From Here to Where? Augustine and Augustinian Enquiry
Kyle Bertoli, University of Notre Dame
Abstract
Drawing on themes of Augustinian enquiry sketched by MacIntyre
in Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, this paper analyzes
Augustine's Confessions as a paradigm of moral enquiry. Juxtaposing
MacIntyre and Augustine clarifies the role of authority, dialectic, and
tradition central to MacIntyre's work by presenting compelling examples
of all these themes. For example, Augustine's relationship with the Manichees,
the Platonists, and ultimately the Church helps us to identify characteristics
of Augustinian moral enquiry both for traditions and for inquirers; Augustine
experiences successes and failures of traditions, as well as his own successes
and failures as a student. Furthermore, MacIntyre insists that an end
of enquiry is a personal transformation, and Augustine gives content to
the virtues to which MacIntyre alludes by emphasizing throughout his Confessions
humility as a foundational virtue throughout. MacIntyre also elucidates
Augustine; by outlining themes of Augustinian enquiry, he facilitates
our understanding of Augustine's conversion, indicating why Augustine
encountered the successes and failures he did. As MacIntyre emphasizes,
moral enquiry is both theoretical and practical, and Augustine complements
MacIntyre's work as a narrative rendition of moral enquiry.
Alasdair MacIntyre revives classical moral enquiry, best exemplified by
what he calls the Augustinian conception of moral enquiry. Such enquiry
does not start with immediate recognition of first principles and subsequent
demonstration, but rather with training in a tradition. Moral enquiry
implies virtue and directs students toward further transformation in virtue.
To accomplish this transformation, a tradition encompasses more than rational
argumentation, also including stories of model adherents who appropriated
the tradition in their lives. Augustine himself is part of the Christian
tradition in this way; in fact, he serves as a paradigm of Augustinian
enquiry, the record of his conversion in his Confessions elucidating
many themes in MacIntyre's writings. Reading Augustine's conversion, we
identify key components of enquiry and discover that humility is the foundational
virtue of moral enquiry.
Prerational Reordering of the Self
Unlike modern conceptions of moral enquiry in which inquirers
are presumed to begin with a blank slate free from expectations or prejudices,
an Augustinian version requires students approach a tradition with an
initial, not-as-yet justified commitment. Good reasons for accepting texts
and their goals are only available after readers, transformed by the texts
into able interpreters, acquire the skills necessary to judge the texts
rightly. Paradoxically, these skills are available only to those properly
disposed to texts, who have begun to acquire the virtues that the texts
intend to teach: “It seems that only by learning what the texts have to
teach can [the student] come to read those texts aright, but also that
only by reading them aright can he or she learn what the texts have to
teach.”[1]
To get anywhere in moral enquiry, students must undergo a “prerational reordering of the self” by adopting as much as possible the dispositions recommended by texts or teachers before they can understand why those attitudes are virtues.[2] With the necessary virtues in their infancy, the meaning of texts gradually becomes available to readers, who are further transformed through reading and interpretation.
Augustine became acutely aware of the need for a prerational reordering of the self because he initially failed to understand Scripture, which eventually became the central text of his life. Early on, Augustine found Scripture inaccessible. Compared with Cicero, whose writings inspired him to embark on a quest for wisdom, Scripture seemed crude and unlearned. At the time, Augustine could not see that his pride prevented him from appreciating Scripture; only with the virtues that he would have learned had he been able to embrace Scripture would he be able to see what stood between him and the texts. In hindsight, he understood that his pride had restricted his access to Scripture: “I was not in any state to be able to enter [its mysteries], or to bow my head to climb its steps.”[3] Augustine also saw that, once readers enter a text with the proper attitudes and dispositions, the possibility for further growth in the requisite virtues opens expansively: “The Bible was composed in such a way that as beginners mature, its meaning grows with them. I disdained to be a little beginner. Puffed up with pride, I considered myself a mature adult.”[4] As students grow in virtue, they become more adept readers of texts. Skills in judgment are only available to advanced students; as MacIntyre points out, “[r]ational justification is…essentially retrospective.”[5]
Although he initially rejected Scripture, Augustine eventually did accept Scripture, even before he fully acquired the virtues needed to understand it. While his pride persisted as a major obstacle to his growth, the prerational reordering of his soul had nonetheless begun. In order to accept the Bible, Augustine needed at least the beginnings of humility; after all, he accepted something he did not understand. His pride had once demanded that he attain truth by his own effort, but now he understood that “we were too weak to discover the truth by pure reasoning.”[6] Augustine had a long and arduous road to travel, but his first steps involved not only obedience to Scripture but also transformation in virtue, however weak, which was the precondition for accepting Scripture.
