Confessions: Part 4

IV.            Augustine’s Epistemology: The Way in which Augustine came to conclusions and theologized – Modern / Post Modern debate – East v. West – The use of foundationalism and propositional truths

It was a generic presupposition of mine that Augustine set the trajectory for the Cataphatic way in which Western theology developed.  This I still believe to be true. There were a few things however that took me by surprise. In the Modern/Post-Modern debate concerning epistemology, much of what I assumed to be the basic definitive tenants of Modernism were clearly articulated in Augustine’s words. What is equally as shocking is that at times I thought Augustine to sound like an ancient Post-Modern. It is safe to assume that Augustine was not thinking in these terms, but once again the wisdom of this ancient theologian answers the squabble of the modern (or post-modern) dilemma. 

So for example, concerning the nature of truth, I find Augustine’s sympathies for the “Academics” to be eerily Post Modern:

“They taught that everything is a matter of doubt, and that an understanding of the truth lies beyond human capacity (84).”

In the final chapters, concerning interpretation of truth, Augustine says:

“ In this diversity of true views, may truth itself engender concord, and may our God have mercy upon us that we may ‘use the law lawfully’, for the ‘end of the precept, pure love’ (1 Tim. 1:8,5)… And if anyone sees a third or fourth and a further truth in these words, why not believe that Moses discerned all these things? For through him the one God has tempered the sacred books to the interpretation of many who could come to see a diversity of truths (270-71).”

It was difficult for me to distinguish at this point whether or not it was Augustine or John Franke who wrote these words. In this same regard, while vying for diversity in interpretation and a plurality of truth, Augustine seems to make a statement whereby he does not want to make a definitive propositional truth when it comes to these same varying interpretations, stating that if he were the one composing sacred writings he would:

“…choose to write so that my words would sound out with whatever diverse truth in these matters each reader was able to grasp, rather than to give a quite explicit statement of a single true view of this question in such a way as to exclude other views – provided there was no false doctrine to offend me (271).”

At the same time, Augustine, in his definitive quest for truth, very much utilizes propositional truths and foundational thinking to arrive at indisputable conclusions. For example, truth in many ways can be acquired through a process or by the utilization of rationalistic thought:

“It is rather that the created order speaks to all, but is understood by those who hear its outward voice and compare it with the truth within themselves (184).”

Concerning memory and the power of the mind it is said:

“Who has plumbed its bottom? This power is that of my mind and is a natural endowment, but I myself cannot grasp the totality of what I am. Is the mind, then, too restricted to compass itself, so that we have to ask what is that element of itself which it fails to grasp? Surely that cannot be external to itself, it must be within the mind (187).”

The passages and entire chapters which speak about the quest for and arrival at truth go on and on throughout the entire book. What is most compelling about Augustine’s use of foundationalism in order to draw a definitive conclusion is when in one paragraph, Augustine begins each of the ten sentences with “It is true (260).” Having laid down these foundations, Augustine makes his conclusions:

“All these true propositions are no matters of doubt to those to whom you have granted insight to see them with their inward eye, and who unmoveably believe that your servant Moses spoke ‘in the spirit of truth’ (John 14:17). On the basis of all these axioms, a view may be urged to this effect… on the basis of all those true propositions, a view may be urged to this effect (260,61 italics added).” 

It would seem then, that much of what I thought unhelpful to have come out of a modern era was in fact in existence more than a millennium before its conception. Also, the dichotomy which renders the two eras incompatible does not seem to plague Augustine, which I find to be a great relief and a beautiful harmony.