The Grammar of Incarnation

The Grammar of Incarnation: Augustine’s Semiotic Political Discourse

To speak of truth in public discourse is to engender two dangers: to accept the normality of truth claims risks authoritarianism, domination, and hubris; yet to deny the universality of truth and the normativity of its claims is to accept individual subjectivity and political nihilism. In light of these competing dangers, Augustine offers poignant relief, as his corpus operates in overt rejection of these options, and Augustine is at his best when he has an opponent. However, his political prescriptions face unsurprising tensions, especially concerning public notions of Truth, Justice, and other public virtues. The central claim I want to make is that while Augustine absolutely does affirm public and universal access to these ideals, he does not affirm possession of these ideals. As a result, his political thought is not concerned so much with the ideals themselves, but the way in which pursuing them together establishes legitimate public discourse, and even a real commonwealth. This paper first surveys Augustine’s semiotics and anthropology in trin and conf. It then considers how these structure Augustine’s political writings in ciu. It concludes that his political writing is best understood as rhetorical, or psychagogic, pulling his reader away from ‘Theory’ and to a communal pursuit of Truth we can know, but not attain.

Augustine’s politics follow a classical concern for a teleological pursuit of the greatest good. This means that predicate to understanding his politics is a definition of what the human is, what that greatest good is, and how we get there. Augustine’s greatest good is God; my concern at present is how one comes to knowledge of God and the consequent normative value claims while on Earth.

            Human Identity as a Word of God

Augustine’s semiotics form the basis of his epistemology. Consequently, in seeking our knowledge of political goods and their discourse, one must first deal with Augustine's theology of language, noting the signs and symbols that situate Augustine’s search for how humans apprehend love.[1] The relation of words as signs allows him to articulate connections between language and reality,[2] For Augustine, God is the thing which all signs ultimately signify. Scripture, Christ the Word and Image, miracles, the image of God in man, and all created beings, in some sense, refer to God, as God is the source of all things.

Augustine’s first discussion of signs occurs in De magistero (mag.), which concerns the meaning of signs, specifically spoken words.[3] He argues that signs are how a person knows a thing, and paradoxically, it is the knowledge of things which gives meaning to signs in the first place Crucially, The senses establish phenomena of things in the mind, and words signify the phenomena which the senses perceive. [4]  These words do not only signify the specific phenomena perceived, but the form of that phenomena:[5] ‘[6]The problem, of course, is that if one understands everything by signs, and signs point to what is already known, then the signs must point to things that one has already known. This appears to be an infinite regress. But I argue that as a rhetorician, Augustine is not writing inconsistencies, but expounding a gap between theoretical and empirical epistemologies. Either, humans can only manipulate ideas, but cannot learn any new information; or they can only gather brute phenomena but cannot organize it according to ideas and relations.[7] Augustine reconciles this gap by arguing that only Christ, the inner Teacher can teach by both displaying to the mind the reality to be known and its corresponding signification. It is Christ as the inner Teacher that offers both Truth and a grammar for that truth. He concludes that nothing external to the mind can be regarded as the source of knowledge.[8] In this, Augustine echoes Plato’s own epistemology, but where Augustine finds Platonist relations of material and intellectual knowledge unintelligible, he offers Christ, the Word, as the immaterial interjecting itself into the physical.[9] There is a necessarily relational dynamic to signs and things, involving the sign, the thing, and the observer. This dynamic will become the blueprint for Augustine’s later relational conceptions of both God and the inner-man. [10]

Augustine does not consider humanity to be a perfect image of God, because humanity is finite and created, not infinite and begotten. .[11] He notes, ‘That [human] image of God was not made in any sense equal, being created by him, not born of him; so to make this point he is the image in such a way as to be “to the Image”; that is, he is not equated in perfect parity with God, but approaches him in a certain similarity’.[12] Here Augustine distinguishes between two senses of the image of God. First is Christ, the true Image, who is an exact representation of God. Second is the human image of God, which is not the perfect Image as Christ is, but is a lesser sign which refers to the true Image in Christ. Because the image of God in man is easier to grasp, Augustine seeks to come to God by contemplation of the image within himself.[13]

Augustine develops his semiotics into an ontological system, largely due to dissatisfaction with Neoplatonic ontologies. Plato argues for the basic claims of signs and reality: that matter is not all there is, that the invisible is greater and more real than the physical, that physical things share a likeness of invisible things, and that physical things can become more or less like their invisible form.[14]  However, Augustine is dissatisfied with what he sees as Plato’s failure to articulate the connection between physical things and the invisible realms.[15] Moreover, Plato does not explain how material beings can know non-physical and transcendent forms.[16] For Augustine, Plato seems to articulate a theory of only and exactly two things: physical signs and immaterial ideas, which cannot interact. Consequently, he cannot articulate accounts of the unity of the body and soul, the causes of motion and rest, or explain why matter participates in the form it does.[17] For Augustine, the human being’s relation to the Divine had to be analogous to remain coherent, but it also must remain Platonic, with all things relating to the Divine as something totally other, but which, nonetheless, provides the humans both being and form from without.[18].

