Philinte the Misanthrope

Philinte of Molière’s Misanthrope.  He is the true misanthrope, who forgives humankind in the comparison with beasts.  O Christian, avoid utter misanthropy.  Forgive with the authority of God.  Forgive in the comparison with yourself.  Love, for you have been loved.  Forgive much, because you have been forgiven much.  To treat them as God treated you: this is godliness, imitation of and participation in God’s work.

On Augustine’s Confessions: his early encounters with Ambrose

As Augustine moves closer to submission under biblical authority, which is accomplished in the Milanese garden at the end of Book VII, it has already been noted that a certain “wager” in the midst of his suspicions put him in a place to receive catholic teachings about and from the Bible before the garden scene. An important detail in Augustine’s wager was skipped over, and must be revisited.

Before the wager could have happened, Augustine had to be given the smallest glimmer of hope with regard to the Bible. Even though something may promise infinite gain for the gambler, if there is no likelihood of achieving it, then there is no wager: if the Bible were to have no possible refutation for the Manichæan attacks, then the Bible and the Church that teaches from it are not at all an option. But in Book V, Chapters xiii-xiv, just before Augustine becomes a catechumen, he takes the words of Ambrose to heart. Ambrose’s influence on Augustine’s thinking, especially with respect to the Old Testament, cannot be passed over.

In brief, Augustine listens to Ambrose only because the latter is a renowned rhetorician. He wishes to hear how well Ambrose speaks, and does not care of what. But in the listening, what is said eventually takes hold of Augustine and infiltrates some of the Manichæan strongholds, undermining their attack on the Old Testament’s validity.

This brings up the earlier consideration of style and content in the episode about Cicero’s Hortensius. Just as in the reading of that book, here with Ambrose he approaches him desiring to get some great rhetorical training; and just as with that book, the content of some of the words slips in. He weighs the words carefully, and finds Ambrose to be worthy of his fame. And despite trying to keep his mind off the content, he is able to note the effect of Ambrose’s message, at least in retrospect:

And verily with the sweetness of his discourse I was much delighted: which, however it were more learned, yet was it not so pleasing and inveigling as Faustus his was, the manner of the oratory I mean, though for the matter there was no comparison. For Faustus did but rove up and down amongst his Manichæan fallacies; but Ambrose taught salvation most soundly. But salvation is far enough from sinners, such as I was at that instant; and yet I drew little and little nearer toward it; but how, I knew not.

At least twice before—the reading of the Hortensius and the refutation of Faustus—has a great rhetorician changed Augustine’s mind, he being quite unable to explain how. The Hortensius gives him beautiful words and yet dissuades him from the career path of a lawyer, in which Augustine has been planning to put such words to money-winning use. Next Faustus gives him beautiful words and yet simultaneously shows the inadequacy of Manichæan thought behind the words. And here again Ambrose gives him beautiful words whose effect on him is unanticipated.

In a previous post the effect of these words was described as the deciding factor in the wager to become a catechumen. What is of interest here is the role Ambrose the human teacher has in relation to the Old Testament, which consists of supposedly “God-breathed” words, as at 2 Timothy 3.16, whose authority is the question of most of the Confessions. Of Ambrose there is no question that Augustine thinks of him as an angel of God: “To him was I led by thee, unknowing, that by him I might be brought to thee, knowing it.” According to God’s own plan, it seems, Ambrose is a necessary part of Augustine’s journey. He is responsible for changing Augustine’s views of the Old Testament, at least just enough to expose him to the remainder of biblical doctrines and allow for a non-literal hermeneutic. The Bible, though, apart from Ambrose, would have forever been subject to the abuses of the Manichæan interpretations and dismissals. It, being in need of interpretation at all, was unable to defend itself in the world. So we return to the point brought out in Plato’s Phædrus about writing.

With this instance, it seems that the Bible is need of defending. It seems that even it, as a text, is not exempt from the dangers associated with writing. Does Augustine also think of it as merely an excellent specimen among the infinitude of books?

