Wisdom. “They read your will; they choose it to be theirs: they cherish it. They read it without cease and what they read never passes away.” This is twofold. The importance of the Bible, here, is not that it is “God’s Word” (since Christ is God’s Word), but because the Bible teaches us insights to that Word and Wisdom, and also that the expansive beauty of the heavens were formed by the decree of wisdom itself. A combination of the Bible with our own empirical observations and internal marvel that flow from this, is what allows us to “read the will of God” (which is the eternal wisdom of the order to the Universe) and find our place in it all. Wisdom was the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
This is, of course, still tied to Augustine’s pluralistic anthropological composition. “Your words will stand,” and “as grass withers with all its beauty; but your Word stands forever,” the Wisdom of God and the rational order to things is forever eternal and calls us to understand it, and, in doing so, understand things about ourselves. This is what we desire, and this is also part of knowing. Again, desire and reason go together for Augustine. We have animalistic desires, but we also have transcendent desire (the desire to know), which is what he is principally dealing with here in Book XIII. Augustine flowers this desire for wisdom with language of beauty and fragrance, again, because the heavens are beautiful and beauty calls us to it: “Now we see your Word, not as he is, but dimly, through the clouds, like a confused reflection in the mirror of the firmament, for though we are beloved of your Son, what we shall be hereafter has not been made known as yet. Wearing the issue of our flesh he turned his eyes to us. He spoke words of love and flamed our hearts, and now we hasten after the fragrance of his perfumes.”
Augustine retains that deeply neo-Platonic influence (which is ripe throughout all levels of Catholicism). Wisdom imparted into us a desire for beauty, a desire for knowledge, a desire for love, and so forth, and now we, in this beautiful creation, catch glimpses of such beauty, harmony, order, and love, and this propels our souls to seek after the author of it all: Wisdom. We desire wisdom, which is knowledge; our will, properly speaking, seeks knowledge which gives us the happy rest which all humans long for. As Augustine writes, “[our] soul thirsts like a land parched with drought, for just as it cannot give light to itself, neither can it quench its own thirst. In you is the source of all life; your brightness breaks on our eyes like dawn.” We have a natural appetite for beauty, for wisdom, and for the pursuit of knowledge. This is what it means to be fully human: to long and chase after the beauty of the fragrance of light which is the pursuit of wisdom and of God. Man, indeed, does not live by bread alone (which is anti-materialist argument).
Come to Chapter 17, Augustine finally states that happiness is the telos (end) that all humans seek. “Who gathered the bitter sea of humanity into one society? All men are united by one purpose, temporal happiness on earth, and all that they do is aimed at this goal, although the endless variety of their struggles to attain it they pitch and toss like the waves of the sea. None but you, O Lord, gathered them together, you who ordained that the waters should collect in one place to make dry land appear, land dry and parched with thirst for you.” By “one society” Augustine is not speaking of a global political order as some contemporary political operatives try to claim. Augustine’s “one society” is the universality of human nature; the universality of seeking happiness. All humans, no matter who they are, where they are, and to whom they belong, seek happiness. Coming out of the sea and taking on form is the taking on of our human nature as we come to know what our nature seeks. Again, just like in the previous chapters, our coming to know knowledge is a growth into form.
We all desire happiness then. This happiness is found in wisdom. Augustine’s commentary of the conflict between thrashing waters and the order of the land is also deeply profound and influential. Again, Augustine does not see the story of the thrashing waves of the water which are then parted to land as actually talking about creation as Biblical fundamentalists have it. This is about us (our nature). The waves represent our torment as we chase after pure carnal desire without the ordering force of reason – which is wisdom – and the ability to move away from this constantly twisting about like the seas comes from wisdom, for wisdom spoke a decree and brought forth the order of the land. We occupy that land, parched, yes, but with the whetted appetite of desiring wisdom for the consummation of human happiness. This also represents the taking on of form, which is order and knowledge, and is our beginning to that upward ascent toward beauty. For it is on the land, rather than twisting and turning about in the depths of the seas, from which we can begin to see the full radiance of beauty over the world and skies.