Augustine draws on Plotinus to develop an account of participation, which emphasizes being as an image of God in which Christ offers form and meaning to existence and to transcendentals.[19] Fr Augustine, words like ‘essence’ or ‘identity’ refer to a thing’s relation to the divine, rather than a property intrinsic to the being.[20] However, his emphasis on the fall demands a great disparity between God and matter. The fall does not undo a things existence or their being itself, but the way in which beings relate to the source of Being itself. [21] The fall has disordered the relationship God. Both God and created signs remain, but the relationship of signification lies in the shadows.[22] As a result, identifying the relationship between just acts or common goods to notions of Justice and Goodness remains possible, but is distorted and veiled.

Thus, Augustine’s theory of signs and things pervades beyond his hermeneutics and epistemology and becomes the basis for his conception of what the human being is and how it participates in the existence and essence of God, and for our purposes, in the just ordering of society. While he affirms that one knows first things by faith in the incarnate Christ, it is by the contemplation of signs that one comes to understand the connection between things and phenomena in the world. He claims this process of connection is that of words, which are always signs for something else. Therefore, in considering Augustine’s notion of a Justice, one is seeking the sense of the word ‘justice’, the thing to which all just acts refer.

The central sign in Augustine’s thought is that of the image of God in Man. Throughout trin., he develops his search for this sense in terms of his own Image of God. However, his attempts at comprehending himself are frustrated by both his finitude and his epistemic limitations. This results in the resignation that his own concept of himself as but another sign or image (imago), pointing to the perfect imago in Christ. Thus, his true being and his knowledge of himself are both in God, revealed in Scripture and creation, as Augustine comes to direct himself away from himself and to a love of God as revealed in Christ. As Carol Harrison puts it,

classical categories [of signs and things] are subverted and transformed by Augustine’s treatment of the double commandment of love of God and love of neighbour and his conviction that God can ultimately be known only by a “knowledge of the heart” – one which leads, not to an exercise of the intellect but to doxology or praise of the unknowable, ineffable God.[23]

Crucially, while Augustine will admit that Christ establishes a semiotic grammar for thinking of transcendentals, full knowledge is never possible if man is ignorant, weak, and temporal. As Ayres points out regarding the search for the image of God in trin.,

Augustine continues to speak of the mind as known appropriately only when the mind knows itself in a form of active self-presence, not by searching for itself and claiming to know itself as an object… this active self-presence, free from the distortions that follow from the attachment to the mind of inappropriate imagery, will only be a known reality when the mind has been purified from its fallen life.[24]

This impossibility, if anything, should be a clue that Augustine has no intention of coming to know himself as such, but that introspection is always directed toward something else. Thus, while in trin. Augustine follows the Neoplatonist admonition to strip off external things, he goes further. Not settling for an internal self, immaterial but substantive, he strips off himself as object to consider his nature qua human in relation to God. If the human is a word, and Christ is the Word pointing to true reality, then to understand his place as a word, Augustine must consider his relation to Christ and Christ’s bidirectional relation between humanity and God. Augustine finds the pursuit of God both internal and above the self, but as we have seen, this pursuit depends upon the grammar of Christ in the incarnation to reify this pursuit on Earth, because it is Christ that connects the word of the individual to the reality of God.

            Augustine’s Word of Confession

In the Confessiones, Augustine presents a series of epistemic limitations to one’s knowledge of oneself and others and reveals the limits of temporality, the weakness of the will, and the ignorance of the mind. In this, Augustine rejects any knowledge or possession of his own life.

The narrative of Augustine’s life in conf. takes the reader through unsatisfying attempts at establishing continuity of his identity. Earthly pleasures, secular ambitions, and temporal relationships all eave him unsatisfied and disoriented. Communities and vocations fail to ground him. Intellectual engagement and even beatific vision fail to reconcile Augustine’s identity, as his will remains divided and disjunctive. His conversion offers a moment of peace, but it is immediately exposed to be temporary.[25] Augustine again asks who he is. Although he now seeks his identity in direct petition to God, it remains beyond his grasp. Reflection upon his whole life in his consciousness proves beyond the finitude and weakness of both his intellect and his will.  What results is a suspension of Augustine’s attempts to gain knowledge of his own identity. Augustine persists in anthropological investigations. However, aware of the limits of introspection, he does so with attention to sources outside of himself, turning to the Genesis narrative in books 11-13.