On Augustine’s Confessions: his wager among the books

Along Augustine’s long road toward submission to biblical authority, he comes to a place where he takes up the Academic philosophers’ recommendation to suspend belief about some matters until certainty arises. The astronomers are adequate to expose the dubious character of the Manichæan fables, but this does not give him enough reason to take up the Bible again. He also does not hold on to the Academics, for the same reason that he says he did not overly admire Cicero’s Hortensius, given in Book III, Chapter iv:

Perchance it was that book I was stirred up, and enkindled, and inflamed by: this thing only in such a heat of zeal took me off, that the Name of Christ was not in it. For this Name, according to thy mercy, O Lord, this Name of my Savior thy Son, had my tender heart even together with my mother’s milk devoutly drunken in, and charily treasured up: so that what book soever was without that Name, though never so learned, politely and truly penned, did not altogether take my approbation.

So now two elements have come into focus:—unwillingness both to rejoin the Manichæans and to submit wholeheartedly to the Academic philosophers. But the lack of will toward these two sects does not adequately account for his decision to join the Church in Milan as a catechumen. This seems to come out of nowhere. Augustine, at this point, has not submitted himself to catholic doctrine, nor accepted the claims of the Bible’s legitimacy or authority. To this point he writes the following in Book V, Chapter xiv:

For first of all the things began to appear unto me as possible to be defended: and the Catholic faith, in defense of which I thought nothing could be answered to the Manichæans’ arguments, I now concluded with myself, might well be maintained without absurdity: especially after I had heard one or two hard places of the Old Testament resolved now and then; which when I understood literally, I was slain. Many places therefore of those books having been spiritually expounded, I blamed mine own desperate conceit, whereby I had believed, that the Law and the Prophets could no way be upheld against those that hated and scorned them.

Ambrose’s preaching had at least exposed Augustine to alternate possibilities for biblical interpretation, though not supplied him with adequate counter-argument or refutation of the Manichæans. Augustine has only the possibility of a refutation. He doubts that the Manichæans accurately describe the natural world, that biblical doctrines necessarily lead to absurdity, and that the philosophers can offer him the wisdom that he craves. There are many possibilities, but no feelings of certainty, no signs of necessity.

Yet did I not resolve for all this, that the Catholic way might be held safely; seeing it might be able both copiously and not absurdly, to answer some objections made against it: nor yet did I conceive that my former way ought to be condemned, because that both sides of the defence were equal. For although the Catholic party seemed to me not to be overthrown, yet it appeared not to be altogether victorious.

Philosophically, Augustine has the negative. This might mean that he is an Academic philosopher par excellence.  But when considered psychologically, he might say of himself merely that he is unwilling. He has been unwilling toward the Manichæans and the Academic philosophers, and now it is clear that he is equally unwilling toward the Church.  Rather than a philosophical virtue, Augustine seems to think his unwillingness is a sign of intellectual failure.

And so there remains a little confusion about his decision to join the Church as a catechumen. Why would he make this move? Why would he submit himself to biblical doctrine without the positive, without the will, and without faith?

At first glance, there is no sense in it. A reader might be suspicious that Augustine is knowingly omitting from the narrative some reason for making this move. This suspicion should be rejected for two reasons:—first, because part of Augustine’s project is to show how God mercifully moved him throughout his life toward the catholic faith, and so to leave out a known reason for becoming a catechumen would only take away from that project, since all reasons so far have been redeemed and subsumed under God’s gracious plan;—second, because the move is not as unreasonable as the first glance might suggest. To the second point, Descartes in Part III of the Discours says that he will continue to go along with the laws and customs of his country and keep himself in the religion in which he was instructed from his youth, even while claiming to enter into a skeptical project. Maybe Augustine’s thinking matched this. But in case anyone calls the honesty of Descartes’ words into question,* another plausible answer might be found in Pascal’s wager argument. In Pensée 233† he writes,

You wish to go to the faith, and you do not know the way; you wish to be healed from unfaithfulness, and you ask about the cure for it: learn from those who have been bound like you, and who now wager all their goods; these are people who know the way that you wish to follow, and who are cured of an evil of which you wish to be cured. Follow the form through which they began: that is, doing everything as if they believed, taking the holy water, having masses spoken to them, etc.; that will make you believe, even naturally, and you will be rendered compliant.‡ – But this is what I fear. – And why? What do you have to lose?

