Summer Gone

I haven’t posted much recently on this blog, but I do intend to use it more frequently once I start teaching for the academic year.  My summer school obligations were very stressful, and I was crushed in more than one way.  But I am ready to go back to the basics of my faith, pray, do some planning, and launch myself into my new career.

My reading plans for the summer didn’t turn out so well.  I was going to read Fear and Trembling quickly, and then move on to Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations.  Turns out I haven’t finished the former.  Oh well.  I will finish it this week, and likely put the latter on hold indefinitely—unless I can do an insane amount of planning before Day 1 at my high school.

In other news, I started translating Leibniz’s Monadology for fun.  Leibniz is the best of all possible rationalists. I’m not keen on rationalism, to put it gently, but he seems to be a bit more familiar with the Bible than many of the others who worked on the Enlightenment project of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  He may even have had a genuine faith in Christ, though it’s not immediately clear in the works of his with which I’m familiar. All the same, the translation has been fun, and challenging.  I’ll post it once I’m done with the first draft.

Preview and Update

For my own pleasure I have begun writing a short paper that reads Genesis 3 through the roughly cut lens of Nietzsche’s three moral epochs, as if the first man and woman were “pre-moral” before the opening of their eyes, and obviously “moral” afterward, as described in the thirty-second aphorism of Beyond Good and Evil.  The third epoch, the “extra-moral,” will be the point of departure from the textual explication of Genesis into speculation—probably about how Nietzsche’s “will to power” relates to the curses, Cain and Abel, and the gospel message.  I think it will turn out to be a bigger project than I had anticipated on beginning it, but it should be insightful.  What?  Do I expect Nietzsche will teach me something about Genesis?  It is possible, but it is more likely that Genesis will teach me something about Nietzsche.

In other news, I am doing well.  I have had an unusual week dealing with the large snowfall (“snowmageddon” or “the snowpocalypse,” if you will) in Annapolis, Maryland.  This week will likely  bring what is expected in February here, namely, brisk wind and wintry mix. Hurray?  Apart from being amazed at the weather, I’ve been studying my buns off.  I’ve begun to read Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, Darwin’s Origin of Species, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and a wee bit of Einstein.  I am in the thick of things.  My audio-Bible will give me a little rest from this turbulent swell of philosophy, poetry, and physics.

Finished My Paper

I have finished my project on Augustine’s Confessions. It looks almost nothing like what the discrete chunks posted beforehand might suggest.  In some way, I had to cut myself short of where I wanted to go.  I didn’t have time to flesh everything out, so I had to leave off my inquiry at a good stopping point and allow for the rest to be summarized in speculations.  The final title is “Developing the Hermeneutic for the Whole.”  Even though some details are best understood in light of the whole inquiry, I’ve decided to post the final section on the blog:

We return, then, to the project of finding the wholeness of the Confessions.  Clearly, those last two Books, in which Augustine displays his relationship to the Bible as a text, cannot be dismissed or read as an addendum.  And clearly his autobiography can be structured around his learning how and why to approach the Bible in this way.  Even the middle books on memory and time, though not at first glance, have to do with Augustine’s “spiritual interpretation”: as much as the Bible is the expression of the unchanging and eternal Word in time, he must come to terms with the rule of the whole that extends over all he parts, including all the parts of his particular life.

Given another long inquiry into the Book on time and more details from the last two Books on Genesis 1, this might ultimately suggest that hermeneutics is not limited to texts.  Maybe it is the case that Augustine is not only trying to show us his relationship to the Bible, but also that he holds the same relationship to the Bible as to his past, to his present, to the whole world.  So the wholeness of the Confessions that we found when examining the texts may only itself be a part of a greater wholeness. He has spent his life learning how to achieve this iconic relationship to Genesis 1, and in the process has learned also how to read these other things.  Maybe there is a hermeneutic for the whole.

This is even more intriguing when we consider Augustine’s peculiar spiritual hermeneutic.  It seems that he is reading the texts, his memories, and all time with the mediation of Jesus Christ.  The healing of our distension may depend upon our effort to apply the spiritual hermeneutic to all of the compartments and distinctions and divisions that we make.  Just as we would approach the Bible as an icon, in this way also would we approach everything else.  To have the spiritual hermeneutic is to read the entire world as an icon, and to destroy all the idols of our distension.

A Maxim: criticism

Criticisms often come without council; a person breathes out accusations to knock down another’s “house of cards,” but almost never teaches his tongue to edify.

On a related note, Ephesians 4.25-32, English Standard Version, italics added:

Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

Update on My Paper

I will no longer post chunks of my paper on Augustine’s Confessions as I have been.  I have a better outline now and need to pour my efforts into a more cohesive draft.  From now on, until the paper is finished, this blog will only be used for my personal thoughts, some of which may incidentally be related to my paper.

I will, however, share the introduction to this upcoming draft.  It’s a little didactic still, but it articulates the problem and reveals the first next part of the paper:

According to popular labeling, Augustine’s Confessions winds in and out of autobiography, biography, prayer, apology, psychology, biblical exegesis, metaphysical speculation, commentary, worship, etc.  With such labels in mind the reader may be at a loss to take it in as a whole, and may even miss out on the greatest benefits to be gained from reading it.  To read any text as composed of discrete fragments is to read it carelessly and to risk misreading each of its parts.  Without wholeness in mind, the reader can only treat the parts superficially.  Even after a thorough analysis, the reader may try to find relations between those parts, but will only ever come up with “glues” to repair the shattering he has just done—glues such as literary motifs, the writer’s psychological motivations, or historical circumstances.  These, if well formulated, can bind the pieces together persuasively, and maybe even accurately, but will always beg the question about whether the writer himself bound his text together in that way, or if he ever analyzed it into the same parts chosen by the reader.

