In Book V of his Confessions Augustine tells of his travels in search of better students which take him from Carthage to Rome, and then to Milan, until his conversion. He meets the Manichean leader, Faustus, but finds no answers. He also encounters the doubt of the Academics and comes close to total scepticism in his own philosophy. In Milan he listens to Bishop Ambrose, whose homilies, little by little, answer many questions about Scripture which have been nagging at him for a long time.
In Book V Augustine shares several understandings that prepare him for his conversion. These are the place of science in belief, the value of questions, the necessity of faithful prayer, and non-literal interpretations of scripture. I want to explore each of these in turn.
In Chapter 3 Augustine compares the teachings of the Philosophers and the Manichees. He concludes that the teaching of Manes, the founder of the Manichees, was rambling and confused when it came to phenomena such as solstices, equinoxes or eclipses. By contrast, the observations of the Philosophers about creation could be verified by mathematics, by the progress of the seasons, and by the visible evidence of the stars.
Augustine is essentially saying that religious beliefs should not be in conflict with the findings of science and where they are, as in the case of the Manichees, this has to undermine the whole system of belief. How should we view this position in an age when scientists like Richard Dawkins believe there is no common ground between science and religion and when some Christians hold beliefs such as creationism which are opposed to scientific findings?
Sir John Polkinghorne, who is both a world-class physicist and an Anglican priest, is one who seeks to present an account of the friendship between science and theology, which he believes to be the truest assessment. Religion, he says, is our encounter with divine reality, just as science is our encounter with physical reality.
He notes that the intellectual strategy of science is neither an undue credulity nor a perpetual scepticism. A general scientific theory is broadly persuasive because it provides the best available explanation of a great swathe of physical experience. The cumulative fruitfulness of science encourages Polkinghorne to believe that this is an effective intellectual strategy to pursue. He then also wishes to engage in a similar strategy with regard to the unseen reality of God. God’s existence makes sense of many aspects of our knowledge and experience: the order and fruitfulness of the physical world; the multilayered character of reality; the almost universal human experiences of worship and hope; the phenomenon of Jesus Christ (including his Resurrection). He suggests that very similar thought processes are involved in both cases.
Therefore he does not believe that he shifts gear in some strange intellectual way when he moves from science to religion. In particular, he does not claim that religious belief springs from some mysteriously endorsed and unquestionable source of knowledge that is not open to rational assessment and, if necessary, to reassessment. Theology has long known that our images of God are inadequate to the infinite richness of the divine nature; that human concepts of God are ultimately idols to be broken in the face of the greater reality. So, in their search for truth, he claims that science and religion are intellectual cousins under the skin. This, it seems to me, is a position which equates to the approach advocated by Augustine in Book V.
Next, Augustine, in Chapter 6, complains that in the crowd that came to hear the Manichee teacher, Faustus, he was not allowed to voice his anxious questions, and place them before him in the relaxed give-and-take of discussion. The asking of questions is fundamental to Augustine’s approach in writing Confessions. In the first Chapter of Confessions he asks 6 questions, in the second Chapter he asks 12, in Chapter 3 he asks 8, and so it continues throughout the book. Augustine clearly believes that the asking of questions is fundamental to gaining true knowledge of God.
In Letters to a Young Poet the poet Rainer Maria Rilke calls for the unknown to be embraced, and not necessarily puzzled out. His call is one which I think equates with Augustine’s use of questions in Confessions. Rilke writes: “…have patience with everything unresolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves, as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing, live your way into the answer….”
That was what Monica, Augustine’s mother, had to do as she prayed that Augustine would come to faith. Augustine writes in Chapter 8 that God did not grant what she desired at that moment, but, true to his higher purpose, he met the deeper wish of her heart. Monica had to learn to persevere in prayer in the face of what seemed to be a lack of response from God to her prayer. When Jesus told parables about prayer the stories he told were of those who did what Monica did and kept on praying no matter what. When Monica’s prayer is finally answered it is the deepest wish of her heart that is realised as her son becomes one of the most influential figures in the history of Christianity.
Finally, Augustine explains that the change in his understanding of Christianity comes as he changes the way in which he interprets scripture. He is impacted by hearing Bishop Ambrose in Milan because Ambrose explains the spiritual meaning of Old Testament passages by figurative interpretations. Previously, Augustine says, taking these passages literally had been the death of me.
Literal understandings of the Bible claim that the meaning originally expressed by the writer is clear. Biblical literalism became an issue in the 18th century as a reaction to the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution. Some Christians, such as those who in 1978 wrote the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, have made this way of understanding scripture their test as to whether the Church is being faithful to God or not. They affirm the necessity of interpreting the Bible according to its literal sense. The literal sense is, as we have heard, the meaning which the writer expressed and they deny the legitimacy of any approach to Scripture that attributes to it meaning which the literal sense does not support.
The problem with this is that the Gospel writers and St Paul do not interpret scripture in that way. The Gospel writers constantly apply Old Testament passages to Jesus in ways that do not reflect the meanings that the writers originally expressed while St Paul, like Ambrose, regularly uses allegorical or figurative interpretations of Old Testament passages. As a result, if we are, like Augustine, to understand the spiritual meanings of scripture we cannot simply apply one interpretative method to our reading of scripture but have to embrace the diversity of ways in which scripture is interpreted and understood and used within the pages of scripture itself.
So, in Book V, Augustine gives us these four foundational approaches to faith: the taking seriously of science, living our questions, perseverance in prayer; and a diversity of approaches to the interpretation of scripture. These four approaches return Augustine to the place where, as he writes at the end of Book V, he becomes once again an inquirer in the Catholic Church. He would therefore, I believe, commend them to us in our ongoing inquiries and investigations into the truth of Christianity.
Rainer Maria Rilke - Letters To A Young Poet.
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