Humility is a cardinal virtue in Augustinian enquiry, both a precondition for all learning and an end to which enquiry aims. The humility with which Augustine accepted Scripture is absent among Manichees, and it is largely for this reason that his relationship with that sect ultimately failed. Rather than calling their students to humility, they promised instant success in a total story accessible even to beginners. In fact, where Augustine's pride prevented him from accepting the Bible, it motivated him to join the Manichees: “[The very pride that kept me from the Scriptures] explains why I fell in with men proud of their slick talk, very earthly-minded and loquacious.”[7] Augustine's disappointment with the Manichees suggested that humility was prerequisite for moral enquiry; looking back on his life, he could rightly judge his youth by wisdom acquired in the Christian tradition, seeing clearly that the Manichees could never satisfy him because of their overweening pride.
While another school, that of the Platonists, brought Augustine further than the Manichees, they too failed to complete the course because they lacked humility. Because it obstructed his journey, Augustine's sinfulness helped him to realize that moral enquiry has its end not in knowledge but in the transformation of the inquirer into a certain type of person. Even while he was intellectually certain of God, his ambition and lust remained obstacles: “I was astonished to find that already I loved you...But I was not stable in the enjoyment of my God. I was caught up to you by your beauty and quickly torn away from you by my weight...I was in no kind of doubt to whom I should attach myself, but was not yet in a state to be able to do that.”[8] The Platonists did not counsel moral conversion, so his progress was once again frustrated. Only after discovering a humble mediator and teacher in Jesus Christ could he appropriate the virtues necessary for apprehension of truth: “To possess my God, the humble Jesus, I was not yet humble enough. I did not know what his weakness was meant to teach.”[9]
Disillusioned even with the Platonists, Augustine turned with greater intensity to Scripture, especially the letters of Paul. He saw there the same truths he had learned from the Platonists, enriched by an attitude of reverence and humility: “I began reading and found that all the truth I had read in the Platonists was stated here together with the commendation of your grace, so that he who sees should ‘not boast as if he had not received' both what he sees and also the power to see.”[10] With humble reverence and awe, Augustine suddenly comprehended Scripture; the simplicity that was once off-putting was now enchanting. He identified the salient difference between Christianity and Platonism: where the latter saw “what the goal is but not how to get there,” the former knew “the way which leads to the home of bliss, not merely as an end to be perceived but as a realm to live in.”[11] This distinction became so evident for Augustine that he realized that even someone without his intellectual background could travel the path recommended by Scripture to arrive securely at the goal: “So also the person who from a distance cannot yet see, nevertheless walks along the path by which he may come and see and hold you.”[12] Augustine now spoke not of possession of truth but of approaching truth with the whole person. Moral enquiry is not wholly a matter of propositions, for it aims at the transformation of the person and requires an initial, prerational reordering of the self.
Authority
Because moral enquiry requires a transformation of students before
they are sufficiently advanced to grasp that transformation as good, all
moral enquiry requires “a teacher and an obedient trust.”[13]
But if a student's trust is only in the teacher, MacIntyre notes, it does
not run deep enough to justify the prerational reordering of the self:
“This reordering requires obedient trust, not only in the authority of
this particular teacher, but in that of the whole tradition of interpretative
commentary into which that teacher had had earlier him or herself to be
initiated through his or her reordering and conversion.”[14]
Every teacher was once a student, so faith in moral enquiry can never
suffice unless it enables student to accept teacher, and with the teacher,
the teacher's teacher, and so forth. Submitting to the authority of a
tradition of enquiry requires incorporating a history of teachers
and students; only by trusting a tradition can students trust teachers
situated in that tradition.
