In his earlier study of contemplation in Augustine, Professor Kenney concentrated on Augustine's most famous work. He argued for a reading of Confessions as primarily a contemplative text, and one which demands an appreciation of the essentially theological nature of Augustine's mysticism – an appreciation largely lacking in modern assessments of the mystical tradition. Kenney interprets the Confessions as offering, not a baptised Platonism, but a quite alternative theology, rooted in the church's scriptures and life. The aim is to free Augustine's account of contemplation from the distortions of an alien and secularised psychological model, so as to reveal with clarity the irreducibly theological frame of the experience described.
This more recent work has been described by Kenney as a ‘prequel’ to his earlier study. Through a detailed chronological study of Augustine's developing understanding of contemplation in the period from his conversion until completion of Confessions in 400, Kenney continues to uncover Augustine's theology of contemplation.
The first chapter provides a lucid account of the range of pagan Platonism in late antiquity, and the role of contemplation in its theology, before giving attention to the particular school which exercised a direct influence on Augustine's developing thought. It was Plotinus who became ‘the bearer of transcendence to Augustine’, but in the service of articulating the latter's radically diverse soteriology. Platonism would henceforth be ‘at once an ally and a rival’.
Kenney proceeds (chapter 2) to examine Augustine's earliest extant catechumenal writings. Their evidence shows that, while Augustine gratefully received from Platonism the postulation of an eternal and intelligible world, the articulation of the ineffable One, in terms of the apophatic theology of divine transcendence found in Plotinus, is entirely lacking in these early writings. Even at this early stage, the ‘deep logic’ of Augustine's theology was orthodox and Christian. Special attention is directed to the prologue to Soliloquia in which Kenney sees already articulated the main outline of Augustine's later theology, together with the distinctive insights on which contemplation would there be based. In a clear revision of the Plotinian notion of omnipotence, for example, Augustine presents it as both ontological and noetic – in the sense that God has ‘immediate divine knowledge of individuals’. The God discovered by Augustine within the soul is the ‘intentional God’ of the Psalms, who knows him intimately. Contemplation of God is at core relational.
A third chapter unpacks more fully Augustine's articulation of contemplation in these early catechumenal works. Kenney identifies two distinct models of contemplation in the Cassiciacum treatises: the first emphasising the necessity for prevenient divine grace in the search for what is eternal and true; the other recognising in reason a certain power to raise the attention of the soul to its eternal source. By comparing the earlier works with passages in the Confessions, Kenney shows the large degree of consistency between them.
The fourth chapter concentrates on the decade following Augustine's baptism in 387. Kenney traces Augustine's thought in the monastic texts and early catholic treatises of these years. Here contemplation begins to be interpreted primarily as ‘ascent to God grounded in the soul's ethical advancement’. The essential context for understanding contemplation is the provision of divine grace which purifies the soul and enables it to recover its original condition. The soul's healing also requires its own active participation in the process through faith. The church's authoritative teachings which must first be believed, and then understood, mark out the road to transcendence for human beings.
In chapter 5 we return, full-circle as it were, to the Confessions and to Augustine's most famous account of contemplation – the vision at Ostia in book 9. Kenney approaches it by means of an analysis of Augustine's defence, in book 12, of his transcendental reading of scripture. Spiritual exegesis of Genesis reveals the God whom he encountered at Ostia to be ‘a transcendent God, one whose very transcendence is written in the heart and in scripture’. This polemical exegetical context is skilfully used to shed light on the Ostian ascent narrative. The book concludes with a summing up of the significance and influence of Augustine's theology of contemplation.
This work of solid and lucid scholarship will be valued by all with an interest in the development of Augustine's theological mind, and in his contribution to the flowering of what would become normative, classical Christian theology.
