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ABSTRACT
Anders Nygren argues that Augustine’s adherence to a Platonist notion of eros undermines both his own and a wider Christian account of agape. On Nygren’s reading, eros, which is self-fulfilling love that originates in the soul’s movement toward God, stands in contradistinction to agape, which is self-denying love that originates in God and condescends to us through the sacrifice of Christ. While it is true that Platonism plays an important role for Augustine, he comes to interpret love through a lens of Christian doctrines on creation, Christ, and the Trinity that leads him to reshape the Greek ideal of love. In particular, Augustine reads human upward love of God (eros) as flowing out of God’s triune downward love of creation (agape) mediated through the incarnation. Nygren contends that Augustine’s connection here between eros and agape is contradictory, but this presupposes at least a medieval, if not a modern, distinction between natural (erotic) and supernatural (agapic) love. Augustine does not draw on eros to the exclusion of agape but rather sees in eros the inclusion of agape. That is, our natural love (eros) for God is always enabled by God’s supernatural love (agape) for us.
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Notes
1. Scholarship on love in Augustine is vast. For an overview of the topic, see: Fitzgerald, ed., Augustine through the Ages; Mayer, Augustinus-Lexikon; Pollmann and Otten, The Oxford Guide.
2. Nygren, Agape and Eros, 253–257. Other twentieth century theologians have sought to extend the critique of Augustine’s Platonism in various directions. For example, see: Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian, 42–45; LaCugna, God for Us, 81–109; Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 25, 41n35, 88, 95, 100, 104n98.
3. Nygren, Agape and Eros, 23–27, 52–6, 133–9.
4. For example, see: Edwards, “The Figure of Love in Augustine,” 197–214; Barrett, Eros and Self-Emptying.
5. Kierkegaard offers an interesting parallel that develops out of his distinction between natural (preferential) and ethical (universal) love. Natural love is present within all people and does not yet make one moral or immoral. Love is rendered moral or immoral based on an additional divine command on how we ought to apply our love to different objects. For a further discussion, see Pia Soltoft’s article in this special edition.
6. Cavadini, “The Darkest Enigma,” 119–132.
7. Among those who compare Augustine and Descartes on selfhood, a great deal of attention is paid to Descartes’ famous ‘cogito ergo sum’ argument, which grounds his analysis of the self, and Augustine’s ‘si fallor sum’ version of the argument (c. Acad. 3.10.22–3.11.25; lib. arb. 2.3.7; sol. 2.1.1; de Trin. 10.10.14; Civ. Dei 11.26). The prima facie similarity in the structure of the two arguments gives way to complex questions on the form the argument takes in each thinker, on the distinct psychologies underlying the arguments, and the purposes for which the arguments are employed. Descartes is aware of the formal similarities and in an often-referenced letter to Colvius maintains that they give way to basic differences: Augustine connects the proof of self-existence to the divine image and the relation between knowledge and love, while Descartes connects it to the immaterial substance of the mind. Adam and Tannery, Oeuvres de Descartes. 247. Beyond such issues, their arguments are more profoundly separated by the type of self-existence displayed. Augustine utilizes the argument to indicate the divine power that epistemically and ontologically grounds the mind, while Descartes uses the argument to establish the mind’s epistemic independence. For studies on this issue, see for example: Menn, Descartes and Augustine; Matthews, Thought’s ego in Augustine.
8. Pierre Courcelle argues that the ascents are a failed attempt at Plotinian ecstasy (Courcelle, Recherches sur les Confessions, 157–167). James O’Donnell accepts the basic Plotinian structure of the ascents but argues that while Augustine fails in his first mystical ascent (7.10.16), he is successful in his second ascent (7.17.23), at least on Plotinian grounds (O’Donnell, Confessions, 435). Andrew Louth also argues for the strongly Plotinian character of the ascents but contends that Augustine’s search for a more permanent reunion with God leads him toward a Christian model of the beatific vision (Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical, 133).