Mani was the first authority on which Augustine reflected. A member of the Manichean sect, Augustine respected the group's founder, who was reputed a man of wisdom and sanctity. At first, Augustine embraced the Manichees fervently, accepting all they taught, which included as much about physics and astronomy as about spiritual matters. At the same time, Augustine began to study natural philosophy, which acquainted him with philosophers who offered more thorough explanations of nature than the Manichees, such that the books of the philosophers could even predict phenomena.[15]
Augustine found himself torn between traditional authority and alternative explanations that seemed superior in explaining the same phenomena. Mani's authority was a form of testimony, and Augustine, already relatively experienced in the sect, held his words up against evidence in the world. As MacIntyre points out, testimony is proper to authority, which must be believed before one has good evidence.[16] Augustine did not simply juxtapose the evidence from his senses to what he learned from the Manichees. Rather, he compared two traditions — two authorities — only to realize that one tradition better explained evidence that both sought to explain. Augustine could not have questioned Mani on the basis of one or two books on natural philosophy, but as a result of his extensive studies, he was familiar with traditions of natural philosophy. He compared the evidence as refined by two rival traditions: “Since I had done much reading in the philosophers and retained this in my memory, I compared some of their teachings with the lengthy fables of the Manichees. The philosophers' teachings seemed to be more probable than what the Manichees said."[17] Augustine would not say that the Manichees failed to explain observed phenomena — there was no evident conflict with the evidence — but only that the traditions of natural philosophy better accounted for the evidence.
These discoveries raised serious questions about Mani's authority. What Mani promised, he could not deliver. Mani's failure in scientific testimony was at the same time a failure of Mani's testimony generally. If Mani were so proud as to pontificate on matters of natural science beyond his ken, how could a postulant trust that he would not fail similarly in matters of the spirit? Augustine began to ask himself just these questions: “His impudence in daring to teach a matter which he did not understand shows that he could know nothing whatever of piety…He had very much to say about the world, but was convicted of ignorance by those who really understand these things, and from this one can clearly know what understanding he had in other matters which are harder to grasp.”[18]
Yet inasmuch as Augustine was committed to the Manichees and to Mani's authority, his trust forbade his immediately rejecting his teachers. Trust in a tradition requires of its members the benefit of the doubt, even if a break with tradition may ultimately be unavoidable. Nevertheless, too many external pressures eventually undermined Augustine's faith in the Manichees, despite his patient commitment to the sect.[19] Authority, then, is first grounded in faith in a tradition, yet trust ought not be uncritical, for students must break with a tradition when it is shown to be seriously deficient.
The Manichees having failed him, Augustine lingered for a while in skepticism. He could not immediately trust another authority because his trust had been betrayed: “While [my soul] could not be healed except by believing, it was refusing to be healed for fear of believing what is false.”[20] Stumbling upon the books of the Academics, he easily understood their skepticism of the human capacity to know truth.[21] If moral enquiry requires both a prerational reordering of the self and an obedient trust in a tradition, however, a skeptical attitude inhibits a potential student from this initial deference to a teacher and tradition, just as a humble attitude catalyzes the process. If inquirers are closed even to the possibility of seeking truth, they will never trust someone who promises they can know truth if only they act first on faith. Skepticism precludes enquiry from the very beginning.