“But there are souls that thirst for you, souls which in your eyes are set apart from the great main of the sea for a different purpose. These you water with the sweet streams that flow from your hidden spring, so that the earth too may bear its fruits.” Wisdom has given us a parched tongue so as elevate up on high in the pursuit of beauty, truth, and wisdom. Again, our minds and phenomenological desires cannot be satiated by anything less than wisdom, because this is human nature – the coming to understanding of oneself and what it means to be human in the grand scope of the Cosmos. Being, knowledge, and will must be in harmony with each other in order for us to be happy. From this our light shines out to other.
This is what it means to be “Elect.” We bring light, joy, and happiness to others through our charity. “When we love our neighbor by giving him help for his bodily needs, our souls bear fruit in works of mercy proper to their kind, for they have seed in them according to their species…Then we are like a great tree bearing fruit, for we do good to a neighbor, if he is the victim of wrong, by rescuing him from the clutches of his assailant, and providing him with the firm support of true justice, just as a tree affords the protection of its shade.” In other words, in wisdom, we know how to act. In our actions, we find happy rest in what we’ve done. We are happy. Our happiness bears the fruit of happiness, which is also the shining ray of light. We become conduits of light and goodness in the world. Again, this is purely individual on Augustine’s account. No such nation is “the light to the world,” but only individual humans are. “In this way, O Lord, you create happiness and give it to us to ease our lives.”
Again, Augustine comments on how the mind – knowledge – is the conduit from which we derive happiness. Knowledge, then, is the root of all true happiness as opposed to fleeting happiness. “Let our light shine out in the world and from this humble crop of good deeds let us pass on to that more sublime harvest, the joy of contemplation, so that we may come to possess the World of Life and shine in the world like stars set in the firmament of your Scripture.” There are gradations of happiness. Each person will find happiness in different means and measures, but only through some form of wisdom which comes with understanding. For instance, some will find joy in literature. Others in the beauty of the natural world. Others will find joy in music and the arts. Better still, some will find joy in helping others. But, of course, the most sublime and happiest of people will be those who are able to derive happiness from every such matter. But such people are few. As Augustine states over the latter half of Chapter 18, we each have specific gifts and needs. No one is the same, though we all desire happiness.
Chapters 19-21: Light and Beauty Eternal
As Augustine is coming to the climax of Genesis, which is the making of humanity in the image of God (the image of the Divine mind), he now turns his attention to understanding what is meant by the creation of the other luminaries of the skies: the sun, stars, and moon. Again, it is important to remember Augustine is not reading this literally or even thinks that this has anything to do with creation in the most simplistic sense. Genesis 1 is an entire commentary about human nature and anthropology using metaphorical and allegorical language that is common to those who have read pre-Socratic Greek philosophy.
The establishment of the sun for day, and the stars and moons for night, represent the eternality of the brilliance of wisdom (which is light) and beauty which is eternal. Not only is wisdom eternal, beauty is eternal because it is transcendent. People telling you “this is beauty” is because they have corrupt minds. They do not understand true beauty, and therefore they destroy true beauty by promoting things of lesser beauty as true beauty – equal beauty means no beauty at all as it lowers the greatest beauties to being equal with the lower beauties. “Be lights shining in the firmament, so that the skies may proclaim his glory. Divide the light of those who are perfect, but not yet as the angles, from the darkness of those who are infants in God’s nursery but are not without hope. Shine over all the earth and let the day, radiant in the sunlight, utter the word of wisdom to the day.” The “lights of the day” are not really talking about the establishment of the sun and other daylight stars at all. It is just a reminder of the brilliance of light in general, which is beauty and truth, which shine most brightly in the day, and illuminates the total beauty of the world and Cosmos we live in.
