Augustine

In Book IX of his Confessions, Augustine writes:

This is Augustine's entire narration of his own baptism. It is curious given Augustine's characteristic preoccupation with initiation into the Christian life. This understated account hardly serves as the kind of literary climax that a reader expects. The reader of the Confessions is trained to see what a crucial event this must necessarily be in the life of any Christian. Moreover, the reader ascertains how momentous an undertaking this must necessarily be for this particular sinner who has for so long gratified his habits of resistance. The reader rightly waits for baptism to assume spotlight and center stage. Instead the reader receives this mild and modest report. Having stated these curiosities, I hope to render them incurious by giving attention to Augustine's theology of baptism and ongoing conversion.

In Augustine's account of his own baptism, he intersperses his personal conversion narrative with the stories of the conversions and deaths of others – of Verecundus and Nebridius. In Augustine's baptism, he is joined by others – his friend Alypius and his son Adeodatus. Following the brief record of their baptisms – of Alypius, Adeodatus, and Augustine – Augustine meditates on the use of hymns in the liturgy and the discovery of the bodies of two saints. His reflections testify to his praise for the fullness of the presence of God to us. The arc of the story moves from “once I had gasped for you” to “now at last I breathed your fragrance, insofar as your wind can blow through our house of straw.”Footnote ⁷

The method of conveying the message is, in part, the message. Augustine's mode of interspersing and shifting says something of the character of conversion. Conversion itself is an interspersing and a shifting. Augustine moves from telling of his struggle to maintain his individuality to the universal story, from the story of Augustine to the story of one becoming a part of the people of God. We find this characterization echoed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which reads, “the person baptized belongs no longer to himself, but to him who died and rose for us. From now on, he is called to be subject to others, to serve them in the communion of the Church, and to ‘obey and submit’ to the Church's leaders.”Footnote ⁸ The public character of baptism is affirmed in Book IX and explored in the previous book in Victorinus’ the profession of faith. Despite the priests’ offers, Victorinus refuses to privatize the act of baptism.Footnote ⁹

In this shift of Augustine's from ‘the story of Augustine’ to ‘the story of the people of God’, he includes the narratives of other individuals – of Verecundus and Nebridius, of Alypius and Adeodatus – subordinating all to the larger story of which they have now become a part. In Book IX alone Augustine weaves together five deaths and five baptisms to highlight themes of our rebirth and God's work in us as God's works are wrought through us. Significant action becomes something that happens to us, not something we do.

Baptism's effects include “salvation, higher spiritual knowledge, and stability of soul,” according to one persuasive interpretation of Augustine.Footnote ¹⁰ What contemplation of divine things there is, since after all Augustine is quite interested in it as a catalyst in his narrative, is grounded in the sacraments of baptism, Eucharist, confession. Contemplation at best provides moments of transcendence, however, such moments are not sustainable and are perhaps not fundamentally what the Christian life is about. The Christian life is about growing in love.

Now I come to another point that I take to be telling. Just as with baptism, so too with the virtues. Again, reader expectation is not fulfilled in Augustine's display of the virtues consequent to baptism. A reader may have thought that, in the pattern of the pre-conversion narrative, the post-baptismal narrative would involve Augustine's re-narration of Augustine's own worldly activities, now giving God's credit for the virtues. One expects to hear about how much his life changes or at the very least begins to change as he is shaped by a whole litany of Christian practices.

Rather than focusing on this new life into which he has been called, Augustine focuses on his mother as exemplar. He turns to her virtues and to her death. Now the reader sees a display of the virtues in the example of Monica. He writes, “I will speak not of her gifts, but of the gifts with which you endowed her,” writing of her wisdom, gentleness, mercy, devotion, patience, peace-making, and loyalty.Footnote ¹¹ These virtues that Augustine is now able to individuate gives good indication of the kind of narrative in which Augustine has been adopted. The new narrative and the new individual virtues are inseparable from one another. Only now that Augustine is Christian can he see that the gifts with which God endowed her are called wisdom, gentleness, mercy, devotion, and so on.

Now that Augustine focuses on his mother and her virtues, the reader also sees a display of the virtues in the authorship of Augustine. His writing is an attempt to be truthful. In loving devotion, he recounts Monica's virtues and describes his own struggle to love her appropriately. He resists despair. He confesses sin. He intercedes for her. His account is instructive insofar as Augustine directs his focus on an exemplar rather than on himself. Turning his gaze to the virtues of another, Augustine himself displays the virtues that he is now enabled to see.Footnote ¹² His rhetoric and narrative images the theology it depicts.

In sum, Augustine's provoking account of his own baptism unfolds along the lines of least two significant elements: again what I call ‘dynamism’ and ‘unraveling.’ These two elements are characteristic of Augustine's story only insofar as they are a part of this particular narrative concerning growth in virtue. This narrative determines what growth looks like and therefore what dynamism and unraveling are. By the principal element of dynamism, baptism itself does not provide any solution to Augustine's search but becomes the means by which he is confirmed in a new stage of the soul's journey. He now has full access to the Eucharist and penance as his succor during his struggles to lead the life to which he is called. Baptism involves him in ritualistic tracing of his steps back to the Eucharistic altar. With the gracious assistance of the sacraments, the virtues are open to perfection over the course of a lifetime.