Not only was Augustine's skepticism an obstacle to his entrance into the Christian tradition, but the Manichean tradition he thought he had abandoned stayed with him, blinding him to narratives he would encounter in other traditions. Long had Augustine avoided the Catholic faith, not realizing that the Church he avoided was not what he thought it was. Trained in the Manichean way of thinking, he was unable to understand the incarnation, the problem of evil, or the immateriality of God as the Catholic faith understands these mysteries. Listening to the claims of the Church, he only heard absurdities, for he lacked the framework and categories by which to make sense of those claims. Augustine resisted Christianity not because of contradictions he found within the faith, but because he stood outside the faith; not because he misheard what the Church said, but “because my mental picture was what it was.”[22] Although he failed to realize it at the time, if he could just stand within the tradition, he would be able to go on. Augustine's prejudices, not merely his skepticism but also the Manichean framework in which he was trapped, held him captive and prevented him from accepting a new tradition: “Gasping under their weight I could not breathe the pure and simple breeze of your truth.”[23]
Augustine's prejudices soften when he begins to entertain a new tradition, not at first as a student, but rather as a spectator. He listened to Bishop Ambrose of Milan with fascination, not so much with regard to the truths of which he spoke but to the words with which he spoke.[24] Gradually, Ambrose's words penetrated Augustine's mind; Augustine found himself reevaluating his objections to the Catholic faith, which made less sense as he stood within the Catholic story. Before long, Augustine found fault more with his despair, which had prevented him from approaching truth, than he did with what he once thought to be the absurdity of the Catholic faith. At this point in his Confessions, he seriously begins to reconsider authority. Instead of speaking of his desire for certainty or immediate knowledge, he speaks of “accepting” or “entrusting” himself to a tradition. Though still holding something back, Augustine tentatively decided to enroll as a catechumen in the Catholic Church.[25]
As he grew in faith, Augustine grew in the humility proper to a student's relationship to authority, increasing his faith in Scripture and the authority of the Church; yet his journey was not without challenges. As long as he followed the Platonists, his pride remained a major obstacle to his learning, keeping him from fully entering the tutelage of the Church and her Scriptures: “I prattled on as if I were expert, but unless I had sought your way in Christ our Saviour, I would have been not expert but expunged. I began to want to give myself airs as a wise person.”[26] Nevertheless, even with a vast number of questions on his mind, he had the humility to wait patiently: “Such questions revolved in my unhappy breast, weighed down by nagging anxieties… But there was a firm place in my heart for the faith, within the Catholic Church, in your Christ.”[27]
Troubled by his sinfulness, Augustine realized that the Platonists offered no remedy. Seeing that they lacked the fullness of truth, he went to Simplicianus, who would eventually succeed Ambrose as bishop of Milan . Instead of posing theoretical questions, he asked for practical advice: “I wanted to consult with him about my troubles, so that he could propose a method fitted for someone in my disturbed condition, whereby I could learn to walk in your way.”[28] Augustine humbly appealed to authority, seeking to be transformed though he knew not the way. Had he not had the initial humility to accept the authority of the Church, he would never have progressed to the point where he could authentically embrace the humility demanded by Christ, which is the foundation of the Christian life.[29]
Openness to Questions and Competition
Having submitted to the Manichean tradition, Augustine's trust
in the traditional authority of his sect waned because that authority
was abused; he was “ordered to believe” what seemed less and less plausible.[30]
The Manichean tradition lacked an openness to questions that animates
healthy, organic traditions. Related to this failure, the Manichees had
insulated themselves from challenges posed by rival traditions. These
two failures led Augustine to abandon what he realized was a dead, ossified
tradition.
MacIntyre argues that openness to questions is a central feature in traditions. The need for openness arises because “obscurities, discrepancies, and inconsistencies” in the texts and traditions of the Church need working out in a conversation that leads to consensus in some areas and continued debate in others. Out of an interpretative tradition emerges a set of quaestiones that define an agenda for continued discussion. Naturally, new questions arise unpredictably, be they from internal developments in theory or practice, or from external stimuli of other traditions. Were questions stifled and challenges ignored from the beginning, a tradition would jeopardize its own future; instead of being a fertile ground for growth toward the fulfillment of a tradition, questions would become accusations revealing deep failures of that tradition.[31]
Hurt by the failure of Mani's authority, Augustine began to see the necessity of genuine openness to questions. Mani's pride prevented him from taking any questions seriously; he always responded by declaring complete allegiance to his own fiat. Instead of diligently working out difficulties, he made pronouncements: “He not only wrote on matters of which he was ignorant, but also uttered his falsehoods with so mad a vanity and pride that he attempted to attribute them to himself as though he were a divine person.”[32] Here again, pride obstructs progress for both individuals and traditions.