“Let the night, gleaming in the light of the moon, impart the word of knowledge to the night. The moon and the stars shine by night, but the night does not darken them, for it is they that give it light in so far as it is able to receive it. It is as though, when God said, ‘Let there be luminaries in the vault of the sky’ all at once a sound came from heaven, like that of a strong wind blowing, and then appeared to them what seemed to be tongues of fire, which parted and came to rest on each of them.” This is the opposite of the daytime luminaries, and sticks with the theme of the struggle between reaching up to the light or the falling to the abyss. Darkness represents the abyss of alienation, but even in the darkness there is light. This is why, from the light of the moons and stars, the brilliant beauty of the Cosmos radiates outward for all to see. Light is eternal. “Let there be light and there was light.” What the luminaries for the “nighttime” represent, for Augustine, is the eternality of beauty. It is 24/7, it is never hidden from us – and we cannot hide from it despite our best efforts to do so. Even in darkness there is beauty illuminated by light.
Once again, contrary to the Biblical fundamentalists (who are a modern phenomenon anyway, having emerged in the early 20th century as a result of the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy, which is also a purely Protestant phenomenon), these stories have nothing to do with “scientific creationism.” They have everything to do about us – these are stories of anthropology and philosophy trying to teach us something about ourselves and our place within the expensiveness of creation. There’s a strong undercurrent of epistemology throughout all of these chapters but we’re primarily interested in looking at Augustine’s anthropology in these readings.
Chapters 20 and 21 detail how life comes from the seas and lands after their own kind. This is rather more self-explanatory than other books within Augustine’s corpus. “All things are beautiful because you are their maker; but you who made them are more beautiful than they.” Beauty permeates the world and brings light to the world. Augustine’s statement that “all things are beautiful” is not one of egalitarian beauty. There is never something not beautiful is a better way of understanding this – when you truly understand, there is beauty in everything. But there remains a gradation of beauties, as Augustine himself lets you know in the same sentence, “but you who made them are more beautiful than they.”
I do want to turn our attention to Chapter 22 though, where Augustine argues that mortality was part of natural creation but this doesn’t take away from the beauty and harmony of it all. He claims that the creatures of land, including humans, eat the fishes of the sea because knowledge has grown as to the understanding of the natural world and its internal order and interaction with itself. This is universal in Catholic philosophy, that – contra the pagans and certain Protestants – this good world was established with mortality prior to The Fall. We were not immortal, as it were, until we sinned. Sts. Athanasius, Augustine, and Aquinas all reject that idea.
Augustine also claims that once we come to know, we will see that all things in the world: the animals, serpents, and the natural world on the whole, is something marvelous and beautiful which “enable us to catch a glimpse of eternity as it is known through your creatures. For these creatures are the servants of reason when they are allowed to live and be good and kept from the path that leads to destruction.” Reason allows us to know, it allows us to understand beauty, it allows us to participate in Wisdom and Beauty, and it allows us catch a glimpse of the Transcendent if only we have the eyes to see and minds renewed in the pursuit of truth. As Augustine stated very clearly at the end of Chapter 18, the wisdom and beauty of the order of creation and the natural growth therein is established “so that in the wonder of contemplation we may see all things clearly.”
For Augustine, light (truth) and beauty abound at all times, an eternal reminder from wisdom itself which calls us you to it. There is nothing more beautiful than wisdom, for the happiness we seek comes with this knowledge, and the acceptance of one’s nature within the schema that Wisdom brought forth and calls you to be part of. Thus, Chapters 11-21 are still dealing with the participation of Beauty and Wisdom as Chapters 5-10 were detailing, though Augustine gets more in-depth in these chapters and we can break down certain chapters as belonging to particular themes concerning our coming into union with Beauty, Wisdom, Light, and Truth. The world is beautiful and good, being made in the goodness of Wisdom, and calls us into union with its Author.
Once again, like Chapters 1-10, Chapters 11-21 are a lengthy commentary over anthropology and epistemology and are not meant to be taken “literally.”
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Hesiod, Paul Krause in real life, is the editor-in-chief of VoegelinView. He is writer, classicist, and historian. He has written on the arts, culture, classics, literature, philosophy, religion, and history for numerous journals, magazines, and newspapers. He is the author of Finding Arcadia, The Odyssey of Love and the Politics of Plato, and a contributor to the College Lecture Today and Making Sense of Diseases and Disasters. He holds master’s degrees in philosophy and religious studies (biblical studies & theology) from the University of Buckingham and Yale, and a bachelor’s degree in economics, history, and philosophy from Baldwin Wallace University.
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