What Pascal describes may in fact be based on his interpretation of instances like Augustine’s own story, but the anachronism does not take away from the thought behind what is written: What has Augustine got to lose by joining the Church while he waits for a sign giving further direction? Having determined that Manichæanism is a risk, and that the Academic philosophers do not promise what he craves, and knowing that the Church does at least promise such, while being unsure of the substance behind that promise, he is making the gamblers move to stay in the game and wait to see what cards turn up.

Before this point, he had been prevented from such a wager because of the high risks that he had associated with the Bible and biblical doctrine. Ambrose’s preaching, however, changed the stakes. Mirroring Pascal’s account of the relationship between miracles and demonstration in Pensée 842,° this is the pivotal point where Augustine obtains the first half of what is sufficient for his conversion, namely, the lack of conflict between the Bible and his own criteria for reasonableness. Ambrose’s words make it less repugnant to him, and he no longer dismisses it on the basis of the absurdity of its content, as he had done previously because of his Manichæan prejudices. So the thinking that goes into Pascal’s wager now applies, once there is any probability, however slight, given to the claim of the authority of the Bible, since it presents infinite gain to Augustine if true and no loss if false.

More needs to be said for the sermons of Ambrose that effect this wager, and also the large change in Augustine’s hermeneutics that comes from reflection on 2 Corinthians 3.6.

*And rightly, I think, should we suspect Descartes of being less than honest.

†My translation.

‡The verb in French is abêtir, which means to be rendered bête or beastlike. It has connotations to docility, tameness, acquiescence, submission, dullness, silliness, stupidity, and simplicity. Pascal’s use of it here has some shock-value, but I think that he also means what he writes.

°The following is my translation of one of the paragraphs in the middle:

The proofs that Jesus Christ and the apostles draw from the Scriptures are not demonstrative; for they say only that Moses said that a prophet would come; but they do not thereby prove that this is the one, and that was the entire question. These passages, therefore, are used to show that someone is not against the Scriptures, and that there appears to be no conflict, but not that there is agreement. Now, this is sufficient, exclusion of conflict, along with miracles.

The word translated conflict is répugnance in French, here taken in the logical sense of inconsistency, incoherency, incompatibility, impossibility, etc. In Augustine’s case, the last two sentences could be modified: Ambrose’s interpretations are used to show that the Bible is not in conflict with the criteria for reasonableness, and that there appears to be no conflict, but not that there is agreement. Now, this is sufficient, exclusion of conflict, along with submission of the will. So Augustine has the first part, and does not find the second until the garden scene in Milan.

On Augustine’s Confessions: the relationship of many interpretations to one written word

In a previous post, I already noted that Augustine says love stands over all the diverse interpretations of Genesis. His central argument is, in short, that if the interpreter believes that all the Law and Prophets is summarized by the commandments to love his God and his neighbor, then he discredits his own interpretation by violating love whenever he quarrels about the supposedly true meaning of the words. And in Book XII chapter xviii of the Confessions, Augustine writes:

All which things being heard and well considered of, I will not strive about words: for that is profitable to nothing, but the subversion of the hearers; but the law is good to edify, if a man use it lawfully, for that the end of it is charity, of a pure heart and good conscience, and faith unfeigned.