In contrast to Mani, the Manichean bishop Faustus spoke with surprising humility. He did not, when pressed, speak on matters beyond his learning, and he made a more positive impression on the young Augustine than Mani had. By the time Faustus came to Carthage , Augustine had become so preoccupied with questions that he eagerly laid them at the bishop's feet. Faustus, however, refused the invitation: “I put forward my problems for consideration and discussion. He modestly did not even venture to take up the burden.”[33] His expectations confirmed, Augustine now knew that the Manichean tradition was utterly inept at dealing with serious questions.
Faustus's attitude, however, taught Augustine about the humility that traditions and authorities ought to bear toward questions. Despite his disappointment, Augustine admired Faustus's humility, “for the controlled modesty of a mind that admits limitations is more beautiful than the things I was anxious to know about.”[34] Faustus's humility is perhaps Augustine's first encounter with the intellectual humility that came to characterize the Augustinian conception of moral enquiry. Faustus did not pontificate as Mani did, but he failed in his refusal to entertain challenges. Humility, though commendable, cannot replace but must enrich willingness to debate vigorously and honestly as difficulties arise. Though humble, Faustus could not breathe life back into a dead tradition.
A tradition must be open not merely to questions, but also to public conversation. MacIntyre emphasizes inter-tradition rivalry as a factor in a tradition's success: “Augustinianism requires for its fullest rational vindication not only progress in the solution of its own problems but further confirmation by the way in which such rival projects of intellectual and practical enquiry exhibit incoherence and resourcelessness.”[35] If a tradition is to compete well, it needs to engage other traditions in conversation, responding to challenges proposed by alternative conceptions of truth.
Already skeptical of the truth the Manichees promised, Augustine despaired further when he found that Manichees discussed matters only in private conversation. Already attending Catholic lectures where he hoped to test Manichean criticisms of Scripture, Augustine found Christianity stronger than Manichean counterclaims: “The Manichee answer seemed to me weak. They did not easily produce their response before the public but did so to us in private.”[36] Catholics responded directly, convincingly and publicly to Manichean challenges; that the Manichees failed to reciprocate on all three counts made the sect fall into further disrepute in Augustine's mind.
The Platonists also attracted Augustine because they outperformed the Manichees. Books VII and VIII of the Confessions describe how the Christian tradition ultimately outperformed the Platonists. Augustine came to believe that the humility counseled by the Church was the foundational virtue in moral enquiry, but it was a virtue that Platonists failed to develop. Shortly before his conversion to Christianity, Augustine was fairly confident in the intellectual progress he had made by way of Platonic texts, but he continued to hold back: “I no longer had my usual excuse to explain why I did not yet despise the world and serve you, namely, that my perception of the truth was uncertain. By now I was indeed quite sure about it. Yet I was still bound down to the earth.”[37] Augustine's moral vacillation obstructed his pursuit of truth, just as his intellectual pride had prevented him from accepting Scripture so many years before. Augustine's ambition and lust checked his ability to grow in wisdom.[38] The possibility of moral growth and an abiding, integral humility, which Christianity offered and required, opened for Augustine a broader horizon than the Platonists could. The Catholic tradition thus ultimately out-narrated the Platonic tradition that was otherwise very attractive. Only when the Church demonstrated its openness to and success in competition could Augustine embrace the faith without reservation.