In suspending any resolution to the problem of his identity, Augustine refutes the criticisms brought before him, not by proving himself, but by refusing to take himself into his own hands. In sharing this inner restlessness, conf. is not a blandishment for his readers to accept Augustine as he is, but a disparagement against any such judgements concerning either Augustine or themselves. He effectively inverts the criticism such that those who do attempt to know and justify themselves are themselves revealed to not yet be fully converted to God. From the outset it is the opposite of an apologia. It is a confession: ‘accusation of oneself; praise of God’.[26] Conf. is a series of Augustine’s failed attempts to define or defend his identity in anything outside of the revelation of God in prayer.

Just as self-knowledge in trin. is best explained by semantic analogy, so too is Augustine’s conception of himself in conf. aided by closer attention to his semiotics.[27] Augustine is clear that our experience of reality operates in signs and things, but his theory could be aided by greater attention to one’s ideas of the thing. It is evident that this is what he investigates when he asks to know himself. He clearly has the words ‘me’ and ‘I’ (meo, ego), and more importantly, knows to what, or whom, these words refer. For instance, in book three of trin. he writes ‘When the mind is told to “know thyself” it knows what “thyself” means because it is very present to itself’.[28] And yet, despite grasping both the referent and the object of himself, he lacks sufficient understanding of himself for the referent to make sense. He literally has no sense of self.

Augustine does not suggest that there is no self. Instead, Augustine explores the paradox of affirming both the reality of the self and the stability of his identity throughout change, while having no certainty of, or epistemic access to, what that is. the one place where man can find himself is the one place he is incapable of reaching: in God.[29] It is only in embracing this paradox, one’s inability to conceive of a ‘self’, that one finds any notion of what he is. As an image, it is concerned with the reality to which it refers.[30] The purpose of the image is the signification of another, not the definition of the self.

Because the eternal word accepts the limits of humanity, so too must one not seek herself out of time and body but accept God's grace to embrace finitude. As one looks to Christ, who is the voice of humanity and wisdom, she begins to see how she might grow into wisdom to see and live with God.[31] One’s encounter with Christ, one’s participation in the God’s being, is not a fixed achievement, but a journey ‘into ever greater dependence and longing, into a love that has no end’.[32] This self-knowledge is the beginning of what it means to be oneself, to be human. The rhetoric aims to produce a sense of uneasiness in his readers as well as a moral uncertainty in their own self-evaluation as they consider Augustine’s life. As the narrative develops the reader encounters successive false solutions to self-identification, opening an aporia that cannot be resolved. In this vacuum Augustine turns with his readers away from the project of self-knowledge and toward a position of self-giving, or confession.

As Augustine makes explicit in trin., his picture of participation is of approaching God ‘by a certain likeness’ to Christ.[33] Augustine moves beyond his Neoplatonist influences to describe wisdom in terms of Christ’s descent, not intellectual assent.[34] Participation is a likeness to the image through Christ’s participation in in human nature.[35] Though one’s identity is only known in God’s knowledge, the incarnation claims that our current knowledge of this identity occurs through physical and temporal events, through human narrative, and through the Church.[36] To receive oneself is to receive oneself in God, and to receive God requires the humility to embrace, not transcend, one’s finite and temporal situation.[37] The logos is not merely the ordering of creation, or the rational element in man, but Christ, in the incarnation Christ into the material world and in the ongoing role Augustine attributes to Christ in creation, giving form to all things.[38]

For Augustine, it is the humble incarnation which reconciles both his knowledge of himself the limitations of other-knowledge and allows for real communication between the self and the other. By orienting all communication to the reality of Christ, Augustine’s semiotics moves beyond the divided line of classical Platonists and the hopes for beatific vision of the Neoplatonists. Rather, because Christ is an both directly accessible and a real object of linguistic reference, the incarnation provides both a substantive account of common goods and a grammar in which to discuss and pursue them. However, while this grammar of common goods offers a means of dialogue, it still fails to provide full epistemic access to the nature of God, or goodness itself. Thus, one must draw a distinction between the ways in which Christ establishes political discourse around common goods, and the remaining suspension of judgments about the nature of goodness itself.

