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The Hippo and the Fox: a cautionary tale

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Margaret Atkins
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Extract

Matthew Fox’s popular but over-simplified retelling of the history of Christian attitudes to creation makes St Augustine the prime enemy. In the table at the back of Original Blessing, Augustine is the first-named spokesperson in the enemy camp, so to speak, of ‘fall-redemption’ theologians. It might seem appropriate therefore to borrow the pages of a Dominican journal to ask whether Fox has somewhat missed the point. It seems important to correct the distorted account for two reasons, negatively because Fox’s sharp distinction into either ‘creation- centred’ or ‘fall-redemption’ theologians allows him to pretend that these two fundamental elements of Christian theology are conflicting rather than complementary; positively, because Augustine himself has a great deal to contribute to serious thought about creation.

I should like to trace three themes which Augustine explored in the light of both Biblical thought and ancient (particularly Neoplatonic) philosophy and which run through his reflections upon creation. I want to argue that far from being the pernicious influence that led the Western world to an uncritical anthropocentrism, Augustine in fact provides certain valuable insights for a balanced and properly theocentric theology of creation. The three themes I shall discuss are:

(i) ‘reason’ as the thing that distinguishes humans from animals;

(ii) the goodness of all created things;

(iii) the dependence of the creation upon the Creator.

Information

Type
Original Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 73 , Issue 864 , October 1992, pp. 497 - 506
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

1 I am not, of course, the first to complain of Fox's rather cavalier treatment of his heroes and his villains alike; see. for example, Simon Tugwell's review of Breakthrough in New Blackfriars. April 1982, Oliver Davies, ‘Eckhart and Fox’, Tablet, 5 August, 1989, Kenneth C. Russell, 'Matthew Fox's Illuminations of Hildegaard of Bingen', Listening, vol. 24, no. 2, Spring 1989 and (on the medieval mystics in general) Brearley, Margaret, ‘Matthew Fox: Creation Spirituality for the Aquarian Age’ in Christian Jewish Relations, vol. 22, no 2, Summer 1989Google Scholar.

2 An outstanding treatment of the last theme is Mary Midgely's Beast and Man (Ithaca, 1978)Google Scholar. For criticism of the abuse of the concept of rationality with reference to the treatment of animals, see Midgely, , Animals and why they Matter (Harmondsworth, 1983)Google Scholar and, more radically, Clark, S.R.L., The Moral Status of Animals (Oxford, 1984)Google Scholar.

3 See e.g. Regan, T., ‘The nature and possibility of an environmental ethic’, in Regan, All that Dwell Therein (London, 1982)Google Scholar, Rolston, Holmes III, ‘Are values in nature subjective or objective?’ in Elliot, R. and Gare, A. (edd.), Environmental Philosophy (St Lucia, 1983)Google Scholar, K. Goodpaster, ‘On being morally considerable’, Journal of Philosophy, June 1978.

4 Porphyry, On Abstinence form Animal Flesh III. 20.

5 Politics I 2, 1253a7–18.

6 City of God I. 20, On the Custom of the Manichees 54. Augustine's move here is in fact an odd one; I have discussed this in an article forthcoming in the Bulletin for the Institute of Classical Studies, ‘“In praise of the worm”: Augustine on the goodness of creatures’.

7 E.g. John Passmore, Man's Responsibility for Nature, p.184.

8 DGL III. 32

9 Sermon XLIII. 4; For a full discussion see see A.G. Hamman, L'Homme, Image de Dieu (Paris, 1987), chapter 10. Augustine's exegesis has, of course, a great deal in common with other church fathers (see H J. Somers, ‘Image de Dieu: les sources de L'exégèse augustinienne’ in Revue des Études Augustiniennes 1961). Incidentally, the claim that Fox repeatedly makes of Augustine ‘“Man but not woman is made in the image of God”, he wrote’ (e. g. The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, p.31, is simply false. In fact that is a position that Augustine was at pains to refute (DGL III. 22, cf XI.58, On the Trinity, XII 10–20).

10 DGL IX. 25, DGcM I. 29; Sermon XLIII. 4, On Free Will I.16. Sometimes he attributes the Wildness of most animals towards humans to the effect of the fall (e.g. DGcM ibid., Tractate on the letter of John III. 6–7). One of the ‘original blessings’, perhaps, was a greater communion with non‐human animals.

11 He does remark once, in passing, ‘even Augustine alludes to creation’ (Original Blessing, introduction, p.21). Fox might perhaps have paused to ask why his hero Eckhart considered Augustine's The Literal Meaning of Genesis one of his favourite works (Meister Eckhart: the Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises and Defense, ed. Colledge, Edmund and McGinn, Bernard, (New York, 1981)Google Scholar, introduction, p. 29).

12 On True Religion, XLI.77.

13 I am not assuming that Augustine used Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius as direct Sources.

14 On the Parts of Animals, II. 16, Phyics II. 3, 195a23–25.

15 The Meditations IX. 35 (translated Grube).

16 On the Customs of the Manichees 11.

17 DGcM I.32, DGL III. 37.

18 Marcus' holism is shared by some modern ‘Green’ thinkers. Pantheism, however, is not the intellectual ally some of its ‘Green’ admirers think (see S.R.L. Clark, ‘Amando il mondo vivente,’Cenobio 40, 1991; a shorter version is in Argument I, 1990)

19 DGL III. 37, cf Enneads III.II.3; compare also DGcM I. 25 with Marcus Aurelius VIII. 50.

20 507a ff.

21 See John Rist, ‘Plotinus on matter and evil’, Phronesis 1961.

22 For an account see e.g., Confessions VII. 11–16 and Encheiridion 9–15.

23 Tractate on the Gospel of John I. 13.

24 Confessions V. 8, City of God V. 5–17, 21.

25 DGL V. 43; the same passage preempts another of Fox's favourite themes, the wonder of living bodies.

26 DGL IV. 22, ibid. VIII. 48 This treatise, incidentally, quotes plentifully from the Wisdom books so favoured by Fox. Cf also De Trinitate III. 13 on God working ‘inwardly’.

27 For a full and rich discussion see Grabowski, S. J., The All‐Present God: a Study in Saint Auustine (London, 1954)Google Scholar.

28 Tractate on the Letter of John, II. 11.

29 DGcM I. 26, cf DGL III. 22.

30 X. 6.

31 E.g. Commentary on Psalm XLIV 7.

32 VII. 31 (translated Bettenson).

33 E.g. Commentary on Psalm XLVIII, 10.

34 Fox is just one of an army of current journalists and popular writers eager to blame Augustine, with various degrees of historical implausibility, for an astonishing range of contemporary evils. If you can't beat ‘em, join ’em. I offer a five‐pound book token for the most plausible and imaginative proof of his responsibility for the introduction of the poll tax.