Augustine has been called one of the greatest, if not the greatest theologian of the church. Who better to speak to Augustine’s legacy today than Matthew Levering, author of The Theology of Augustine and the James N. Jr. and Mary D. Perry Chair of Theology at Mundelein Seminary, University of Saint Mary of the Lake, in Mundelein, Illinois. In this interview, Credo editor Spencer McCorkel asks Levering why Augustine has influenced his thought to such a great degree and what we can learn from Augustine today.
With the entire Great Tradition before you, why Augustine?
Augustine is the greatest theologian who has ever lived. There have been other amazing theologians across the centuries, and I am particularly an admirer of Thomas Aquinas. But Augustine’s work is often utterly groundbreaking and, even when one disagrees, it is brilliant and richly grounded in Scripture. No theologian has ever written a greater or more creative set of works than On the Trinity, Confessions, and City of God. These three works differ radically in genre and in the learning that it took to complete them. There simply is no parallel to this in the history of theology. Had Augustine only published his sermons and his commentary on the Psalms, he would be rightly recognized as one of the greatest theologians of all time. Theologically, I find almost everything he wrote to be profoundly compelling.
There is also a more personal reason. At the time that I wrote this book, I had recently moved from a spiritually and theologically vibrant Catholic university to one that was captive to religious liberalism, and the contrast was shocking. I found myself greatly in need of spiritual nourishment. I turned to Augustine’s works for that nourishment, and I was not disappointed.
When discussing the ordering of your book, you mention that love is approached differently in each of the four works that “lay the foundations” for exploring Confessions, City of God, and On the Trinity. You then conclude, “All wisdom, all history, and every aspect of our life find their fulfillment in God and his love.” How does Augustine’s emphasis on love differ from modern theological discourse and how might he offer a helpful critique?
The key argument of my book is that Augustine’s three greatest works form a triad: Confessions treats how the individual’s personal history participates in God’s wisdom and love; City of God treats how the entirely of human history participates in God’s wisdom and love; and On the Trinity treats how the human image of God is caught up into God’s Trinitarian wisdom and love. Christ is the center of each of these works. Augustine is radically theocentric and Christocentric.
Augustine is especially aware that the life of an individual man and of the human community may seem murky and meaningless. Likewise, he knows that, when contrasted with the eloquence of Cicero and Plato, many pagans considered the philosophers to be greater than Scripture. Scripture is filled with detailed stories about sinners and about the sorrows of human history. For some people of Augustine’s time and for some people today, it was (or is) a struggle to understand how Scripture could be the spiritual nourishment that we need. Look at the “spirituality” shelves in the local bookstore today. Then as now, educated people liked to read history (Roman or American) or natural science and medicine.
Modern theologians too often forget about God, and instead talk about almost everything else! Augustine highlights how the created human imago is made for God. Share on XAugustine recognized that the great works of ancient philosophy and history reflected upon the life of the wise philosopher, the wise city, and contemplative ascent to the True and Good. Augustine exposes how Christianity far outstrips all that went before it. It is the truest manifestation of the wise man–Christ. It reveals the true City—of God. It reveals the true goal of contemplation—configuration of the imago Dei to the Trinity. In Confessions and City of God, Augustine shows how an individual’s life and the human race’s life are perfected in Christ. Humility and love, not pride and self-assertion, are the real meaning of both a human life and the whole history of the human race in God’s plan. Christ leads us into the Trinitarian life so that we discover that our goal, begun here and now, is to share in the divine processions of Word (Wisdom) and Love. We are called to become “gods” in the sense of being configured to the holy Trinity. This is the meaning of existence, by contrast to Rome’s deified heroes of power, violence, and lust.
Let me emphasize that the key difference between Augustine and modern theological discourse on love is primarily how theocentric he is. Modern theologians too often forget about God, and instead talk about almost everything else! Augustine highlights how the created human imago is made for God. The “psychological analogy” of memory, knowledge, and love reveals that our imago is created to become itself in communion with the eternal processions of the Word and Love of the Father, through the incarnate Image Jesus Christ. This is the point of On the Trinity.