There is also an unraveling, which itself is in part the explanation for his recourse to the sacraments. Augustine now has formalized his confession of being a sinner before God. Baptism confirms previous failures in virtue. It becomes the means by which Augustine sees that any of his own attempts at virtue will damn him to the same fate. Rather than baptism eliminating the need for Augustine's confession, baptism does quite the opposite as it underscores confessions’ continued need.

Thomas

Thomas adopts these insights of Augustine regarding the virtues and sacraments, and I focus on his doing so in the Second Part of the Second Part of the Summa, Question 47 (ST 2a2ae, q47). Here Aquinas treats prudence and in article 14, he asks whether prudence is in all who have grace. He agrees with Gregory that all having grace also have prudence.Footnote ¹³ Even the young may have a form of prudence, according to the objection and reply to objection 3. Nestled in this reply, Thomas brings baptism into his discussion of the virtues to explain the unusual character of the “prudence of grace”:

Thomas introduces baptism to explain how even the young may be prudent. The baptized enjoy this “settled endowment” simply by virtue of their entrance into a community, the body of Christ, the Church, which is given prudence as gift. In such cases, the Church is given the knowledge and friendship with God that makes salvation possible.

Children who become members of the Church are given what the Church has. They receive this habit, “though not [yet] as an activity.” When things go rightly, children learn to properly use this endowment finally actualizing this habit. When things go wrongly, children may grow to reject their endowment though they never lose their baptismal character. At worst, such children become prodigal sons. They never lose their identity. They always retain access to what is not rightfully theirs in the first place.

Thomas is careful to distinguish this prudence of baptized children from its complete forms. Its complete forms entail the activity of prudence, which in turn merits its increase. Therefore baptism may mark the infusion of a form of virtues not available to the creature apart from it, but baptism is only a start. The creature must act through the virtues endowed by the sacraments for the virtues’ perfection. Thomas mentions baptism to mark the important difference that it introduces to the moral life and to furthermore signal that the virtues it confers must be made complete through their exercise.

Thomas’ allusion at the end of this passage – “The Apostle tells us that strong meat belongs to them that are of full age, those who by reason of use have their sense exercised to discern both good and evil” – gives the reader a sense of the progression Thomas intends for those who are to grow in virtue. Although children may receive prudence through a settled endowment, it is not yet enacted. Progress: the young begin to act on this endowment. More progress: those who act on this endowment are called to even further activity, hoping to “merit an increase till at length it grows complete.”Footnote ¹⁵

Yet Thomas would not overestimate our growth. The formation in these virtues carries along with it a sharpened capacity to recognize how we are not formed in the virtues in an ‘unraveling.’ Growth in virtue makes us constantly young again, and thus we must constantly take recourse to the sacraments.

Unraveling finds its home in several moments of Thomas’ Summa. Take, for example, his account of acquired virtues in ST 1a2ae. Contrary to expectations for virtues that are ours according to “nature,” acquired virtues are surprisingly “theological.” For Thomas clarifies that acquired virtues are “not of course without God's help” and “not without God.”Footnote ¹⁶ They are movements of love that express our relationship with a gratuitous and loving Creator.Footnote ¹⁷ Moreover this profound account of agency results from Thomas’ brilliant combination of an ostensible metaphysical ordering with his careful attention to the moral and spiritual formation of his readers.Footnote ¹⁸ As agents ourselves, we readers may infer that progress we attempt to make on our own may make us more sinful rather than less!Footnote ¹⁹

So much for Thomas’ unraveling; now, his dynamism. For both Thomas and Augustine, charity always has room to grow. The moral life is constantly in flux, moving from potency to act. Christians either grow through participation in the sacraments and in the life of God open to them by charity, or they vitiate and even relinquish their gifts through sin. Baptism plays a crucial role in this movement toward or away from God. Thomas’ invocation of it shows simultaneously its power and its limitation with respect to the agents who receive them. Its power is to confer the infused virtues, which in turn perfect the acquired. Baptism's limitation is that it may not effect our full perfection. Yet its limitation is essentially our limitation, as limited creatures wounded by sin. To the extent that sin compromises the virtues conferred by baptism, the sacrament is received while we stifle “the glorious cortege of all the virtues.”Footnote ²⁰ We are limited, incomplete, when we receive the sacraments without also receiving their fruits.

Another way to navigate the relationship between the sacraments and the virtues comes by language Thomas offers elsewhere in the Summa of ‘imperfect’ and ‘perfect.’ To receive the sacraments in good faith but to fail to grow in virtue names an ‘imperfect’ participation in the perfection open to us creatures through the sacraments. (Of course we bring inherent limitation to the sacraments by the fact that we need them in the first place.) Beyond the limitations of nature are the limitations we choose ourselves. We choose limitation by sin, which comes to bear on our reception of them. As we choose sin, we choose our own imperfection.

