Tag Archives: Augustine of Hippo

Whither beauty, goodness, and truth in the modern American church?

Posted on September 12, 2022 | Leave a comment

The following argues that the re-integration of the spiritual and the material/social is the deepest task of both the faith & work movement today and the Christian Study Center (CSC) movement. I wrote it in 2016, after the national meeting of the Consortium of Christian Study Centers–hosted that year at Wheaton College.

The early church, per Robert Louis Wilken, Darrel Amundsen, C S Lewis, and many others, understood truth, beauty, and goodness to be intrinsic, inarguable, and universal goods (that is, to be secured for all people, as God wants all people to have them), as had the classical world before them. And drawing on the Christian understanding of the material world as intrinsically good (which the Pagan philosophers did not share), the early Christians were also able to add to these three values a fourth, bodily health and well-being—a value so vividly supported by the Incarnate Christ’s healing activity on earth.

The church then proceeded to say (again, per Wilken) that, while these four things are intrinsically and universally good, none of them provides, of itself (nor even do all four taken together), a suitable telos for humanity—and that indeed any of them become life-destroying idols when pursued in and of themselves, without the transcendent referent: the universal call to love and serve God. (This is the burden of Augustine’s theological discussion of uti love and frui love–that is, the loving of things that are not ultimate, and the loving of the ultimate, which is God–and it is also the burden of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy.)

The early Christians responded to this transcendent referent by identifying three “theological virtues” – faith, hope, and love, which they added to the four classical (“cardinal”) virtues of prudence, courage, temperance, and justice.

The new Christian value of the good of bodily health, along with the Christianized classical values of truth, beauty, and goodness, each informed and amplified through the transcendent referent, and pursued with the help of all seven virtues, birthed in the Christian medieval West the institutions of the hospital, the university, the cathedral and liturgical art and architecture, and the ethical systems of the scholastics that would lay important foundations for modern jurisprudence.[1] This was the origin of huge swathes of the culture and the vocational arenas of today’s world.

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Spirituality and economic work in the Middle Ages: Complementarity, not enmity? Part X – the Cistercian example (III)

Posted on September 6, 2022 | Leave a comment

“Cistercians at work,” Alexander Bremen, 13th c.; Expositio en Apocalypsim (University Library Cambridge Ms. mm 5.31. fol. 113), manuscript from Northern Germany; Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Continued from part IX

Nor did contemporary observers seem to think the Cistercians were defined by their economic activities – either used or eschewed.[i]

And indeed, even the document considered to have been written in 1134 didn’t single out “pawning, leasing, sales, and exchanges” for censure.[ii] (196)

She concludes that the Cistercians “participated vigorously in the economic changes of the twelfth century while retaining the solitude of their houses and granges and the simplicity of the food, clothing, and liturgy that made them appear so intensely holy to their neighbors.” (196)

By this example of simplicity and austerity, Bouchard argues, the knights were attracted to them “psychologically,” as they were “reaching a level of social prominence . . . at the beginning of the twelfth century,” thus “just reach[ing] the point both of being able to enjoy [the] comforts [of the aristocracy] and of recognizing that the soul’s salvation might lie in the rejection of them.” (197)

But at the same time, there was a “social” appeal of the Cistercians to the knights as well, “because the Cistercians were integrated into the rural knightly system of ‘give-and-take,’ where property transactions were used not only to transfer ownership of property but also to bind people together.” (197)

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Five themes in Christian humanism (III)

Posted on August 30, 2022 | 2 comments

“Dante and His Poem,” Domenico di Michelino (1417-1491); wikipedia, public domain

Continued from part II

4. Grace and virtues (the Christian moral life and Christian social ethics)

Other than dissenters such as Tertullian, the early church was happy to absorb and adapt much of the non-Christian knowledge of the time (classical philosophy). This included knowledge in the realm of ethics and politics (e.g. Aristotle’s Ethics – see e.g. Robert Louis Wilken, Spirit of Early Christian Thought). Thus the substance of Aristotelian virtue ethics was absorbed into Christian ethics, culminating in Aquinas’s Summa.

More recently, Protestant as well as Catholic readers of Elizabeth Anscombe, Alasdair MacIntyre, and other modern Christian virtue ethicists have also been willing to consider the older Christianized classical virtue ethics tradition as important and helpful for today. However, there is still a tension between that tradition and the Augustinian understanding of the primacy of grace (given the extreme effects of the Fall) in human moral life. Again Christian humanism has worked to sustain a synthesis in this tension of virtue and grace, to various degrees in various phases of the tradition.

