Bronwen Neil: Book Review: "Let me know you…”: Reflections on Augustine’s Search for God

AUGUST 2004 - ISSUE 3 - ISSN 1448 - 632

Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2003. ISBN 0-8146-2957-1

The title of this small volume comes from the second part of Augustine’s prayer in Soliloquies, 2.1.1: “O unchanging God, let me know myself; let me know you”. The book is the product of many years of teaching and writing on the philosophy of Augustine, but in this work Burt turns to an examination of Augustine’s spirituality. This was also the subject of its prequel, “Let me know myself…”: Reflections on the Prayer of Augustine (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2002).

The structure of these “Reflections on Augustine’s Search for God” is based on the seven steps that lead to the vision of God. The seven stages that Burt attributes to Augustine’s meditation upon Isaiah 11:2-3 [1] are 1. fear of the Lord; 2. piety; 3. knowledge; 4. fortitude; 5. counsel or love of human beings; 6. purification from attachment to the world; and 7. wisdom. At the seventh and final stage “we are at last prepared to receive the eternal vision of God that awaits us beyond death” (p. vii). These stages were equivalent to the seven virtues that Ambrose identified as the gifts of the Holy Spirit, where they are listed in the reverse order as the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of right judgement and courage, the spirit of knowledge and reverence, and the spirit of holy fear in God’s presence (De Mysteriis 7, 42).

It is instructive to compare these seven stages with those that Augustine identifies in his very early work, On the Greatness of the Soul (De Quantitate Animae), written in the two years after his conversion in 386. In this work, the ascent to God was described from a Neo-Platonic understanding of the soul’s union with God, which culminated in contemplation of the divine. The seven stages that the younger Augustine identified in De Qu. An. were: 1. the animative degree of the soul, in which the soul gives life to the body; 2. sense perception; 3. the development of knowledge; 4. moral purification, producing the virtues of prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice; 5. self-contemplation, overcoming the fear of death and achieving tranquillity; 6. purification of the understanding, which allows perception of the real; 7. contemplation of the truth.

It will be seen that there is much overlap between the stages of De Qu. An. and the seven stages described by Burt. The first two have been replaced by two traditional Jewish/Christian virtues: fear of the Lord and piety. The third stage remains that of knowledge, although the later Augustine has a much broader understanding of knowledge than that of the arts and sciences as in De Qu. An.. The fourth stage is that of fortitude, which reveals itself as courage in prayer, prayer to a God who remains hidden (p. 53). Fortitude was just one of the four cardinal virtues that Augustine attributed to the process of moral purification, the fourth stage in De Qu. An., the other virtues being temperance, justice and prudence. These were the four virtues of Stoic philosophy. They were easily adapted to a Christian context: courage is needed for justice, and brave prayer and prudent bravery are two of the reflections on the theme of fortitude that Burt discusses.

It is in the final three stages that we see the most marked difference between the early philosopher Augustine and the later bishop, mature in his faith. In the fifth stage, the soul directs its energy outwards towards others in love, rather than inwards in self-contemplation. Through the Holy Spirit’s gift of counsel we can reach out in love to others (p. 68).The sixth stage is purification of our attachment to the world, which entails a change in our understanding of the world and our place in it. And the final stage is not “contemplation of the truth” but “seeing” the God of love, if not directly then at least in other human beings. The later Augustine believed that the final goal of union with God was to be achieved not through the intellectual exercise of “contemplation”, but through the wisdom that comes of purifying our soul’s desires and loving God in and through other people. After his baptism in 387, Augustine realised, as Burt puts it, “that God was a God of love and that his destiny was to be united to that God, not by ‘contemplation’ but by ‘seeing’ and ‘loving’.” (p. vi).

Burt describes these seven stages with compassion, a quaint sense of humour and great spiritual insight. In the course of his description it becomes clear that Augustine’s journey is every person’s journey towards God. Burt supports his reading with a broad range of quotations from Augustine’s works with a facility that can only come from a lifetime of scholarship in the field. The climax of the book in my reading is the final chapter, “Loving a Still Hidden God”. Here Burt deals with the very human dilemma of how to continue waiting with hope for a God we cannot see. Augustine had a brief glimpse of divine union in an ecstatic vision at Ostia, shared with his mother Monica shortly before her death. This sad event returned him abruptly to the harsh realities of life. Even though the best one can achieve is to see “the back parts of God” as Moses did on Sinai, it is a beginning, as Augustine reminds us in De Trin. 2.17.28. Burt cites Simone Weil’s Waiting for God to bring home to the reader that the attainment of wisdom is waiting patiently for God to manifest. As Burt observes (p. 117),

It is consoling to realize that the guarantee that we shall eventually see God for all eternity is not based on whether or not we have had some mystical experience of him in this life. Rather it is determined by our continuing struggle to be worthy to receive this vision, by our struggle to keep our focus on what is above rather than what is below, by our continuing struggle against temptation to turn back in despair.

In his epilogue, Burt stresses the crucial point that these seven stages are not consecutive, or as he puts it “mutually exclusive” (p. 116). We should not expect to pass through one stage and leave it behind for good as we enter the next one. Frequent relapses and regressions are inevitable as we journey towards the ultimate goal of union with God. This can only be lastingly attained, by grace, in the next life. However, God is present with us at every stage of the journey. That is the infinitely valuable message of hope that the author conveys so effectively in this brief but powerful reflection on the life journey of one of the church’s favourite sinner-saints.

Dr Bronwen Neil, Centre for Early Christian Studies, ACU

[1] “On him [the shoot of Jesse] will rest the spirit of Yahweh, the spirit of wisdom and insight, the spirit of counsel and power, the spirit of knowledge and fear of Yahweh: his inspiration will lie in fearing Yahweh…” (Is. 11:2-3, New Jerusalem Translation). In the Vulgate translation, piety later replaced the first “fear of Yahweh”, eliminating the repetition of the Septuagint.

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