Yet the power of the sacraments should not be underestimated, as when we receive them most fully.Footnote ²¹ This is the case of receiving the sacraments and growing in the virtues. When we participate ‘perfectly,’ the sacraments are the instruments by which we are enabled to overcome our limitation by sin. In such a case, the grace of the sacraments is truly “accompanied by the glorious cortege of all the virtues.”Footnote ²² The sacraments therefore perfect all aspects of the human person, not only completing the virtues but by conferring upon them a graced unity in participated likeness of the Divine Nature.Footnote ²³ The most complete and perfect participation in the sacraments entails the perfection of both the acquired and infused virtues. Nothing remains untouched by charity. Describing our perfection, Thomas leaves no part of the human person behind because he understands that neither does God.

In this rendering, Thomas’ relative lack of focus on sin means that sin does not determine salvation. Charity wins the day. Thomas’ treatment of sin in fact shares a great deal in common with Augustine's account of the same. Augustine says the good life consists in the right regulation of loves. In De Trinitate, he writes:

Thomas iterates the Augustinian line on loves using language of false, imperfect, and perfect. Thomas’ variants between false, imperfect, and perfect virtue lend themselves to naming how in the particulars one loves God either falsely, imperfectly, or perfectly. One can thereby also name how one loves the goods of the world either falsely, imperfectly, or perfectly. Sin is itself a false or imperfect love of the world, for it makes worldly goods out to be something they are not. In sin, the soul, “loving its own power, slips onwards from the whole which is common, to a part, which belongs especially to itself.”Footnote ²⁵ In contrast, the only true love is love for something for what it truly is.

Sin marks a stifling in growth and virtue. That is not all. Sin finally leads to growth in virtue, by God's grace. To recognize sin is an achievement that requires that one go back and relearn the things one has learned so far regarding the virtues. This real progression, rather than the simulacra that precedes it, finally leads to the fullness of life open to us in the sacraments. Creatures, rather than determining themselves, are finally are determined by God's love. The process of the Confessions shows readers of the Summa what narration and re-narration looks like. They show how growth in sin enjoys a complex relationship to growth in virtue.

By this reading of the Summa, ‘perfect’ and ‘imperfect’ themselves become stages in a narrative that can only be told from one perspective. That is, the movement from imperfect to perfect participation is a narrative that can only be told from the perspective of more perfect participation. Those who are imperfectly participating will not have a sense of that imperfection. If they come to recognize it, they have already moved toward perfect participation.

This perspectival shift is yet another lesson that Confessions offers to readers of Thomas’ Summa. Augustine helps readers see that one's progression in the moral life is not always seen by the self who embodies that narrative and if it is, it is often only glimpsed retrospectively. The very notion of beginning and ends are retrospective notions projected onto events. Augustine is sure of naming his beginnings because he is sure of the story by which he measures them. Once he is given something of a glimpse of the ultimate constant standpoint, as a viator in via he can begin to identify the fragmentariness of his activities.Footnote ²⁶ As Augustine begins this retrospective narration and re-narration in the Confessions, he sees himself in no theoretical, general, or universal human terms, but in light of the Gospel. He defies characterizations of sin or virtue in nontheistic or even vaguely theistic terms because the only terms appropriate are Trinitarian. Likewise readers of Thomas might finally employ this perspectival shift as they read the initial work on the virtues from the ultimate standpoint of Christology and the sacraments. Again, all virtue has a theological character, even if it is not, technically, “theological virtue”!

As I draw this thought experiment to a close, I ought to subject my own conclusions to scrutiny. I offer two points of self-criticism. First, I use the word ‘narrative’ often throughout the paper, perhaps too much. This is especially evident with Augustine's narrative, which sits uneasily within the description ‘narrative’ as it is not ordered temporally or chronologically but rather iconically.Footnote ²⁷ What Augustine appears to want from his own narrative and his narrativization of the narratives of others is the inscription of all those narratives into a tableau that can be looked at in ictu oculi. It appears then that narrative is a preliminary interpretive term. Therefore, I need to go to greater lengths to explain its being overcome to the extent possible. These additional efforts would likely thicken the reading of Augustine I offer here.

A second point of self-criticism is that I have valorized what I find Thomas’ fruitful distinction between perfect and imperfect to a degree that exceeds Thomas’ own use. Such a concentration may turn the distinction between perfect and imperfect into an end itself, which is ultimately misguided. Instead, according to the principles of my proposed reading, I should relocate Thomas as standing with Augustine regarding sin and sanctity. What does this mean, ultimately, for Thomas’ reading regarding baptism and the virtues?

Dynamism and unraveling are ways of naming the complexities of greater participation in that friendship with Charity Itself, God Himself. Such a movement does not end in ever greater specification of kinds of virtue, but in a Christological moment. The road to fullness in virtue begins with baptism, which again turns the gaze upon Christ and His work wrought on our behalf. Renewal in baptism is not our final beginning but we are made new again in the renewal of our baptismal vows and in the celebration of the Eucharist. Dynamism leads each new beginning ineluctably to its end; unraveling points to the penultimacy of every end and every beginning. Far from a linear progression, growth in virtue looks more like a loop back to the confessional, the font, and the altar as one returns to one's beginnings again.