This sentence—which contains citations from 2 Timothy 2.14 and 1 Timothy 1.5,8—may seem straightforward on its surface, but it has roots tapping into some of the main themes running like an underground river through the entire work. First, on the surface, quarrels about words can cause divisions among people who are explicitly commanded to strive to agree on all things. Whereas the disputes may have begun from a desire to come to a better understanding of a biblical passage, which all had agreed beforehand was true, all hope of reaching this better understanding is thwarted by the disappearance of love in the midst of such a dispute. And how exactly is the hearer “subverted”?  Maybe his heart cannot be pure because he is told to hold another’s words in suspicion, even if that one reads from the same passage and presents a tenable interpretation. Maybe his conscience cannot remain good because he will have at the same instant assented to two interpretations while also assenting to the tenet of one possible interpretation, making him divided against himself and unable to plainly confess the truth of the passage. Maybe his faith will become feigned because he will have changed the basis for that faith, now subject to pondering one interpreter against another instead of resting in the unchanging character of the plainly written words; it is no longer a faith in God’s words, but now a faith that must waver in between little gods who have hijacked the words in their disputes. The moment of subverting the hearer is when one claims as his own what had been common to all. In other words, the interpreter’s unduly bold claim forces the hearer or reader to choose one among many instead of the one at the source of the many.

Now this is getting below the surface into one of the main themes of the Confessions:—the relationship of the many and the diverse to the one. The problem arising here in the inquiry about interpretation echoes lofty discussions on both the trinity of God and the catholicity of the church. Of course, for Augustine, three persons are in one God, and many members are in one body, the church, and so an indefinite number of true meanings are found in one written word. In all of these cases, the one is supposed where the many are apparent.  And this supposition has an interesting effect.

At the end of the same chapter cited above, xviii, Augustine poses the possibility that a reader might find a true or truth-yielding interpretation that even the writer did not intend or would not understand. This means that the written word might have the capability of expanding into new territory, of advancing its message according to the sophistication or intelligence of the reader. But this is not in exact accord with the supposition of oneness just mentioned. This is oneness inasmuch as it is a source whence the many pour out. But this sense suggests that the one loses control of the many, that the many have a longstanding independence from the one after they are drawn out. More concretely, this means that the new interpretation suggested by one man stands independent of the passage it was founded in, and also independent of the diverse other interpretations all standing independent from that passage. If two interpreters severally pull out of Genesis what Moses did not put in to it when he wrote it, then these two interpretations can be held against each other on the level of new revelation, competing holy books, whose legitimacy depends not on Genesis or Moses, or any of the Bible, but on the authority of the interpreter. This, clearly, is not what Augustine thinks or advocates.

The supposition of the one mentioned above leads him away from that possibility to a much stronger statement in chapter xxx:

. . . Let us in such manner honour that servant of thine, the dispenser of this Scripture, so full of thy Spirit, that we may believe him, when by thy revelation he wrote these things, to have bent his intentions unto that sense in them, which principally excels the rest, both for light of truth, and fruitfulness of profit.

And then even stronger in xxxi:

And if there be a third truth, or a fourth, yea, if any other man may discover any other truth in those words, why may [Moses] not be believed to have seen all these; he, by whose ministry, God that is but One, hath tempered these holy Scriptures to the meanings of a many, that were to see things true, and yet diverse? For mine own part verily, (and fearlessly I speak it from my heart) that were I to endite anything that should attain the highest top of authority, I would choose to write in such a strain, as that my words might carry the sound of any truth with them, which any man could apprehend of concerning these matters; rather than so clearly to set down one true sense concerning some one particular, as that I should thereby exclude all such other senses, which being not false, could no ways offend me. I will not therefore, O my God, be so heady as not to believe that this man obtained thus much at thy hands. He without doubt both perceived, and was advised of, in those words whenas he wrote them, what truth so ever we have been able to find in them: yea, and whatsoever we have not heretofore been able, no nor yet are, which nevertheless can be found in them.

So the written words also contain the many truths coming from it. The passage is not a source of new revelations, but a single revelation from which interpreters of various abilities and conditions may see different truths, like different faces of the same solid, while also having the other truths available to their consideration if they should change their hermeneutic. And every single interpretation is linked back to the source, back to Moses and the intention under which it was written. The one is not merely the source of the many, it also comprehends the them and lays claim to them. Two interpreters now point back to the original written word in their conversation with each other. Any given passage is now under the scrutiny of the whole of Moses’s writings, or the whole of the Bible. No single interpretation can stand if it does not stand alongside all the other interpretations that hold the written words to be true. This brings to mind something Plato mentions in the Phaedrus, something I will save for another article.