In book 13, as Augustine concludes his commentary on Genesis, he reflects even on his own inability to exposit scripture or make spiritual judgements. Like his plea for God’s knowledge of himself in book ten, here an exegetical dependence comes through repeatedly.[39] Even in his vocation as Bishop, exegeting scripture and judging the people of Hippo Regius, he confesses inadequacy and asks for inspiration. Until his will and intellect are fully rectified, spiritual and moral judgements are beyond him:

[We} do not judge those spiritual intelligences for you made man male and female in your spiritual grace to be equal, so that gender makes no distinction of male and females, just as there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free person. So spiritual persons, whether they preside or are subject to authority, exercise spiritual judgment. They do not judge those spiritual intelligences …nor do they sit in judgement on your book, even if there is obscurity there. We submit our intellect to it…nor does he judge which persons are spiritual and which carnal. They are known to your eyes, our God. To us no works have as yet appeared so that we can know them by their fruits.[40]

There is a limit to one’s spiritual and political judgements.[41] While one can identify creation as good, and certainly can identify the love of God as good, one cannot identify either the spiritual from the unspiritual, or the spiritual works which would allow such distinction. Rather, in conf. Augustine settles for that which is self-evident, the simple love of God and neighbour,[42] the imitation of the saints in ascetic restraint,[43] the provision of other’s basic needs,[44] and the distribution of goods to the poor.[45] All these things are good because they lead others toward a love of God; though they are created and temporal goods, they lead others to God who is eternal.[46]

In conf., his political vision is then, eschatological. He is concerned with temporal goods as far as they lead to God, in whom he finds rest.[47] The ongoing act of confession requires that he suspend his own judgment in deference to eternal judgments. All claims of personal authority, certainty, or individual demarcation are suspended in light of the epistemic limitations of humanity. Likewise, all claims to personal power are deferred by the reality that the individual has neither the strength nor the knowledge to wield such power with clarity and virtue in this life. The only true public statement one can make is a confession: the self-giving recognition of one’s own limitations, and the praise of God who enables any virtuous act.

            Confession in The City of God

One sees a parallel grammar in The City of God. The uncertain and eschatological nature of a pilgrim grounds political engagement in the refusal to settle an earthly city and their contrary hope in God. Unfortunately, this refusal to settle renders discussions of Augustine’s political theory incoherent. There is no way around the epistemic limits of earthly judgements. This is typified by the statesman’s inability to identify true common goods and the human tendency toward domination over one’s citizens. This too, is overcome in confession.[48] In Augustine’s conversion, confession marks the difference between Platonic intellectual ascent and the humble way of Christ. It is not pushing Augustine too hard to say that in ciu. confession continues to distinguish between those who name a city and those who are on pilgrimage. [49]

Augustine’s emphasis of confession has crucial implications for theories of ethical and political life.[50] However, his three great works offer no such theory. They are, instead, rhetorical works designed to draw the reader into paradoxes concerning the human condition, which have no accessible resolution. The Socratic nature of these works leaves the reader hopeful, but uncertain. Augustine’s consistent critical arguments undercut any claim that one has the knowledge and strength to develop and implement any ethical or political system based on a clear understanding of truth, goodness, or beauty. Rather, each of these works leads the reader to examine their own ignorance and weakness for the sake of coming to a greater love of God. They are, in a sense, one cohesive project which unsettles the reader’s false claims to knowledge about God, the self, and how to live, intended to bring the reader to confession.

The primary limit to common political goods is the state’s capacity to identify such goods. While there are real goods to pursue, Augustine cannot expect the Roman government to define them as he might. Different faculties of the soul assent to higher wisdoms; those who do not love God cannot know true justice or truth.[51] There is an epistemic limitation to those with whom pilgrims share the temporal peace. Moreover, there is a concern for any state which claims to define the common good for all as this state becomes free to demand anything in pursuit of happiness.[52]

There is a limitation to the pilgrim’s involvement within the city of man as he must respect that the polis cannot see the common good as he does. [53]. He should seek true justice but respect the authority of a lesser justice of the state. [54]  He should advocate for heavenly virtues wherever possible, but not impose them on another.[55]. The disposition always remains that of a pilgrim. It is always a disposition of confession.    

In conf., Augustine confesses that he cannot define himself, but must rely on God’s definition. Likewise, in ciu., Augustine once again confesses that the Church faces limitations to its earthly governance and the just statesman must confess that he is incapable of securing true peace for the earthly city. He identifies the limits and absurdities of seemingly every possibility for public life, even for the Christian. His pessimistic anthropology rejects self-knowledge, the sensibility of grammar, the objective power of the intellect, personal autonomy, knowledge of Good and Evil, the freedom of the will, the distinction between Christian and non-Christian, and the attainment of happiness in this life.

