How does St Augustine conceive of the relationship between humility and divine illumination

Edward Stroud Michaelmas Essay

What role does humility play in Augustine’s understanding of divine

illumination?

Introduction

In this paper I will look at the role that humility plays in

Augustine’s notion of divine illumination. I argue that humility is

the ground of all human seeking of God, which for Augustine is the

source of all participation in God and hence all knowledge of God.

Despite the central role of humility, particularly in The Confessions,

there is remarkably little literature focusing on the productive

role of humility in Augustine’s thought. There is more looking at

the negative impact of pride, but there is little mention of

humility. Anecdotally, Augustine through the ages: an encyclopedia under

‘humility’ has simply ‘see pride’. Thus I hope this paper can

further the scholarly debate in this area.

To do so I will look at how Augustine understands humility in The

Confessions, then De Trinitate before finally looking at the role that

Augustine thinks that the Church plays in the formation of humility.

In my section on The Confessions I will look at Book VII and VIII. These

books are particularly fitting because they contain two parallel

visions of God, one with and one without humility. Reading them

together helps to emphasise the role humility plays. I will propose

that Book VII shows that any ascent without humility, grounded in

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the love of God, is impossible. Book VIII builds on this theme,

showing that only in cleaving to God, which is the essence of

humility, can the human person know God. From this I will look at De

Trinitate, outlining the Christology which Augustine thinks makes

seeking and finding God possible. I will propose that Augustine sees

Christ as the ground of human yearning for God. By entering into

this yearning so the human being comes to participate in the

Trinitarian life of God. To justify this claim I will look at this

theme in Augustine’s understanding of the incarnation and the

resurrection. Finally I will look at Augustine’s understanding of

Christ as the Church, drawing out the ecclesial setting of humility.

I will propose that it is only in the Church that the human being

encounters the fullness of God’s love, and comes to enter fully into

Christ’s humility. In doing so the human person is taught what it

means to truly seek God.

The Confessions

For Augustine we can only know God in humility, because it is only

in humility that we can cleave to God, and only in doing so that we

can receive God’s illumination of Godself. Book VII contains this

enlightenment in the form of a failure. It shows the dangers of

pride and how it prevents participation in God. Augustine’s attempt

to ascend to God by his own means shows that such an ascent is

impossible. No human being can achieve a vision of God this way.

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Therefore Augustine comes to reject, or at least qualify the

insights of neo-Platonism. In their place Book VII proposes that the

human being cannot come to know God apart from Godself. Indeed, for

Augustine participation in God is the condition for all knowledge

(Harrison, 2008: 43). This is because to properly know anything in

its fullness requires the recognition that it is dependent on God

for its existence (Mascall, 1956: 29). Augustine understands this

illumination as participation in God’s self-knowledge, which is

impossible for fallen humanity. This is why sanctification, and

hence humility, is fundamental to divine illumination.

This sanctification can only come through God’s love. The fruit of

this is humility, which provides a fitting union of Augustine’s

understanding of knowledge and love. Love is able to create humility

because its essence is to draw the ego out of itself into a communal

life (Van Bavel in Rule: 55), in which the ego becomes the fullness

of self (7.7.11). In love the human being cannot remain in the

illusion that she is all; but love creates space in the self for the

other. This takes a kenotic form, in which the human person abandons

claims of ownership over all things, including self, and instead

recognises that all reality springs from God’s gifts (1.20.31). For

Augustine this ushers in a whole-hearted seeking of God, which for

Augustine, is the ground of all participation in God (Ep. Io. 4.6).

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This healing of pride, and the delusions it brings, springs from the

work of the Mediator. Only in Christ can the human person enter into

God. This is why Augustine discusses the Manichees and why he

dismisses their teaching. He discusses it because he thinks that the

Manichees try to achieve knowledge solely by applying human

understanding to the nature of the universe instead of humbling the

self and receiving knowledge from God. This is also the reason is

can be dismissed, because ‘they do not speak your Word’ (7.2.3).

Literally, they try to speak of God without participating in God

through Christ the Word.