9. Conf. 7.9.13.
10. Nygren, Agape and Eros, 252–257.
11. Conf. 7.6.10–7.7.11. James O’Donnell notes that even though Courcelle finds Plotinian echoes in the passage, the language of ‘duce te’ (you as my guide) moves in the opposite direction of Plotinus (O’Donnell, Confessions, 437–438).
12. See note 9.
13. Conf. 7.10.16.
14. Teske, ‘The Ambiguity of Love,’ 27.
15. Conf. 7.19.25.
16. For a balanced critique of Augustine on material reality, the body, and sexuality see: Miles, Augustine on the Body; Rist, Augustine, 112–121.
17. Conf. 7.18.24–20.26. Confession is finished by around 397. Michel Barnes argues that by 400, Augustine, through his interpretation of Matthew 5:8 and Philippians 2:6–8, comes to understand better the role of our participation in the church – the body of Christ – as one that purifies us for the vision of God (Barnes, “The Visible Christ and the Invisible Trinity,” 329–355).
18. Conf. 4.10.15–12.19; de Trin. 10.5.7.
19. Augustine’s commitment to the bodily resurrection underscores this point (The City of God 22.4–5, 22.11–21).
20. Conf. 13.4.5, 13.7.8.
21. Ench. 3.11, The City of God 12.6–12.7.
22. Conf. 12.7.7.
23. Drever, Image, Identity, and the Forming, 58–62.
24. Conf. 13.9.10.
25. In ep. Io. 7.1.
26. Ibid., 2.
27. In ep. Io. 7.4. Pia Soltoft argues that Kierkegaard too draws on 1 John 4:8 to argue that God is present in love. It would be interesting to examine the extent to which Kierkegaard’s dialectics allows him to approach the Augustinian position.
28. Teske, “The Ambiguity of Love,” 23. See also: van Bavel, “The Double Face of Love,” 173.
29. Roland Teske and Christian Tornau argue a version of this in maintaining that a Platonist metaphysics provides the context to interpret Augustine’s claims in Confessions, On the Trinity, and elsewhere that the journey into the soul and toward divine love is also a movement into God (Teske, “The Ambiguity of Love,” 30; Tornau, “Does Love Make Us Beautiful,” 99–100).
30. van Bavel, “The Double Face of Love,” 176. See also, Ayres, “Augustine on God as Love,” 483.
31. See note 25.
32. In ep. Io. 7.7, 7.9.
33. de Trin. 15.17.31.
34. de Trin. 15.26.47, 5.2.3–5.7.8.
35. See note 25.
36. In this special edition Antti Raunio develops the Finnish school position that Luther’s model of love also has a notion of deification. It would be interesting to examine the parallels and differences between Augustine and Luther here. Raunio claims that Luther holds an Augustinian position that the divine attributes are essential qualities (i.e. they are convertible with the divine essence), and connects this to Luther’s contention that salvation entails our participation in the divine attributes. Raunio concludes that this participation implies for Luther our unity with the divine essence, that is, our deification.
37. de Trin. 7.3.5. See also, de Trin. 1.7.14, 2.5.9.
38. de Trin. 1.7.14.
39. Conf. 12.6.6.
40. de Trin. 15.16.26.
41. de Trin. 12.6.6–12.6.8; Gn. litt. 3.19.29.
42. See note 33.
43. de Trin. 14.8.11, 14.12.15; Gn. litt. 3.20.31.
44. Marion, “Resting, Moving, Loving,” 24–28; Drever, Image, Identity, 23–26.
45. Gn. litt. 3.20.31.
46. de Trin. 15.17.29–15.18.32.
47. de Trin. 1.8.17, 1.13.30–1.13.31.