In sum, Augustine is a man who has fallen in love with God and who worships God with every fiber of his being. He rejoices in how great God is—how (paradoxically) perfectly transcendent and perfectly immanent, radically unlike any creature and more intimate to creatures than we are to ourselves. This is what infinite Love really is. Again, modern theological discourse too often reflects a fundamental disinterest in God. When modern theologians do think about God, they tend to make God more like a creature in order to make God relevant. Augustine follows the very opposite path, allowing the mystery of the Trinity—the simple, incomprehensible God, so glorious as to be able to become incarnate without changing—to entrance him.
Rightly ordered love is a major theme in Augustine. In On Christian Doctrine, Augustine argues that “Scripture…teaches us what to love and how to love.” In City of God, the creation of the earthly city is predicated upon the disordered love of creation over Creator. How is Augustine’s thinking about the role of Scripture and the Church in the ordering of love needed today?
Scripture is the very heart of theology, but there is a danger in reading Scripture: we can get focused on the signs and fail to reach the “res” (the deepest reality). We can learn the words, the details about the ancient Near East, all the intricacies about Second Temple Judaism, Qumran, and so on. But we can forget what Scripture is for: to guide us in Christ to the living God in love. We can lose contact with the “res.”
For Augustine, when reading Scripture becomes about everything else other than knowing and loving God (and neighbor in God), then something has gone awry. The “res” of Scripture will re-order our love, because the “res” of Scripture is God’s love. As Scripture testifies, our turning toward God is a work of grace. We need the forgiveness that Christ brings; we need his Cross, Resurrection, and Ascension; we need to be united by faith and the sacraments to his new Passover and new Exodus to the heavenly Jerusalem, where God will be all in all.
For Augustine, when reading Scripture becomes about everything else other than knowing and loving God (and neighbor in God), then something has gone awry. Share on XAugustine is wonderfully attuned to the biblical “res”: Christ coming to unite us in Him to the Father by the power of the Spirit. This union fulfills the people of Israel’s yearning to know God and the prophetic promise that the whole world would come to know God as He truly is. The Church is the place where God is known and loved. Reading Scripture rightly—valuing the “signa” because of the “res”—is to be weaned from our idolatries and learn to lift up our minds and hearts to God the Trinity, not merely as individuals but as the community of friends whom God has called in Christ.
Thus, Augustine’s powerful image of the “City of Man” describes the disorder that prevents us from embracing the “res.” The City of Man (which runs through each of our hearts) is filled with the lust for power, what Augustine calls the libido dominandi. It is fueled by pride and self-assertion. Everything revolves around love of self in the City of Man. Love of self triumphs over love of God. By contrast, the City of God (which is the work of grace) is guided by humility and mercy. We do not seek our own glory; we learn to seek God’s glory. In Christ, we learn to surrender ourselves, to die to self, to rely not on our own supposed wisdom or greatness but on God’s—and thereby truly to love our neighbor and to put our neighbor first.
How would you describe Augustine’s hermeneutic and how does it compare to most modern hermeneutical methods?
I have answered some of this above already. For Augustine, the purpose of biblical interpretation (hermeneutics) is to know the “res” of Scripture—the true, living reality—which is the infinite divine love. By comparison, modern biblical scholars and theologians tend almost inevitably, and to some extent understandably, to focus on the “signa”—signs or words. Signs are the path for knowing the “res,” and so they are deeply important. But the purpose of biblical study is to enter into union with the Triune God who is love, and to be transformed in Christ’s love so as to become lovers of God and neighbor.
Why did Augustine take the Donatist controversy so seriously?
For Augustine, Baptism is (as Paul says) a dying with Christ so as to rise with him; it is a sharing in the power of the Cross and Resurrection. Baptism is therefore a divine action, in which God enables us to share in the saving mysteries of Christ. The Donatists supposed, however, that Baptism’s power depended upon whether the minister was worthy. For Augustine, the true minister of Baptism is Christ by the power of his Spirit. So the minister is indeed worthy! If the sacrament of Baptism is a mere human work that depends on the worthiness of the human minister, then Baptism is nothing.