[list of potential subtopics follows]

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Spirituality and economic work in the Middle Ages: Complementarity, not enmity? Part VII

Posted on August 4, 2022 | 2 comments

Image by Simon from Pixabay; public domain

Continued from part VI

On the efficacy of the active life as an aid to the contemplative life, Gregory’s understanding of “the mixed life”—especially, but (as we’ve seen) not exclusively for pastors and bishops—is one of his greatest legacies to the church. Bernard McGinn notes that while Gregory dwelt, “at times obsessively,” on married life’s dangers—especially owing to its unavoidable entanglements with the “outside” world—yet, “he believed that the combination of the vita activa and vita contemplativa to which the praedicatores [preachers] were called was the highest and most important form of life in the church.”[i]

The importance of this point may be seen in the fact that Gregory identified the two lives as oriented to the two parts of the “law of love” – love of God and love of neighbor.[ii]

Perhaps not surprisingly, given his own liberality with the coffers of the church on behalf of those in need, one of the elements of the active life that he taught pastors to practice was the economic work of providing for their people’s material needs and “earthly necessities.” In fact, he argued that if they did not do so, their words would not be heard well – and they would deserve it![iii]

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Spirituality and economic work in the Middle Ages: Complementarity, not enmity? Part VI

Posted on August 3, 2022 | 2 comments

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), “Dante’s Vision of Rachel and Leah”; Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Continued from part V

Cuthbert Butler first points out that Gregory picked up Augustine’s teaching that “no one can come to contemplation without having exercised the works of the active life, so that the active life is necessary for all, whereas the contemplative is not necessary[, and thus] . . . optional.” (Butler, 249)

Gregory, in fact, not only asserts that the active life is necessary, but also that it has a chronological priority: it must be exercised before one can come to the contemplative life. In fact, he asserted this frequently:

“The active life is lived first, that afterwards the contemplative may be attained to.”[i]

“Perfectness of practice having been received, we come to contemplation.”[ii]

“Every one that is perfect is first joined to an active life for productiveness, and afterwards united to a contemplative life for rest.”[iii]

“The season for action comes first, for contemplation last. . . . The mind should first spend itself in labour, and afterwards it may be refreshed by contemplation.”[iv]

“We ascend to the heights of contemplation by the steps of the active life.”[v]

“The active life is before the contemplative in time, because by good works we tend to contemplation.”[vi]

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Spirituality and economic work in the Middle Ages: Complementarity, not enmity? Part V

Posted on August 2, 2022 | 2 comments

Johannes Vermeer, “Christ in the House of Mary and Martha”; Wikipedia, public domain

Continued from part IV

Augustine’s claim for the superiority of the contemplative over the active life, which sets the tone for the church for the next millennium, seems based on two things: (1) the early and medieval Christian understanding of the superiority of the eternal over the temporal life with all its struggles and unmet needs in the fallen world. Note we need not say “eternal/spiritual” and “temporal/material,” for there is a New Creation, with its own kind of materiality – so that is a false separation. I’m not sure whether Augustine makes that separation or not, but he does note that material need will be wiped away in the eternal life. Which brings us to Augustine’s second source on the preferability of the contemplative over the active life: (2) the Gospel story of Mary and Martha.

Here is Augustine on both of these themes:

“Martha chose a good part, but Mary the better. What Martha chose passes away. She ministered to the hungry, the thirsty, the homeless: but all these pass away,–there will be [a time – or rather, an eternity] when none will hunger nor thirst. Therefore will her care be taken from her ‘Mary hath chosen the better part . . . which shall not be taken away from her.’ She hath chosen to contemplate, to live by the Word (Sermon clxix.17).” (in Butler, 233)

Note this early identification, in Augustine, of the active life with Matt 25 type works of compassion to those in need. It is clear that he is not here denigrating Martha’s choice or the active life entirely:

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Spirituality and economic work in the Middle Ages: Complementarity, not enmity? Part IV

Posted on August 1, 2022 | 2 comments

The earliest known portrait of Saint Augustine in a 6th-century fresco, Lateran, Rome; Wikipedia, public domain

Continued from part III, and repeating the last couple of sections of that article:

Clearly, Augustine is not dismissing the active life (though he has also not yet fully defined it). He is pointing, in fact, to a sanctifying function in that life.