So it is a worthwhile project to inquire into the wholeness of the Confessions, at least with the expectation that it will afford a better treatment and understanding of its parts.  But this is admittedly difficult.  Those labels and divisions did not come about by accident.  If it is a whole, at first glance it does seem a very intricate one.

Of all the things to be said about it, I thought that one of the most general theses would be the best place to begin:—that the Confessions is a text.  This articulation ties up the supposition of the text’s wholeness with its being a written work.  Now my inquiry continues with the prospect that exploring what the Confessions asserts about writing in general does reveal something about the wholeness of this particular written work.

A good way to find what Augustine thinks about writing is to look at some of the other texts that he mentions in the Confessions.  Of interest here are those of his liberal arts education, those of the Neoplatonists and Academics, Cicero’s Hortensius, and the Bible.

…

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.

Part of a Dialogue about Psychology

Two university students, Frank and John, in a coffee shop.

F. There are no norms. What he describes only seems dysfunctional because we are so used to talking about the functional, the ideal. We always talk in terms of norms, and things like that. But a really accurate description doesn’t need norms.
J. What you’re saying makes sense, as far as he is concerned. But is it not possible to find the best, even if it isn’t a norm?
F. That’s what Christians do with Jesus.
J. Yeah. That’s a good example. If we are describing without reference to norms, couldn’t we still look for the highest, the best, the good, no matter how abnormal it all is?
F. I suppose. But in the realm of psychology Jesus just won’t do?
J. Why not?
F. Because there’s not enough of him. Where’s his childhood? Where’s his education? Where’s his own writing? In the same way that Aristotelians ruin Aristotle, Platonists abuse Plato, Buddhists walk all over Siddhartha,—of course Jesus’s disciples were no different.
J. Well fine. But what about literary Jesus?
F. What do you mean?
J. I mean Jesus as he is written down by those disciples you distrust. There’s still not enough revealed there?
F. No. Like I said, his childhood and education, and most of his social interactions, are not recorded.
J. But those would be necessary to find the best, in psychology?
F. …
J. You seem to be making a lot of assumptions here.
F. Well, I am assuming that knowledge about his education, et cetera, would tell us more than what the disciples’ narratives did.
J. What if they didn’t?
F. Then psychology has a long way to go.

On Augustine’s Confessions: the first steps toward accepting biblical authority

Augustine before his conversion had a strange relationship to the Bible. His thirst for “the immortality of wisdom” that he got from Cicero’s Hortensius, as in Book III Chapter iv, encouraged him to take up the Bible after years of disdaining it, but he could not bring himself to appreciate it at the time, for he came to the text already distrusting the content.  Diverse Manichæan teachings had undermined Christian claims about biblical authority, and he also found the style “far unworthy to be compared to the stateliness of the Ciceronian eloquence” that had led him to approach the text again. As long as anyone despises both the content and the style of a text, it has nothing to offer him. So Augustine was repelled from it.

How would it be possible for him to approach the Bible and read it successfully? He could admire its style if he would radically alter his taste, or else forsake, or forget, his highly technical knowledge about literature and style. But even if he achieved admiration of its style, this would make the text enjoyed in the same way that a painting is enjoyed, as Socrates describes in the Phædrus; it would offer nothing to him but light pleasure, being unable to answer its questioners or teach any new knowledge. Words read as merely pleasing sounds are themselves mute. By this Augustine might have come to admire the Bible, even its writers, and even the personages of its stories, but admiration falls short of the required adoration. The Gospel Accounts repeatedly tell of how Jesus Christ tries to draw a distinction between mere fans and his faithful disciples: to love Jesus Christ for his eloquence would be an ironic failure to hear what he says.

Again, how to approach the Bible and abide? He would need to find a way to apprehend its content without Manichæan contentions before he could ever honestly examine it, let alone be content with it. This is precisely what the books of some astronomers and philosophers did for him. He found in them claims to the wisdom that he craved from Cicero’s exhortation, and also highly plausible accounts that ran against the mystical teachings and fables of the Manichæan books. Against the astronomers, Faustus, the great Manichæan preacher, fell short and was forced to acknowledge so much. And then the skeptics gave young Augustine a place to stand suspended; now the Manichæan fables were as dubious to him as the Bible. The end of Book V, Chapter xiv, describes how he loses his love for the one, but does not thereby gain an appreciation for the other:

[I judged] in that very time of my doubt, that I could not safely continue in that sect, before which I now preferred divers of the Philosophers: to which Philosophers notwithstanding, for that they were without the saving Name of Christ, I utterly refused to commit the curing of my languishing soul. This therefore I determined, so long to be a catechumen in the Catholic Church, (which had been so much commended unto me by my parents) till such time as some certain mark should appear, whereto I might steer my course.

His participation in the church as a catechumen is the intriguing detail here that will be explored in another article with the help of Blaise Pascal.

Update on the Paper

I am currently reformulating the original “Phædrus dichotomy.”  I was flat-out wrong about something, and I feel a little bit silly about it, but the discovery is very helpful.  Now the way some of the books discussed in the Confessions has changed a bit.  More on that to come.

Also, today I found a working title: “Books, the Book, and Augustine’s Book.”  It sounds a bit corny, but it gets at the summary of my work with the Confessions.  I will explore what Augustine thinks his own book is, by examining the books he mentions within it.  In seeing his differing evaluations of the liberal arts, philosophical literature, and the Bible, the role of reading and writing for Christians will be brought to the forefront, maybe suggesting an ahistorical reason for Augustine to make his confessions both public and written.  Within the scope of the paper is an explication of Augustine’s account of the Holy Spirit’s work, especially as it relates to reading and writing, and also a brief look at Plato’s Phædrus, which will furnish my examinations of particular books with some structure and important distinctions.