Augustine in this way is emphasizing that the Church itself is God’s work, accomplished by God’s power in Christ and the Spirit. The Church is not built upon the worthiness or lack thereof of mere humans. The Triune God Himself is the author of the Church, the Bride of Christ. For Donatists to divide the Church because the human ministers are unworthy is, for Augustine, an indication of radical misunderstanding of the Church’s source.
What was at stake in Augustine’s defense of grace (and predestination) over against Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism?
The fundamental issue was twofold: whether God can convert sinners and whether God’s eternal plan will be accomplished. The Pelagian and Semi-Pelagian positions suppose, on the one hand, that sin is not so serious (we can initiate our own conversion without God’s grace causing it), and, on the other hand, that God’s gracious election or predestination is not the fundamental reason for the perseverance of the saints (rather, the reason is that the saints are good and therefore choose well). For Augustine as for Scripture, we are enslaved to sin and require God’s grace to heal us, and God’s plan for the kingdom of God is grounded in His electing grace—in God’s goodness and power, not in our goodness and power (the latter are God’s gifts).
Why was Platonism so instrumental in Augustine’s conversion? Out of all philosophies, why did Augustine consider Platonism the perennial philosophy of his day?
I think it has to be said that Augustine took Aristotle’s insights—many of which he knew—rather for granted. For example, he speaks rather dismissively about Aristotle’s Categories, but he actually uses them to great effect in insisting upon the distinction between substance and relation in On the Trinity. Even so, Plato is the greatest of the philosophers because Plato fully lifted up his mind to the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. Plato understood the significance of the spiritual soul and of ascent to God. Plato’s account of justice, the other virtues, the city, and so on—as well as the example of Socrates and his self-sacrificial death—are also of intense help for Christian theology. Moreover, Plato’s metaphysical understanding of participation is fundamental to Augustine’s theology of salvation. In Augustine’s view, Plato’s fault consisted in not apprehending his need for the Mediator, Jesus Christ.
What do you think is the greatest contribution to theology Augustine has made?
This is the toughest question! To me it seems to be his Trinitarian theology. His recognition that the Son’s name Word opens up crucial vistas for apprehending the human “imago dei” of memory, knowing, and loving—and for employing this image analogously for speaking about the Trinity in accordance with the Father’s Word (the Son) and Love (the Spirit)—is groundbreaking. His Trinitarian thinking builds upon insights that Greek Cappadocian theology had about the significance of relation of origin for distinguishing the Persons, as well as about the significance of the name Word for the Son. In Trinitarian theology, which is the height of theology, Augustine goes deeper in ways that are of extraordinary spiritual value.In Trinitarian theology, which is the height of theology, Augustine goes deeper in ways that are of extraordinary spiritual value. Share on X
What work of Augustine would you require every Christian to read today and why?
Having praised On the Trinity in the preceding question, it might seem that I would make On the Trinity the one required work. But in my view it has to be Confessions. The amazing psychological and biblical insights into sin, God, grace, time, eternity, creation, Christ, friendship, contemplation, Baptism, philosophy, natural science, faith, heresy, the example of the saints, the Psalms, Paul, Scripture, the role of the bishop, preaching, the moral life, concupiscence, suffering and death, and countless other realities—and the incredible rhetorical power of the book—make Confessions the most accessible and important book by Augustine for today.
Image credit: Retro. | Alan Kleina Mendes | Flickr.
Matthew Levering
Matthew Levering (PhD, Boston College) holds the James N. and Mary D. Perry, Jr. Chair of Theology at Mundelein Seminary. He is the author or coauthor of over twenty books including The Theology of Augustine: An Introductory Guide to His Most Important Works, Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? Historical and Theological Reflections, Scripture and Metaphysics, Participatory Biblical Exegesis, and Engaging the Doctrine of Revelation.
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