Thus the discussion on the Manichees and neo-Platonism should not be

seen as two distinct conversations within the Book, but rather part

of an overarching theme. Augustine thinks that neo-Platonism has

much more to recommend it than Manicheism (7.9.14) but it still has

the same failing. It still operates out of an isolated idea of the

self, attempting to achieve knowledge of God by reason alone

(7.17.23). The mistake here is not to attempt to know God, but to

attempt to do so by reason, while denying the light by which all

becomes intelligible – Christ (Evans, 1982: 36 & 62). This explains

why Book VII’s ascent is not wholly unsuccessful, yet does not

satisfy Augustine’s cravings to know God and be transformed by this

knowing. In his own words:

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I saw with my soul’s eye, such as it is, an unchangeable

light, a light above my soul’s eye, above my mind; not the

ordinary light that is visible to the flesh, nor something of

the same sort but greater… [it was] higher because it made me,

and I was lower because I was made by it. He who knows the

truth, know this light, and he who knows this light knows

eternity. Love knows this light. (7.10.16)

First I will look at the success of this ascent: not only does

Augustine manage to see this ‘unchangeable light’ but he also

receives illumination that this light is higher than he is because

it is the Creator, ‘it made me, and I was lower because I was made

by it’. However, I would suggest that the failing of this vision

lies in the last sentence ‘Love knows this light’. Augustine here is

incapable of truly loving this light, and this is why he falls back

down to lower things. It his inability to love which limits his

knowledge. Augustine is in need of a sanctification which he cannot

bring about himself.

This sanctification comes by an encounter with the love of God,

through Christ, from which humility springs. Augustine writes ‘where

was the love that builds on the foundation of humility, which is Christ Jesus (1Cor.

8.1, 3.11)?’ When did the Platonists books teach that?’ (7.20.26).

The relationship between love, Christ and humility reveals an

important element of Augustine’s understanding of humility. It shows

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that humility is not something static, it is not a trait possessed

as we tend to think of it today, but rather it is something dynamic

which initiates us into the drama of the divine life. How this is

possible will become more obvious when we look at the relationship

between humility and seeking God. But the seed of this thought can

already be seen in the fact that humility is brought about by love.

Humility is no less dynamic than the love of God, which grants and

fuels it. For Augustine, the love of God is always a love which

incites us to respond, drawing us into full personhood through

leading us to participate in the personhood of Christ (McIntosh,

1998: 158). Humility as the outworking of this love, is equally

dynamic. Both love and humility are divine realities into which the

human being is ingratiated through Christ. How Christ accomplishes

this will become more apparent when we look at the De Trinitate.

The lack of Christ’s humility in the Platonists reveals, to

Augustine, the dangers of pride. He comes to see that evil clouds

the mind, making it impossible for the human being to know God

(Evans, 1982: 29). This stresses the importance of reading

sanctification and divine illumination together in Augustine’s

thoughts. Accounts of Book VII which fail to note the role of

humility can separate these intertwined components (Kenny, 2005:

58). The prominence of this in Augustine’s thought is nicely shown

by his opposition to Pelagianism. For Augustine, Pelagius cannot be

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right in suggesting that the human being can come to sanctification

by her own will because the human being does not even know what

goodness is by herself (OGFC: 175). This is a lesson that Augustine

learns from his own experience. He writes that ‘I was separated from

you [God] by my pride and, and my face was so puffed up that my eyes

were closed’ (7.7.11).

Having recognised in Book VII that an ascent by his own means is

impossible, in Book VIII Augustine accepts that only in humbly

cleaving to God, can the human being come to know God and indeed

herself. What he struggles with in this chapter is the implications

of this recognition. He writes that ‘I had chosen the Way, who is

our Saviour, but was still reluctant to pass through the narrow

places of that Way (cf Matt 7.14)’ (8.1.1). Augustine knows he needs

to be transformed by God if he is to know God, but he does not know

how to achieve this, or even if he can bring himself to truly desire

this. This shows how divine illumination and sanctification act

together. It is not just sanctification which is required for divine

illumination. For Augustine, divine illumination does not merely

bring knowledge but a reorientation of the human being, which is

itself sanctifying, and salvific. This is precisely because

illumination is a ‘spiritual encounter within which knowing takes

place’ (McIntosh, 2004:233).