48. Modern commentators sometimes seek an ecclesial, intersubjective structure in Augustine’s model of personhood as, for example, in passages where he connects worship to our expression of the Trinitarian image. However, he lacks a sufficient intersubjective ontology to ground personhood within the doxological experience of the church. The teachings of Chiara Lubich offer an interesting possibility of what Augustinian personhood could look like were it to be more squarely grounded in the Church’s liturgical and sacramental experiences of the Trinitarian God. For further discussion see the Lubich article in this special edition.
49. Cavadini, “The Structure and Intention of Augustine’s,” 102–123; Ayres, “The Discipline of Self-knowledge in Augustine’s,” 261–296.
50. Teske, “The Ambiguity of Love,” 30. Augustine’s identification between love and the Spirit, and his corresponding claims on deification, has interesting echoes in the work of William of Saint Thierry who also argues that love is the actual presence of the Spirit in humans that leads to our deification. This generates an important distinction between, on one hand, William and, on the other hand, Bernard, Thomas, and much of medieval scholasticism that reject the equation between love and the Spirit. For this latter group, love elevates us to God and leads to a perfect harmony between our will and divine love, but our will remains our own in a way not true for William. For a further discussion, see the Thierry article in this special edition.
51. Bonner, “Augustine’s Concept of Deification,” 370; Meconi, The One Christ; Wilson-Kastner, “Grace as Participation in the Divine Life,” 135–152.
52. Sermon 23b.1. The first explicit Christian use of ‘deificare’ occurs in this sermon, which dates to 404, about 7 years after the completion of Confessions. However, David Meconi charts three references to ‘participatio’ in Confessions book 7 (7.9.14, 7.18.24, 7.19.25) that move toward his model of deification (Meconi, “The Incarnation and the Role,” 61–75). See also, Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition, 140.
53. Sermon 23b.2.
54. Sermon 23b.1. In his exegesis of Psalm 49.2 and 81.2, Augustine reads the claims that we will become gods through 1 John 3:2 in order to argue that deification is reserved for those justified by Christ’s grace. See also, de Trin. 13.9.12 and 14.12.16–14.19.25.
55. de nat. b. 1, 19, 27.
56. de Trin. 12.9.14–12.11.16.
57. de Trin. 14.12.16, 14.19.25; en. Ps. 49.2; Sermon 166.4.4.
58. Ayres, “Augustine on God as Love,” 478–481.
59. Raymond Canning provides a prophylactic against such misreads in his excellent account of the reciprocity between divine and human love (Canning, The Unity of Love).
60. doc. Chr. 1.4.4–5.5.
61. In his essay in this special edition, Aristotle Papanikolaou draws together Maximus the Confessor’s accounts of love and deification with a model of ethics. Though Augustine never brings together deification and ethics in an explicit a manner, Papanikolaou offers an excellent example of how this might look.
62. In her essay in this special edition, Pia Soltoft argues that Nygren’s critique runs into a similar problem with Kierkegaard, who speaks of one love that is differentiated between natural, preferential love (eros) and ethical, universal love (agape). These two loves are distinct but not opposed (pace Nygren). They have their source and unity within the single love of God. God gives both forms of love to us and in this renders genuine love double-bound: As both a need to love (agape) and a need to be loved (eros).
63. In his essay in this special edition, Marc De Kesel discusses the debate between Fénelon and Malebranche within the wider context of the fight among seventeenth-century French intellectuals on the nature of love and human selfhood. Malebranche moves in an Augustinian direction when he claims that the individual human self finds its identity and love not in its freedom and separation from God, which is Fénelon and Descartes’s position, but only in its radical unity with God. But from an Augustinian perspective, we must add the critical caveat that the unity between the self and God does not entail the deconstruction of the individual self so it can find its true self within the divine self, as Malebranche seems to argue, but rather the reconstruction (or reforming) of the self as the divine image, which finds itself within the divine self not as the divine but as the image of the divine.
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Matthew Drever
Matthew Drever teaches historical and systematic theology at the University of Tulsa. He is the author of the book titled: Image, Identity, and the Forming of the Augustinian Soul (Oxford, 2013).