In a similar text, with a less absolute division between the two lives, Augustine says the following (I give it in two translations – the first from the Cuthbert Butler book cited above, and the second, again, from an online NPNF version):

“Two virtues are set before the soul of man, the one active, the other contemplative; the one whereby we journey, the other whereby we reach our journey’s end; the one whereby we toil that our heart may be cleansed for the vision of God, the other whereby we repose and see God; the one lies in the precepts for carrying on this temporal life, the other in the doctrine of that life which is eternal. Hence it is that the one toils, and the other reposes; for the former is in the purgation of sins, the latter in the light [or illumination] of the purgation effected. Hence it is that, in this mortal life, the former consists in the work of leading a good life, the latter more in faith, and with some few, through a mirror in enigma and in part, in some vision of unchangeable Truth. These two virtues are seen figured in the two wives of Jacob. . . . the three first evangelists, who principally record the words and deeds of our Lord for the right conduct of the present life, are chiefly concerned [230] with active virtue; but John is chiefly concerned in commending contemplative virtue.”[i]

Then we find in Augustine a view we might almost describe as “pragmatic” – that the active life is simply necessary to us, as beings of the sort we are, and though we might desire to fly directly to the contemplative life, we cannot do so – and that’s not entirely a bad thing. We’ll take it piece by piece, reflecting on each as we go:

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Spirituality and economic work in the Middle Ages: Complementarity, not enmity? Part III

Posted on July 29, 2022 | 2 comments

Augustine, portrait by Sandro Botticelli; wikimedia commons, public domain

Continued from part II

First, then, the “busyness thesis,” as read by such thinkers as Augustine of Hippo and Gregory the Great.

Augustine of Hippo described two kinds of life: the active life and the contemplative life. His reflections on the relationship between these set the theological tone for the entire era of the Middle Ages on this aspect of the relationship between spiritual and economic work—though as we’ll see later, we already find some monastic pioneers a generation or two before Augustine who were concerned with the potential for a busy life with lots of human responsibilities to crowd out the quest for personal holiness.

From his writings on this matter, it is clear that he sees both kinds of life as necessary and that the active life comprises most of our experience here on earth. Second, it is also clear that the contemplative life is above all desirable, unites us to our true God, and comprises tastes of heaven for us – thus the descriptions of the contemplative life in the long list of dyads in his most famous passage on the subject, below, is a kind of travel brochure or gift catalogue for the contemplative life, designed to stir up our desire for it. One may see such language as a clue to why so many entered an ascetic, and so many more a fully cloistered monastic, life in the time between Augustine and Luther: only strong desire could so move them:

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Spirituality and economic work in the Middle Ages: Complementarity, not enmity? Part I

Posted on July 27, 2022 | 1 comment

Threshing and pig feeding from a book of hours from the Workshop of the Master of James IV of Scotland (Flemish, c. 1541), Wikipedia (public domain)

A few years ago I was invited to present a paper at a colloquium of scholars gathered to discuss topics related to the intersection of faith and economic work in the history of the church. What I presented was a first stab at a research agenda: 2/3 of a larger idea about a certain theme in medieval Christianity. Since the paper was never published, I intend to blog it here in sections. So, to begin:

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The question of this paper is this: Was there, in the Middle Ages, an understanding of economic labor as inherently inimical to the spiritual life – especially as modeled by monasticism?

It is certainly true, as the great medievalist R. W. Southern says, that through its 1,200+ late ancient and medieval years of activity, monasticism was often involved in and compromised by the world. R. W. Southern talks about this complexity:

“Everywhere in the history of the religious Orders we find that associations which were founded as a protest against the world and all its ways had their destinies shaped for them by the society in which they had their being. There were many forces which shaped them, even against their will: their property, their family connexions, their secular functions, and the opportunity which they offered their members for advancement to the highest places in the social order. The ‘worldliness’ of medieval religious communities has often been remarked and generally criticized, and it is true that anyone who looks at these communities for a pure expression of the aims of their founders must very often be disappointed. The states of mind and aspirations expressed in the Rules and Foundation deeds of the various Orders were not realized in any large measure. The driving forces in their development were quite different from those of the original founders.”[i]

But the question is, would medievals themselves share the underlying assumption of this analysis: the supposed “fact” that economic work must, by its very nature, hamper spiritual formation?

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Medieval stupidity? Works-righteousness? Monastic uselessness? Getting beyond the caricatures

Posted on June 20, 2016 | Leave a comment

We all know medieval people were ignorant, gullible bumpkins who didn’t even understand the gospel message of grace, right? After all, they believed in a flat earth, salvation by works, and a monastic life completely shut off from culture and society. Uh . . . no.

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