Dialectic
Traditions must be open to questions because enquiry is not primarily
demonstrative. MacIntyre endorses the Platonic principle that “in learning…we
move towards and not from first principles.”[39]
Instead of demonstration, traditions develop a dialectic by which they
discover first principles:
Certain differences between dialectic and demonstration are crucial. Demonstrative arguments state and order already known truths, vindicating the status of such truths as certain knowledge, as parts of some science. A perfected science exhibits its form as a chain of such arguments, descending from its necessary first principles to its subordinate conclusions. By contrast dialectical argument is exploratory. Dialectic is the instrument of enquiry which is still in via . It is through dialectic that we construct demonstrative arguments, and thus while in demonstrative reasoning we argue from first principles, in dialectical we argue to first principles.[40]
Dialectic is the central mode of reasoning in moral enquiry. Not surprisingly, it is the mode of reasoning that best propelled Augustine's enquiry.
Book VII paints the most complete picture of Augustine's intellectual travails that we see in the Confessions , yet Augustine accomplishes very little by way of demonstration and much more by a dialectical search. The central topics of Book VII are God's incorruptibility and the problem of evil, and the former takes precedence. While incorruptibility of God initially resembles a first principle, Augustine could not deploy it as such, by way of demonstration, to clarify the nature of God. He saw God as an extended substance, albeit one that permeated the entire universe, unaware that God could be immaterial substance.[41] Augustine's conception of God needed radical adjustments that could not emerge through demonstrations.
Searching for truth, Augustine was growing accustomed to dialectical enquiry, and he “made [his] investigation without any anxiety,” even though he experienced great uncertainty.[42] In hindsight, the way he formulated the questions he asked precluded his arriving at the right answers. Augustine eventually came to see that God is immaterial and evil is only a negation of goodness and existence, but as long as he presumed in his questions that evil was a substance requiring explanation (following Mani), he could not arrive at this conclusion. Looking back on his errors, Augustine could later observe, “I searched for the origin of evil, but I searched in a flawed way and did not see the flaw in my very search.”[43] Progress in enquiry required not a missing premise but a reconceptualization of the problem — a move available to dialectic, not demonstration.
Augustine's breakthrough came via a turn to introspection inspired by Platonic texts he was reading. Entering his “innermost citadel,” he discovered an “immutable light higher than my mind,” his first glimpse of the transcendent, and he came to know God the Creator as Being.[44]
Augustine's turn from an immanent God physically permeating the world to the transcendent Creator God opened to a new way of resolving the problem of evil. Augustine re-envisioned the rest of the universe based on his new understanding of God, considering manifold implications of creation.[45] Re-examining God's incorruptibility and the corruptibility of creation, he realized that evil has no substantial existence, but is only corruption in created substances and ultimately a negation of substance.[46]
Augustine's model of moral enquiry, then, does not rest on demonstration. Instead, he juxtaposes one conception to the next, always open to re-imagining the world if a more promising narrative presents itself. Like submission to authority, the maneuvers of dialectical reasoning are justified only in hindsight. Looking back on his enquiry, Augustine explains what seemed at times like a lost and wandering mind:
Because my soul did not dare to say that my God displeased me, it refused to attribute to you whatever was displeasing. Hence it came to adopt the opinion that there are two substances. But it found no rest and spoke a strange language. Returning from this deviation, it created for itself a god pervading all places in infinite space. It imagined this god to be you and installed him at its heart. It again became the temple of its own idol, an abomination to you. But afterwards you calmed my head without my realizing it, and 'shut my eyes that they should not see vanity.' I relaxed a little and my mad folly was put to sleep. I woke up in you and saw you to be infinite in another sense.[47]
This is not a study proceeding by demonstration, but the twists and turns of a dialectic.
Reading Oneself into the Tradition
Authority, dialectic, humility and open questions situate the
individual, whether novice or advanced, in a tradition. In learning to
interpret the texts of a tradition, readers learn that those texts interpret
their readers as well.[48]
To read texts as a student is to be open to the imperative transformative
power of texts and to read oneself in texts: “[The novice learns to read]
texts in which such a person discovers the story of him or herself, including
the story of how he or she was transformed into a reader of these texts.
