How Classical Theism Has Shaped My Life

“Do you have a head-knowledge of God or a heart-knowledge of God?” I can still remember a youth leader and mentor in high school asking me a question, if not verbatim, then very similar to this. This somewhat common distinction in evangelical circles, drove at a central concern with how I approached my life of faith, or lack thereof. I loved having debates about theology or the bible because I had a pretty good head-knowledge for a teenager. Perhaps more than that, there was nothing I liked more than philosophical debate about ideas, particularly about God which I could disguise as being spiritual. Of course, it was never simply head-knowledge at the expense of heart-knowledge. Often, I would spend time in prayer and love bible study and really did strive to know God with my whole being. The question posed above was a challenging reminder that the purpose of the study of scripture was not to prove to others that I had answers to hard questions. If I did not learn to read and think spiritually and prayerfully, not only would I fail to have the knowledge I desired, but what little I acquired would make me insufferable to be around. Sadly, I think I was often this second kind of person for many years.

Head Knowledge and Heart Knowledge

What does this have to do with being a classical theologian? For most of my life, I have been studying and reading one well known theologian we could call classical, St. Augustine of Hippo, the Doctor of Grace. Around the same time that my mentor was challenging me to not lose sight of the heart-knowledge of God, I had my first chance encounter with the great African saint, who thought deeply about this problem, among many others.

The trouble is, as Augustine knew, the person we are least likely to understand, turns out to be ourselves. Click To TweetIt seems the experience of exercising head-knowledge at the expense of heart-knowledge with the result of a prideful spirit did not arise in St. Louis, MO in the 1990’s. This problem has been a perennial one and the wisdom about how to resolve such conflicts has been passed down in the Great Tradition of the Church for those who are willing to seek it. One well-known Christian philosopher, Etienne Gilson, encapsulated Augustine’s approach to the life of faith, saying, “Augustine’s doctrine of the relations between faith and reason … refuses to separate illumination of the mind from purification of the heart. In its essence, Augustinian faith is both an adherence of the mind to supernatural truth and a humble surrender of the whole man to the grace of Christ.”[1] The language of “head-knowledge” and “heart-knowledge” is newer, but the concept fits neatly in the distinction between faith and reason, as Gilson notes. I would like to say that I learned this lesson about the need for the purification of the heart for growth in the knowledge of the truth right away when I first read the Confessions. Sadly, and unsurprisingly, I am still learning these lessons.

The trouble is, as Augustine knew, the person we are least likely to understand, turns out to be ourselves. Did I believe that I was arrogant and needed a greater heart-knowledge of God? Not at the time. Augustine wrote, “It is we ourselves who are unable to comprehend ourselves. We ourselves are too high and too mighty and surpass the small measure of our knowledge.”[2] Purifying the heart in order to understand oneself begins by properly situating ourselves within the world. This kind of self-understanding requires the humility to recognize that we do not have a God’s eye view of ourselves, and we lack the knowledge we need to truly and completely understand why things are the way they are. Any insight into the reality of our situation requires a surrender which pride inhibits. At least that’s been the case with me, and Augustine.

Like Augustine, as a young man, a close friend of mine died while I was in high school. Just as I was beginning to grow in my faith and try to apply myself towards a greater heart understanding of God, I found myself in despair over my grief. By God’s grace, someone suggested I read Augustine’s Confessions, one of the monumental works of Western literature. Great literature reaches out to us in vivid depictions of the perennial longings and struggles of the human experience, and Augustine is no exception. He wrote of grief, “All things scowled at me, even daylight itself, and everything with a being apart from him was obnoxious and offensive—except of groaning and tears: in these alone was scintilla of rest.”[3] I was not willing to surrender myself to the good God out of fear and thus wanting to control my struggles in my own way. But, before I could move myself forward to a greater understanding of, and indeed participation in God, I would come to know much more of not only grief, but stubbornness. My companion on the journey, Augustine, knew this kind of pain and stubbornness as well, I was just not ready to heed his advice.

Knowledge Begins with Surrender

In this essay, as I have been reflecting on my own journey and its parallels in the life of Augustine, one could not be faulted for wondering, “what does this have to do with classical theism or being a classical theologian?” For one thing, a key insight of Augustinian spirituality and theology is that one’s intellectual knowledge can be hampered by one’s lack of spiritual preparedness. What may seem a surprise to some is that the early Christian theologians argued, like Augustine, that knowledge of the God who is true being does not come merely through one’s intellectual or academic capabilities. It is here that Augustine critiques the Platonic philosophers like Plotinus and Porphyry who knew much about metaphysics and epistemology but could not set aside their pride to grasp that God would unite humanity to himself in the humble incarnation of the beloved Son. The great philosophers recognized certain attributes of divinity, which Augustine summarizes in his work On the Trinity, who describe divinity this way: “Eternal, immortal, incorruptible, unchangeable, living, wise, powerful, beautiful, just, good, happy, spirit.”[4] These philosophers knew some of the classical truths about the nature of God, which Augustine also acknowledged. But, knowledge for Augustine begins with surrender. No Platonist could say that.

For it is indeed by knowing and participating in God who is being and goodness itself that Augustine can legitimately call out the evil which leads to death. Click To TweetIn one of the great serendipities of imprecise translation, Augustine chanced upon a summary of theology in a verse from Isaiah which states, Nisi crediteris, non intelligitis (Isaiah 7:9, Vetus Latina). “Unless you trust, you will not understand.”[5] And this deep truth opened the door for Augustine to seek wisdom more than academic knowledge in places where the intellectual Platonists would not condescend to look. For wisdom can come from those who know how to trust in something greater than themselves, even if they do not have the academic knowledge so prized by ancient philosophers. Indeed, what else is the incarnation, but the way of humility, Christ humbling himself to become human, so that we might become like God (in a summary of Athanasius, which Augustine also echoed). This example of humility guided Augustine in his life of faith.