Most of all, despite constant returns to the centrality of Christ in rectifying these limits, Augustine offers no way of knowing or of speaking about Christ with certainty. Both scripture and sacrament remain obscured by man’s understanding. The burdens of ignorance and weakness remain too great to overcome. It seems that in writing against the many claims of the Donatists, Manicheans, Neoplatonists, and Pelagians, Augustine has written himself out of any ground to stand on. His only recourse is the love of God and the hope of grace to purify the loves of one’s souls and grant an understanding of truth. This framework leaves political life open to a litany of disorders. In suspending all things to the judgment of revealed knowledge, true justice and common goods become the possession of an enlightened few.[56] Another option is the ‘two kingdoms’ model segregating Church and State, divorcing eternal goods from common goods. This allows for the survival of the saeculum, but asks that legitimate religious concerns remain separate from public life.[57] A third option is that of pilgrimage or wayfaring, in which the individual authentically lives out theological convictions in the style of Kierkegaard or Karl Barth, yet this isolates the individual from public life and any real community.[58] On this framework, one may have real and true convictions, but they are untested and unconfirmed by anyone outside of ‘me and God’. In the end, Augustine leaves his reader with a political ‘error theory’: true politics must exist, and we must pursue it, but there is no way to know the means or earthly ends of such a project.[59]

One final option which I have proposed is that much of Augustine’s major writings is rhetoric. That is, rather than putting forth a theology and anthropology which will develop an ethic or political philosophy, Augustine only has one aim: to draw his readers away from the self and to a greater love of God. This approach would locate his work in the Socratic tradition, never settling dialogues, but raising aporias for greater reflection. It suspends claims to Truth, Goodness, or Beauty and leaves happiness as an eschatological uncertainty. His claims about damnation and the vice of seeking-virtue might be read with less certainty, intended not as pure dogma, but an unsettling of the security of one’s situation. It renders the reader perpetually inadequate for the requirements of living a good life. One is left with nothing but the act of confession, born out of faith, hope, and charity.

To be a pilgrim is to confess that one does not know what one is doing, what goodness is, or how to communicate truth. There is only the hope that in living in this ignorance, one is giving up oneself, and in this way, imaging the God one knows in faith.[60]

Augustine is not putting forth a political philosophy or an ethic for the pilgrimage but opening an aporia of knowledge and meaning at the largest scale possible. [61]  In this way, despite being one of the greatest works of early Christian history, philosophy, and theology, ciu. is at its core, 22 books on how impossible it is to say with certainty anything about the City of God. [62] What I propose is that Augustine’s works are more concerned with his reader’s love of God than their action or politics. [63]  He desires their happiness and peace, but the method he offers is confession. He makes no claims about the proper politics of the pilgrim on her way to the city of God other than to imitate those who imitate Christ in Confession.

I conclude that while Augustine offers Christ as a solution to the problems and paradoxes of human existence, his knowledge of Christ always remains mediated by the ignorance and weakness of humanity. As a result, Augustine’s anthropology does not allow for a new system of ethics or politics, but only allows for an unsettled, yet hopeful, pursuit of the good life as a pilgrim.

His major works operate as instalments in a rhetorical schema, leading his readers to confession. They caution against the danger of self-sufficiency and domination inherent in political philosophy itself. In its place, Christian political speech must pursue its meaning in faith, not jettisoning theological and philosophical risks, prayer, or Biblical exegesis. I have argued that questions of language, ethics, politics, and selfhood are all questions of what is means to be human. They are questions on Augustine’s quest to know only God and the soul. While Augustine does not offer the answers to these questions, he invites us to journey with him in the pursuit of wisdom, confessing our errors and praising God. In this, one comes not to know Truth with certainty, but to love Truth in faith. Paradoxically, one’s vision of Truth, Justice, or other values becomes clearer the more one confesses ignorance of exactly these. He suggests a disposition of confession and humility in public life, which, despite its inefficiencies, allows public life to remain public as the Church confesses and falls in love with Truth together.

[1] . The notion of signs and things (signum et res) is not original to Augustine. However, his synthesis of language and analogy under the single category of signs has had longstanding implications. See ‘Signs and Semiotics’ in Pollmann and Otten, The Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine Vol. 3, 1739-1746.