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Book VIII begins to draw out this theme. Augustine comes to

recognise how deeply flawed and broken he is, and in doing so begins

to know and be transformed by God. He prays to God ‘You took me from

behind my own back, where I had placed myself so long as I refused

to attend to myself, and you set me before my own face (Ps 50.21) , where

I could see how foul I was: twisted and dirty, full of stains and

sores.’ (8.7.16). This revelation of human brokenness and need of

God leads Augustine deeper into humility because it begins to reveal

the depth of God’s atoning love. As the human person recognises her

own brokenness so she can come to recognise Christ. For Augustine

Christ can only be encountered when the human person comes down to

‘the level at which he has chosen to live, the level of ruined and

scarred humanity’ (Rowan Williams, 2004: 21). Significantly though,

Augustine does not simply see the human person as broken, but

destined for praising and participating in God. This will be focused

on later.

Moreover, Augustine thinks that it is only in the light of this dual

revelation, of the broken now but the end of glory, that the human

being can take up their proper place in the created order, what

Candler refers to as ‘reading reality’ correctly (2006:3).

Augustine thinks that the human being reads creation properly when

she reads it humbly. Furthermore, for Augustine, creation cannot be

understood or properly dwelt in without a very real participation in

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this transcendent reality. In participation the will and the

intellect is transformed into the likeness of God, through grace so

that the human being can come to know God, and in doing so come to

know that she is loved by God. Human beings come to read reality in

‘the mind of the Son who regards all things with a view to the

Father’s goodness, which is a habit of praying without ceasing’

(Schumacher, 2011: 229). This is because performing actions of

knowing as the Father knows them brings the human being into the

divine life in which the Father knows through the Son and through

the Spirit (ibid). Thus, the Trinity is shown to be the ground of all

true acts of knowing (McGinn, 2004: 247).

It is important to recognise that this enlightenment, or ‘reading of

reality’ is not just an intellectual or propositional illumination.

Indeed, Augustine despairs that his intellect has not led him to

knowledge of God exclaiming:

What is it we are enduring? What is it? What have you heard?

The untaught arise and lay hold of heaven (Matt 11.12) while we,

for all our learning have no heart – see where we wallow in

flesh and blood! Are we ashamed to follow them, merely because

they have gone first? Should we not rather be ashamed not to

follow them? (8.8.19)

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For Augustine this sanctifying knowledge of God is only brought

about by a deep yearning for and seeking of God. The sanctification

of the will and indeed the intellect comes about in seeking God; no

more than this can be done. Ironically, this searching in prayer and

crying out to God (8.1.1, 8.7.17, 8.10.22 etc.) is so essential to

book VIII, that the reader can sometimes miss it. Just as in reading

we forget to notice what is most essential to our activity – the

individual letters that compose the words. Despite the ease with

which this is overlooked, Augustine sets this out clearly in the

opening paragraph writing, ‘I saw that every substance comes from

your substance. I desired not to be more certain about you, but to

stand more firmly in you’ (8.1.1). This nicely links reading reality

correctly with cleaving to God. Augustine has come to recognise that

God is the ground of all reality, whether it be creation, yearning or

humility.

For Augustine true yearning is impossible without humility. Before

his conversion Augustine cannot know God as he wishes because he

seeks God guardedly, reserving part of himself. This is not the

nature of how God must be sought, or indeed loved. The parallel

between seeking and love is not a coincidence. I can put it no

better than McIntosh when he writes that

This striving, having marked and identified the Seeker and the

Sought, is itself fully identified and realised as love; for

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now the seeker and the sought are constituted in a

relationship to each other and so the striving originary

dynamic of their relationship is recognised and consummated as

love. (1998: 161)

For Augustine seeking God, the expression of humility, is a response

to God’s primordial act of love, which itself call us to love. To

return to Book VIII, it is significant that Augustine’s conversion

is proceeded by a vision in which he is asked the following: ‘Why do

you stand back, trusting in yourself, and not stand firm? Cast

yourself on him and do not be afraid. He will not draw back and let

you fall’ (8.11.27). Thus Augustine’s conversion comes when he

completely abandons himself to God, throwing himself on the floor

and weeping (8.12.28). It is in this almost kenotic act in which

self is given. To make this point even clearer, the story of

Augustine’s own reluctance to give himself completely to God is

contrasted with the way in which Augustine writes The Confessions in

which every part of his life is given to, and almost consecrated to

God. Not even Augustine’s infant years escape this analysis (1.6.8).