This story of oneself is embedded in the history of the world, an overall
narrative within which all other narratives find their place.”[49]
Incorporation of the self into a tradition is a gradual process by which
students come to be at home in a tradition; success in this respect justifies
what was once a prerational obedience to authority, so moving the inquirer
closer to the inherent goal of the tradition, a goal that is continually
approached but never quite achieved.
Augustine is finally born into the Christian tradition after hearing stories of other Christians recounted in Book VIII. At this point, Augustine sees himself in a radically new way, despite his persistent weaknesses. He did not achieve sudden perfection; in fact, he wrote his Confessions to remind those who exalted him that he was anything but perfect. But he now saw himself in the light of the Christian tradition and could rely on God's grace whenever he slipped back into old habits, as he frequently did. Having allowed himself to be interpreted by Christian texts, he went on to become part of those texts by confessing God's grace and Christian truth in his own life. Augustine's life became a story treasured by the Church and respected as part of its tradition. MacIntyre, too, is acutely aware of Augustine's role in this respect:
The reader in his or her own life enacts and reenacts that of which he or she reads in Scripture; the enacted narrative of a single life is made intelligible within the framework of the dramatic history of which Scripture speaks. So the reading of texts is part of the history of which the same texts speak. The reader thus discovers him or herself inside the Scriptures. The paradigmatic record of such a discovery was Augustine's Confessions and it was of course Augustine who had formulated in classical form the doctrine of understanding which came to inform the Christian form.[50]
Augustine's is an exemplary Christian life. In coming to discover the Christian tradition, he discovered both what made the Christian tradition unique and how that enabled continued progress in moral enquiry. His thoughts on authority, dialectic and theology elucidated and developed what was already present in the Christian tradition, leaving a compelling example of the way individual Christians can navigate the tradition of which they are a part. Augustine's legacy enriches his tradition by taking its place beside those legacies of saints that inspired him to embrace the Christian tradition and to receive God's grace, which transformed him in the humility of Christ.
[1]
MacIntyre, Alasdair. Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry. Notre
Dame: Notre Dame Press, 1990. p. 82
[2] Ibid.
[3] Augustine of Hippo.
Confessions. Trans. Chadwick. New York : Oxford University Press,
1991. III. v
[4] Ibid.
[5] MacIntyre, 84.
[6] Augustine, VI. v.
[7] Ibid., III. vi
[8] Ibid., VII. xvii.
[9] Ibid., VII. xviii.
[10] Ibid., VII. xxi.
[11] Ibid., VII. xx.
[12] Ibid., VII. xxi.
[13] MacIntyre, 82.
[14] Ibid., 82-83.
[15] Augustine, V.
iii.
[16] MacIntyre, 92.
[17] Augustine, V.
iii.
[18] Ibid., V. v.
[19] See the following
section for an account of Augustine's break with the Manichees.
[20] Augustine, VI.
iv.
[21] Ibid., V. x.
[22] Ibid., V. x.
[23] Ibid., V. xi.
[24] Ibid., V. xii.
[25] Ibid., V. xiv.
[26] Ibid., VII. xx.
[27] Ibid., VII. v
[28] Ibid., VIII. i.
[29] Ibid., VII. xx.
[30] Ibid., V. iii.
[31] MacIntyre, 84-85.
[32] Augustine, V.
v.
[33] Ibid., V. vii.
[34] Ibid.
[35] MacIntyre, 102.
[36] Augustine, V.
xi.
[37] Ibid., VIII. v.
[38] Ibid., III. iv;
IV. i; VI. vi, xii.
[39] MacIntyre, 84.
[40] Ibid., 88.
[41] Augustine, VII.
i.
[42] Ibid., VII. iii.
[43] Ibid.
[44] Ibid., VII. x.
[45] Ibid., VII. xi.
[46] Ibid., VII. xii.
[47] Ibid., VII. xiv.
[48] MacIntyre, 82.
[49] Ibid., 92.
[50] Ibid., 83.