[2] Prior to Augustine, the only mention of language as analogy occurs in a brief suggestion of Plotinus. See R. A. Markus, ‘St. Augustine on Signs’, Phronesis 2, no. 1 (1957): 60–83,

[3] Markus, ‘St. Augustine on Signs’, 66. One can see the influence of his writings on signs and language in Western Philosophy, most noticeably through Heidegger and Wittgenstein. See Patrick Bearsley, ‘Augustine and Wittgenstein on Language’, Philosophy 58, no. 224 (1983): 229–36; Wayne J. Hankey, ‘Augustine, Heidegger, and Bultmann’. 20 May 2006. It is no surprise then that Pierre Hadot, a philosopher of Hellenistic and Roman thought should be the one to popularise Wittegnstein in French philosophy. see Laugier and Helgeson. Sandra Laugier and James Helgeson, ‘Pierre Hadot as a Reader of Wittgenstein’, Paragraph 34, no. 3 (2011): 322–37.

[4] mag. I.1, 95.

[5] What Augustine would call ‘a word in your heart’. Io. eu. tr. 1.8.

[6] mag. I.2, 97.

[7] For a detailed account of this paradox, see Marcus, ‘St Augustine on Signs,’ 69.

[8] Marcus, ‘St. Augustine on Signs’, 70.

[9] Augustine does not suggest that the Platonists have no way of mediating between form and matter, as the soul operates as a divine faculty. Rather, he rejects the Platonists for the incorporeality of such mediation. Instead, he suggests Christ as mediator, offering a materiality to his epistemology that transcends this strict Platonic dualism. See also, James Wetzel, ‘Life in Unlikeness: The Materiality of Augustine’s Conversion’ in James Wetzel, Parting Knowledge (Eugene: Cascade 2013).

[10] Augustine provides a fuller treatise on signum and res in de doctrina christiana (doctr. chr.), books 2-4, which involves not just the sign and the thing, but also the one observing the relationship. He claims all knowledge is of things or signs, but things are learnt by use of signs. For instance, if one speaks of a walking as far as ‘that post’, the word ‘post’ is a sign of the thing, the wooden stake in the ground; the post itself may be a sign of the boundary of one’s property; the stake may be treated as either a sign or a thing. Its importance lies in whether one is interested in it as a sign or as a thing. Crucially, all physical things are signs to both ideas and other things. doctr. chr. I.2.2 As Markus notes, ‘A thing is a sign for Augustine, precisely in so far as it stands for something to somebody’ Markus, ‘St. Augustine on Signs’. 72.

[11] Augustine is careful to distinguish between perfect images, which are identical to that which they represent, and lesser images, which bear an imperfect likeness. While a full treatment of Augustine’s account of the Fall and its implications is beyond the scope of this thesis, it is worth noting that his anthropology presupposes both a natural order and a current state of disorder. For a full treatment of Augustine’s doctrine of the fall of the Soul and the history of its interpretation, see Ronnie J. Rombs, Saint Augustine and the Fall of the Soul: Beyond O’Connell and His Critics (Washington, D.C: The Catholic University of America Press, 2006).

[12] trin. 7.4.12, 231. For more on Augustine’s understanding of image and likeness, see R.A. Markus, ‘”Imagio” and “Similitudo” in Augustine’, Revue des Etudes Augustiniennes 10. (1964): 125-43

[13] trin. 9.1.2, 272. For a full account of Augustine’s use of the imago dei, see Matthew Puffer, ‘Human Dignity after Augustine’s “Imago Dei”: On the Sources and Uses of Two Ethical Terms. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, Vol. 37, No.1, 2017, 65-82; ‘Augustine on the Image of God: An Ethical Analysis’, PhD Diss. (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia, 2014); Augustine on the Image of God: Scriptural Imagination, Moral Formation, and the Development of Doctrine (Forthcoming from Oxford University Press). 

[14] Plato, Republic, C. D. C. Reeve and G. M. A. Grube ed. and trans. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co, Inc, 1992). 514a-520a.

[15] ciu. 8.6-8, 303-309. See Klein, Jacob, Commentary on Plato’s Meno (Chappel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965, 114-125.

[16] See conf. 16-24, 123-128. Pabst, Metaphysics: The Creation of Hierarchy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 3.

[17] Pabst, Metaphysics, 64.