After Augustine follows Christ’s way of humility, he has greater clarity about the nature of reality. For it is indeed by knowing and participating in God who is being and goodness itself that he can legitimately call out the evil which leads to death. What was he to make of the misery of his friend’s death and the aimless wandering of his soul? How would he know that misery should be properly so called unless he knew the mercy of God? Was he reasonably said to be wandering if there was nothing stable and permanent to measure his proper direction? If there is no end or finishing line, then there is no wandering. As Augustine writes later in the Confessions, “[Christ] is ‘the Beginning’ for us in the sense that if he were not abidingly the same, we should have nowhere to return to after going astray.”[6] It is this knowledge of who Christ is, and a knowledge of God in Christ, which gives us a fixed point to understand ourselves as having moved away from the path. This knowledge is not something we contain within ourselves. We must fix our eyes on our telos, our end point, who is the true God.

In the language of classical theism, for God to be truly God, He must be simple, unchanging, and eternal. The deeper truth that Christianity teaches is that God is also love, caritas. Augustine had to learn this through the 30 years of his conversion described in the first nine books of the Confessions. Once he had a clear vision of God, the Word made flesh, not only could Augustine now properly judge his wanderings and misery for what they were, but now even the deep and profound love he had for his friend made sense. As Augustine said in On the Trinity, “For God’s essence, by which he is, has absolutely nothing changeable about its eternity or its truth or its will; there truth is eternal and love is eternal; there love is true and eternity true; there eternity is lovely and truth is lovely too.”[7] This stability amidst the flux of the world and restlessness of his heart provided clarity about the situation of the world as he actually found it. Love is more profoundly real and permanent than he ever realized. He had not been crazy to think that something was awry in the world as he found it, and even as he eventually found out about himself.

In ways I never could have imagined, the classical doctrine of God as articulated by Augustine and many other classical theologians offers a tremendous solace to the evil and suffering we see in the world. It’s hard not to just quote whole passages of the Confessions or On the Trinity. To choose one longer quote, Augustine the 40 year old bishop looks back on the time in his life when had lost that close friend, and calls out to his younger self–and any who may ever read his great work–,

“Where are you going on that steep, rough road? The good that you love is from him [God], but only inasmuch as it’s directed back toward him is it good and sweet. Otherwise, it will turn bitter, and rightly so, because it’s not right to love whatever is in him while abandoning him. With what destination in mind are you walking, endlessly, endlessly, on those hard paths of suffering? There’s no rest where you’re looking for it… You’re seeking a happy life in a land of death. It’s not there. How can there be a happy life where there isn’t even life?”[8]

Both the deep love he has and the profound suffering he is enduring can only be explained in light of the one who is love! He is the one who can bring suffering back to sweetness. Mind you, this is not an admonition to ignore the grief or pretend it does not hurt. The nine books telling the story of 30 years of wandering and struggling of Augustine’s should be sufficient to show that Augustine is not advocating ignoring pain and suffering. What he is saying is that by the grace of God, we know suffering for what it is and can rightly name it what it is because we know goodness. The suffering and evil, in Augustine’s language, are less real than God who is good and it is encompassed by him who is love and much greater.

It seems only fitting to let Augustine have the final say in this essay. But, in light of the purpose of this essay, I will say that it has been my great privilege and blessing to be able to teach, research, and write about theology within the Great Tradition of the Church, that is, in the classical tradition, for most of my life, professional as well as personal. Despite my best attempts to find wisdom and truth outside of the tremendous gravity of this tradition, I find myself always pulled closer and deeper in. As the Holy Spirit is the center, I find myself most at rest when I let his love pull me closer to the heart of God. For, as Augustine reminds all of us,

“Our life, in person, came down here, and took on our death and killed it with his own overflowing life, and he spoke like a thunderclap, shouting for us to return to him from here, so that the dying body wouldn’t always have to die. He departed from our sights so that we would return to the head and find him. Sons of men, how long will you be heavyhearted? Tell them this, so that they wail in the valley of wailing, and carry them off–along with yourself–to God, because you say these things to them out of his Spirit, if in speaking you burn with the fire of selfless love.”[9]

---

Notes:

[1] Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine (Cluny Media Edition, 2020) 43.

[2] Nature and Origin of the Soul 4.6.8. Translation from the Works of Saint Augustine v. I/23, Roland Teske (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1997) 538-539.

[3] Confessions 4.12, translation from Sarah Ruden, Confessions (New York: Modern Library, 2017) 86.

[4]  On the Trinity 15.5.8. Translation from Edmund Hill in Works of Saint Augustine v. I/5 (Hyde Park: New City Press, 2017) 401.

[5] This was from the Vetus Latina, an old Latin version before Jerom’s Vulgate, who corrected this mistranslation of the Hebrew with, “Si non credideritis, non permanebitis,” in the Vulgate. Translation is my own.

[6] Confessions 11.8.10. Translation from Maria Boulding in Confessions (San Francisco, St. Ignatius Press, 2012) 338.

[7] On the Trinity 4.1 (WSA I/5,154).

[8] Confessions 4.18 (Ruden translation, 92).

[9] Confessions 4.19 (Ruden, 93-94).