De Trinitate

In De Trinitate Augustine is operating from within the same conceptual

framework as he is in The Confessions, linking humility with seeking

God and therefore divine illumination. In De Trinitate, he elaborates

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more on the role of Christ, and Christ’s humility in leading the

individual to knowledge of God. Charting these Christological

developments will be the purpose of this section.

Augustine continues to understand the essence of humility as a

yearning for God. In De Trinitate Augustine stresses how Christ grounds

this yearning and in doing so leads the human person into the

Trinitarian life of God. In this seeking Christ ‘brings the

believers to the contemplation of God and the Father... having said,

I will show myself to him (Jn 14:21)… it is not only himself he shows to

one who loves him, since he comes and takes up his abode with him

together with the Father’ (1.18). Christ as mediator allows the Word

to meet human beings in their brokenness and grants them not only a

vision of the Word Godself, but of the Trinity, as Christ leads the

human person into the ground of her being (15.10). Thus Christ

transforms human beings into the likeness of God, the fullness of

the imago dei, to act as a sign of the Father just as Christ points

to the Father (Schumacher, 2011: 59-60).

For Augustine this does not just follow the pattern of the

incarnation in which the human and divine are united in a hypostatic

union but it follows from the resurrection. The former makes such a

move possible, but for Augustine it is Christ’s death and

resurrection which accomplishes it. Just as it is Christ’s humility

in his death that leads to his glorification in the resurrection so

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our human humility, grounded in Christ’s, leads to our

glorification. In participating in Christ the human person moves

ever closer to the fullness of her human glory. As Augustine puts it

far better, ‘If then whom he justified he also glorified, he who

justifies also glorifies’ (1.24).

This glorification is the transformation of the human being into the

likeness of God. Augustine directly links this with participation in

Christ which leads the human person into God’s self-knowing and

self-loving. Augustine writes ‘our enlightenment is to participate

in the Word that is, in the life which is the light of men (Jn 1:4)’ (4.4).

Participating in the Word leads the human being into the Trinitarian

life and therefore into God’s self-knowledge. As Augustine says ‘our

knowledge is Christ, and our wisdom is the same Christ’ (13.24). It

is in dwelling here, and contemplating God – which for Augustine, is

participation – that the human being is drawn out of their own

narrow concepts of reality and can come to know reality and God as

God knows. This knowing of God is once again grounded in a seeking

of God – the fruits of humility. This is because of the intimate

relationship which Augustine sees between love and knowledge.

In De Trinitate Augustine begins to unpack this writing that ‘the more

the thing is known without being fully known the more does the

intelligence desire to know what remains’ (10.2). Desire drives the

human being to know God, precisely because, for Augustine knowing

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God is to love God, and to love God is to know God (Anna Williams,

2001: 132). This is to say that God is both that which enlightens

and draws the soul to participate in Godself. As Burnaby puts it,

‘God Himself is the condition of all human apprehension of Him’

(Burnaby, 1991: 143) and we could add the condition of all human

loving of God too.

However, Augustine writes, just as he does in The Confessions, that our

fallen states makes such participation impossible. Yet, a solution

remains: ‘the only thing to cleanse the wicked and the proud is the

blood of the just man and the humility of God’ (De Trin. 4.4). Thus

Christ’s blood – his death and resurrection enact an ontological

shift in which participation in Christ becomes possible and, as we

saw above, opens the possibility of contemplating God. The nature of

this ontological shift, and why God’s love plays such an important

role in it will become more apparent when we look at Augustine’s

ecclesiology. Before looking at this, one more point deserves to be

stressed. Just as it is Christ’s humility which opens the

possibility of participation so it is humility which allows us to

participate in the fruits of the Christ event. As Augustine says:

What good does it do a man who is so proud that he is ashamed

to climb aboard the wood, what good does it do him to gaze

from afar on the home country across the sea? And what harm

does it do a humble man if he cannot see it from such a

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distance, but is coming to it nonetheless on the wood the

proud man disdains to be carried by. (4.20)

The humility of Christ epitomised by Christ on the Cross, ‘the Wood’

acts as both the vehicle and the way into the life of God. As has

been stressed before, humility acts as a gateway into this because

it brings about seeking. The proud cannot seek God because they

cannot admit their need for God. Nor is it fitting for the proud to

kneel in prayer and confession before God, which for Augustine is

such a fundamental component of seeking. Augustine has full faith in

the truth of Christ’s claim that ‘Ask and it will be given to you;

seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you’

(Matt. 7:7). For in doing so, our seeking becomes modelled on God’s

desire.

The Body of Christ

For Augustine this salvation in Christ is not merely a repaired

relationship between God and the individual, but in being called

into communion with Christ so the human person enters real community

with other human beings. This is the meaning of participating in the

Body of Christ, the Church. Any other notion of salvation would, for

Augustine, misread the essentially communal nature of the human

being. For Augustine, the human being cannot escape community, the

only thing to be determined is the nature of the community she

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exists in, ‘two cities have been created: that is, the earthly by

love of self extending even to contempt of God, and the heavenly by

love of God extending to contempt of self’ (De. Civ. Dei. 14.28).

It should be stressed though that, for Augustine, entry into the

Church brings about more than a sociological reality. There is an

ontological component to it, in which Christ’s body ushers in the

possibility of transformative, participation in the life of God. As

Augustine goes on to say, it is in the heavenly city that the human

person learns to ‘serve one another in charity’ (De. Civ. Dei. 14.28).

Furthermore, it is in the Body of Christ that the human person

learns humility and therefore to seek God. Foundational to

Augustine’s Christology is that Christ does not just provide a

humble exemplar, an image of what human existence should look like.

Christ provides the means to guide human beings from our fallen,

proud state into humble participation in God. Christ accomplishes

this through the Church. This is because it is the same love which

bonds human beings into the body of Christ that unites the three

persons in the Trinity.

If coming to God, many souls through love are one soul and

many hearts one heart [In the Body of Christ] what does the

very fountain of love do in the Father and the Son? Is not the

Trinity there even more one God? For love comes to us from

there. (Trac. Jn. 39.5.2)

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For Augustine it is only in the community of the Church, that the

human person can come to understand and truly realise the love of

God, and thus also the humility of Christ. Christ draws the human

person into practice of love and confession through which she comes

to share in the Triune life of love (Ayres, 2001: 92). This practice

is the Church. Indeed for Augustine the primary purpose of the Church

is not to inform through teaching but to stir love in the heart of

the congregation (Cameron, 2005: 66). In doing so the human being

enters into communion not only with the community of the Trinity but

with the Christian community (Clark, 2002: 283).

Indeed, Augustine writes that the human being is in the image of God

to the extent that she is capable of participating in God (De Trin.

14.11). Entry into the Church brings the human being to participate

in the Trinitarian life and therefore the fullness of personhood as

the Church becomes the place of honesty and self-giving, in the

pattern of the Trinitarian self-knowledge and self-loving. The

Church both accepts human failings and provides a place for healing

(Rowan Williams, 2004: 21). Indeed it is only by acknowledging human

brokenness that healing is possible, this is itself the outworking

of humility, grounded in love.

Augustine goes on from this to link not just God’s self-loving with

the Church but also God’s self-knowledge. He proposes that human

beings come to know God, through other people, through the Church.

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Hints of this are also shown when Augustine describes the advantages

of seeking counsel. He writes that ‘unless each one is assisted by a

superior, in no way is he fit in his own case to extricate himself

from so great entanglements of miseries' (Augustine, On the Sermon on

the Mount, 3.10 cited in Harrison, 2008, 53). This is itself

humility: the recognition that one’s own means are not enough to

know God. In this recognition of a human, basic need the human

person also has a more specific realisation that she can only learn

the ‘way that leads’ (En. 41.9) home from others.