[18] Aristotle broadened the use of analogy beyond mathematics, speaking metaphorically where the relations between real objects were analogous. Aristotle, however, also suggests a use of analogy beyond comparing similar relationships. In the Categories, with which Augustine is familiar, he speaks of a connection of being as a kind of analogy. he identifies a relation between particulars and the universal which grounds their analogy. There is both a relation between objects of health as particulars, and between the object and health itself. The problem for Aristotle, however, is that being is neither a particular thing, nor an unattained universal. Because of his insistence on a constituent ontology, where all things must possess rather than merely relate to their forms, Aristotle’s analogy cannot explain the relation of all beings to BeingAquinas clarifies this distinction in his Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, John P. Rowan trans. (Notre Dame, IN: Dumb Ox Books, 1995). He distinguishes these two types of relationships: that two things can be similar in relation to a third thing, as in food and fitness to health, or in their relation to two other things, such as Ares and his shield to Dionysus and his cup. The first, pros hen (προσ εν) considers how distinct species relate to one another by sharing in relation to a common genus. The second, analogy proper (αναλογία) concerns relations between different genera relate to each other. The problem for Aristotle is that all things possess being within themselves and are related to the form of being, 275-285. A thing must be (possess) a substance, but cannot have Being itself as a constituent part, for this would place one’s substance prior to one’s being. Aristotle, Metaphysics IV, 1003a-b. Moreover, if each being possesses Being as a constituent, and forms are not universal but belong to each being, there would be no similarity of Being amongst beings. Each being would possess being in its own way. This ontology necessitates individuality but unhinges metaphysical relationship.

[19] conf. 7.17.23; trin. 14.3.12, 382. He adapts from Plotinus, rather than Plato, the conviction that the various Platonic forms are various articulations or perceptions of the One Acad. 3.18, 41; see Robert J. O’Connell, Saint Augustine’s Platonism (Villanova, Villanova University Press, 1984).

[20] ord, 2.11, 33-35. By constituent ontology I refer to the notion that essences have all their characteristics or properties as dependent parts. This is distinct from a bundle theory in which an essence is a collection of properties; Aristotelian/Thomistic constituent ontology is mereological in that an essence is composed of form and matter, and that essence then possesses constituent and relational properties which do not affect the nature of one’s essence.

[21] s. 47.14.23.

[22] Erich Przywara, Analogia Entis, 518; In Io. ep. 4.5, 69.

[23] Carol Harrison, ‘Doxology and Loving Knowledge in Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana Book 1’ Journal of religion and Society 15 (2008), 138.

[24] Ayres, Augustine and the Trinity, 304.

[25] Book nine again repeats ‘Who am I and what am I?’ 9.1.1

[26] Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 180, citing s. 2.

[27] The work is an example of how the epistemology of trin. operates within time and within one’s own memory. If trin. reveals introspection to identify nothing in the mind except for contentless functions seeking an object, conf. examines the content of Augustine’s life itself, showing that this too offers no stability for who he is.

[28] trin. 3.12, 295-296.

[29] Marion, In the Self’s Place, 241.

[30] Marion, In the Self’s Place, 256.

[31] Williams, ‘Christ and the Trinity’, 134.

[32] Williams, ‘Christ and the Trinity’, 139.

[33] trin. 7.4.12, 234.

[34] Williams, ‘Time and Self Awareness in the Confessions’, 12.

[35] Meconi, ‘St. Augustine’s Early Theory of Participation’, 85.

[36] His move past the intellectualism and introspection of Neoplatonism resulted from an acceptance that he could not comprehend the logos by the intellect, but that the logos encountered him in space and time. No amount of rationality could resolve his internal tension. Rather, it was the Word of Scripture that imposed the moral imperative to ‘make no provision for the flesh in its lusts’.  This command suspended Augustine’s moral reasoning and committed him to a singular will. He notes: ‘At once, with the last words of this sentence, it was if a light of relief from all anxiety flooded into my heart. All the shadows of doubt were dispelled’.  Augustine could not resolve his divided self, it was only the interruption of the logos that reconciled his will, which has explored below, becomes crucial for his ethic of confession.

[37] As explored above, Augustine’s account of personal dependence hinges on the ontological gap between the creator and the created being. Yet, ontological dependence persists beyond the immediate act of creation, throughout temporal time.

[38] He notes: ‘Your creation has its being from the fullness of your goodness…formless things are dependent on your Word. It is only by that same word that they are recalled to your Oneness and receive form. From you, the One, the supreme Good, they have being and are all ‘‘very good”’. conf. 13.2.2, 273-4.

[39] . Most clearly, he notes, ‘I do not give a true exposition if anyone other than you is inspiring me. You are the truth, but every man is a liar. He who speaks a lie speaks from himself. Therefore, I depend on you to enable me to speak truth’. conf. 13.25.38, 269.

[40] conf. 13.23.33, 293.

[41] A limit Augustine himself does not abide by, as I explore in chapter four.

[42] Conf. 13.24.36, 295.

[43] conf. 13.25.38, 297.

[44] conf. 13.26.41, 298.

[45] conf. 13.34.49, 303.

[46] conf. 13.35.50, 304.

[47] He notes, ‘after our works which, because they are your gifts to us, are very good, we may also rest in you for the sabbath of eternal life’. conf. 13.36.51, 304.

