Augustine’s Synthesis: Wisdom, Enlightenment, and Faith
Augustine’s Synthesis: Doctrinal Wisdom and Enlightenment
Introduction: Background of thought, drawing from Plato and covering various aspects. Augustine speaks of two types of knowledge, connecting them to all areas. He sees the soul as an image of God, emphasizing wisdom and enlightenment. This involves a softened inner search, driven by the thought that one seeks truth, beginning with evidence, following the same order. Self-awareness is the starting point, an indisputable truth in the search. Augustine seeks truth that is sensory, immutable, and eternal, which cannot be found in sensible objects because the soul is too changeable. Therefore, one must search within the soul.
This search from the exterior to the interior leads to the discovery of eternal reasons. These truths cannot proceed from the soul alone but must be explained by divine illumination. The inner search culminates in a move toward the superior. Augustine is inspired by Plato and the Gospel of John. Together, they illuminate reason. If God is truth, then his knowledge proceeds from illuminating all partial truths that we understand. The difference is the absence of effect. The first big reason and guide is faith. It is necessary to believe in God’s revelation to reach understanding. Reason can proceed by demonstrating that faith is reasonable.
Levels of Knowledge
Within knowledge, there are two levels before reaching wisdom: sensation and knowledge itself. Here, we find Platonism influencing characteristics and aims. To separate the theory of being from knowledge or human wisdom, we must preferentially discuss St. Augustine’s anthropology, where the self is fluctuating, faithful to the biblical tradition, and varies its perception from a philosophical point of view, adopting Platonic dualism: the rational soul is what is truly eternal. The mortal body and immortal soul are simple. Augustine sees the soul as an image of the Trinity. The soul has an answer for itself.
According to Augustine, there were two theories at the time. Augustine believed that the soul conceived all things present. When it enters the body, it receives an impression from the exterior object, and from its own substance, the soul creates an image to decide.
Consequences of Sin and Memory
Consequently, the soul originates in sin, exclusively toward the homeland, exhausted in the production of images and sensations. The body is a prisoner, dominated by desires. The soul never loses free will, but due to original sin, it can cease to sin. Authentic truth is no longer in the hands of the soul, and human aspiration leads to condemnation. Only those predestined to receive Christ’s grace are saved. Augustine also emphasizes the role of memory in interior life. Thanks to memory, the soul accesses the present, gains its own privacy, and builds its personal identity. Memory enables interior life and introspection, a way of searching within, though the abyss of the spirit is too deep to be fully sounded.
Love and Will
He places great importance on love and will, prioritizing love over knowledge, resolving elements of Platonism and Christianity. Augustine explains love as the definitive movement of man. The culmination of love is the soul’s movement initiated by knowledge, restoring order. The soul can also be seen as a child of God. To speak of the creation of the world, if creatures are mutable, their immutable source must be God, who contains the intelligence, whether archetypes or exemplary trips to the visible world. All things are created by God from nothing, but although creation is temporal, divine immutability demands that the creative action not traverse time. Through the created world, God and his word are deposited in all beings, germs of future moments that will appear, species that are immutable and remain in the homeland from the creation of the world.
Transcendence of God
The transcendence of God is absolute. God is not one of the world, nor is the world an assumption different from the divine. There is no other demiurge; there is only God and the world.