Significantly, for Augustine the human being cannot even enter into

the Church by their own means, rather the Church stoops to the

lowly, to lead them into God. Augustine describes this as like being

led by the beauty of a song, ‘He was drawn toward a kind of

sweetness, an inward, secret pleasure that cannot be described, as

though some musical instrument were sounding delightfully from God’s

house’ (En. 41.9).

Having been drawn into the liturgical activity of the Church, and

‘your sacraments, those healing medicines’ (Con 9.4.8), the believer

comes to participate in a life of praising and seeking God,

literally from within God; from within the body of Christ. The

liturgical aspect of this reflects the fact that salvation does not

involve a one-off decision in which the human person recognises God

as God. Instead it requires a continual ‘turn towards its Creator in

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gratitude and love’. Without this the human being cannot acknowledge

the gift of creaturely existence (Harrison, 2008: 105).

Furthermore this praise is not just the product of sanctification,

praising God is a sanctifying activity, grounded in the humility of

Christ. Praising God reorients the human being in all acts of praise

as the creature learns to relate to God in humility (Ticciati, 2013:

243). The human being begins to enact a relationship in which she

views God as Source. In doing so the enacted relationships becomes

habit. Cavadini locates the ultimate example of this in the

Eucharist, which replaces the obsessive enactment of original sin –

pride – with the repetition of Christ’s sacrifice. The focus on

Christ’s and not our own sacrifice leads us into a reality beyond

ourselves (Cavadini, 1999: 683); into the love of God and a seeking

of God which is humility.

Ending our discussion on the subject of praise reflects a return to

the central question of The Confessions – how can mortal, sinful

humanity achieve its end, which is praising God? The answer is in a

participation in Christ through humility, which also means a

participation in the body of Christ – the Church. ‘You stir us up to

take delight in your praise; for you have made us for yourself, and

our heart is restless till it finds its rest in you’ (Con 1.1.1)

Conclusion

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In this essay I argued that humility, grounded in the love of God,

leads the human being to seek God. It allows the human person to

realise that the human person needs to seek God, and that God is

worthy to be sought. This seeking brings about knowledge of and in

God as the human being begins to be sanctified. The human person

comes to participate in Christ the Mediator’s humility which leads

the human person into the life of the Trinity. In this the human

being comes to participate both in God’s self-knowledge and God’s

self-loving. I began by looking at Augustine’s understanding of

humility in The Confessions proposing that, his failed Platonic ascent

stressed the need for participation in Christ, and specifically the

need for the humility of Christ. This in Book VIII led to Augustine

realising that he had to seek God wholeheartedly, in an almost

kenotic outpouring of self. It was integral to my argument that

humility took the form of seeking God. From this I turned to look at

the Christology Augustine outlined in the De Trinitate. I focused on

the way that Christ acted as the ground of the human person’s

seeking of God, and hence led her into the life of God. Thus the

human being came to know God, in a knowledge which was more than

propositional. In my final section I sought to show how the

preceding account of humility manifested itself in the life of the

individual, locating it in the Church. In doing so I continued to

look at Augustine’s Christology, and the body of Christ as the

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Church. I proposed that in coming into the Church the believer began

to participate in a mystical reality which led her into the love of

God. For the same love which bonds the Trinity together in one also

bonds the Church together. So the believer is led deeper into

humility and immersed in the sacramental life of the Church, in

doing so she is literally baptised into seeking God.

Bibliography

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Cambridge University Press: 1998). [abbreviated to De Civ. Dei.]

-- Expositions on the Psalms, vol.2, M. Boulding (trans.), (New York: New City Press, 2000). [abbreviated to En.]

-- Homilies on the First Letter of John, Philip Schaff (ed.), John Gibb (trans.), (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983). [abbreviated to Ep. Io.)

-- Homilies on the Gospel of John, Allan Fitzgerald (ed.), Edmund Hill. O.P (trans.), (New York: New City Press, 2009). [abbreviated to Trac. Jn.]

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The Bible, RSV

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Candler, P. Theology, Rhetoric, Manuduction: or reading scripture together on the path to God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006).

Cavadini, J. ‘Pride’ in A. Fitzgerald et al (ed.) Augustine through the ages: an encyclopedia, (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1999), pp.679-684.

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How does St Augustine conceive of the relationship between humility and divine illumination

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