[48] As Sarah Stewart-Kroeker notes, in conf., Augustine self-consciously differentiates himself from the Platonists according to his Christological commitments. Several aspects of his peregrinatio image in conf. 7 illustrate this development. Augustine moves from describing Platonist philosophy as a shared way to the shared homeland (in Acad., for example) to describing a shared vision of the homeland but distinct ways. He also distinguishes between the homeland as a place to dwell in for the Christian as opposed to a place to be perceived for the Platonist. Even as, in this iteration of the image, Augustine makes Christ essential as the way, he does not integrate Christ as essential to the vision of the homeland. The way is inaccessible to the Platonists due to their rejection of Christ.Stewart-Kroeker, Pilgrimage as Moral and Aesthetic Formation, 40. For a full discussion of the evolution of the pilgrimage image in relation to the Platonists, from conf. to ciu., see 18-59.

[49] At least since book seven of conf., the themes of pilgrimage and confession are intertwined in Augustine’s thought. The image of pilgrimage (peregrination) features at the end of conf. 7: As noted above, it is central to Augustine that Christ is the both the way and the end. ‘It is one thing from a wooded summit to catch a glimpse of the homeland (patriam) of peace and not to find the way (iter) to it…It is another thing to hold on to the way (uiam) that leads there, defended by the protection of the heavenly emperor’, conf. 7.

[50] While pilgrimage is the dominant motif in ciu., confession is nevertheless integral to pilgrimage and that to consider the moral formation of pilgrimage, especially those of imitation, aesthetics, and liturgy, without maintaining an emphasis on confession, risks losing the thrust of Augustine’s argument. Without the persistent disposition of confession, the pilgrimage motif itself can too easily become another locus to found moral and political projects in our own name. In seeking, being frustrated, and confessing together, we find a common object of love – even if our perception of that love is flawed.

[51] Ronald H. Nash, ‘Wisdom’, in Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopaedia ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald 885-887 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Press, 2009), 886.

[52] This is the worry of Isaiah Berlin’s ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ (University of Oxford Inaugural Address, 31 October 1958).

[53] Still, Augustine does not suggest withdrawal from the city of man, but to peace. He urges a cautious involvement with the state, looking to it for nothing, but offering to it all one can out of abundance of one’s own happiness. He notes: ‘The philosophers hold the view that the life of the wise man should be social, and in this we support them…heartily’.ciu. 11. 5, 858.

[54] He commands neither apathy nor hope towards one’s government, for though there is no common justice, one can hope for what is possible to obtain ciu. 19. 27, 963.

[55] Robert Dodaro, ‘Justice’, in Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald 481-483 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Press, 2009), 483.

[56] See Tom Jacobs, ‘Postmodern thought and the return of Gnosticism: the darkness of Heidegger and the light of Derrida’; in Boeve, Lamberigts, and Wisse, Augustine and Postmodern Thought: A New Alliance Against Modernity? (Lueven: Peeters Publishers, 2009.

[57] Markus, Saeculum; Michael Richard Laffin, Brian Brock, and Susan F. Parsons, The Promise of Martin Luther’s Political Theology: Freeing Luther from the Modern Political Narrative (London: T&T Clark, 2016).

[58] Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, Or Karl Barth Church Dogmatics, 2.2 trans. G. W. Bormley, et al. London: T&T Clark, 2010.

[59] Despite the rigor of Augustine’s thought and soundness of his apophatic critiques, Augustine’s own life and teaching suggests that this is not sustainable.

[60] For example, see Serm. 13.

[61] . It is what Veronica Roberts Ogle calls a ‘psychagogic argument, that is, his attempt to cure his readers of his distorted vision’. Ogle, Politics and the Earthly City, 69.

[62] One ought not to ignore the ethical and political instruction Augustine does offer. These three major works offer clear commands to love God and neighbour, and even to love oneself as far as he seeks happiness in relation to God. Famously, ciu. 19.14, 873: ‘A man who loves God is not wrong in loving himself’. He should be concerned that his neighbour should love God, since he is to love his neighbour as himself. He should wish his neighbour has the same concern for him’. Likewise, he holds up the virtues of faith, hope, and love, not only in ciu. and conf., but most explicitly in ench. He exhorts the church and its sacraments and instructs political figures. Most importantly, he turns to the reality of Christ to guide his readers in ethics and politics.

[63] Such an account makes sense of Augustine’s own intention for ciu. as he expresses in the preface, ‘I know … what efforts are needed to persuade the proud how great is that virtue of humility which, not by dint of any human loftiness, but by divine grace bestowed from on high, raises us above all the earthly pinnacles which sway in this inconsistent age’ ciu. I, Preface, trans. Robert Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) 5.