The seventh and final Podcast in a series dedicated to Christian paideia in Saint Augustine has been published on the Spreaker channel of the Press Office of the Royal Commission for Italy of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George. Following the Podcasts commemorating the 60th anniversary of the publication of the principal documents of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, the Representative for Formation of the Delegation of Rome and Vatican City, Prof. Enzo Cantarano, Knight of Jure Sanguinis, now draws attention to the importance of the educational sphere for all of us through a series of Podcasts on Christian paideia in Saint Augustine.

Augustine’s pedagogy is a journey that leads from external knowledge to interior Wisdom, guided by pedagogical love. It is an educational path aimed at the conversion of the heart and the salvation of the soul, transforming the “old man” into the “new man” through grace and divine truth. It places Christ as the one true interior Teacher, moving beyond classical pagan instruction in order to integrate Faith and reason with the ultimate goal of knowing God.

The Interior Teacher and Truth: Augustine maintains that human teaching is limited; true knowledge is not transmitted from the outside but illuminated directly by God within the soul.

Pedagogical Purpose: the objective is not merely erudition, but spiritual formation, religious instruction, and love for God, overcoming merely utilitarian curiosity.

The Method: a remarkably modern approach attentive to psychology, avoiding boredom, favouring pedagogical love, and adapting itself to individual capacities, with instruction rooted in Sacred Scripture.

Integral Formation: Augustine values the liberal arts and pagan culture as auxiliary instruments, while subordinating them to the knowledge of Scripture.

Introspection: education passes through self-examination and the narration of one’s own life in order to encounter God, uniting Faith and reason.

Augustine and Christian Pedagogy

Part Seven

In writing these concluding reflections on the subject, I must say that I do not agree with the view that Augustine’s cultural programme, which laid the foundations for medieval paideia, also represented the decline of classical culture. In my opinion, this is a widespread commonplace that attempts to attribute to Augustinian paideia an extremely complex historical process that unfolded over a long period of time and was far from inevitable: the decline of Rome and the eclipse — though never total — of Greco-Roman culture.

It is true that the cultural materials employed by Augustine were largely ancient, while the spirit animating them was entirely new. Yet this does not justify diminishing the value of the new Weltanschauung embodied in the Gospel, nor does it allow one to conclude that Saint Augustine, no longer a man of classical antiquity, was therefore simply a man of the so-called “Dark Ages.” Such schematism is highly questionable and lacks any real justification. The undeniable fact is that when Cicero and Virgil disappeared during the centuries of barbarian domination, Augustine too disappeared from European culture; and when he returned, he did so together with those great authors upon whom his spirit had been nourished.

In reality, within Greek and Latin Patristics, theological development and Christian paideia took shape in close symbiosis with classical culture. The new Christian culture distinguished itself not by rejection, but by a different intensity, a recovery of universally human values, and an extraordinary capacity for creative synthesis.

Humanity became Christianized not through some external varnish, but through a profound transformation reaching the very roots of being. Such a culture therefore implied neither mutilation of humanity in its development nor any regression. On the contrary, it may be said that an aging civilization was miraculously renewed and brought to a maturity that ancient humanity had never fully attained.

The humanism of Golgotha and the Resurrection not only crowned the humanism of the Acropolis and the Forum, but regenerated it. Classical humanism magnificently developed the spiritual powers of man, yet at the same time left them incomplete, lacking direction and fulfilment in relation to the decisive problems of existence.

For Augustine, the light of the Gospel was providential also for classical culture, for it provided a criterion capable of preserving its authentic values and enabling them to enter the future of humanity. It became a principle of perfective integration and the starting point of a true rebirth.

It is therefore legitimate to think that, had the development of the civilization and culture of Augustine’s age not been tragically interrupted by the barbarian invasions, a Christian culture deeply permeated by religious values would nevertheless have emerged — as happened in the Latin Middle Ages — but without breaking or weakening its bond with classical culture.

Throughout Augustine’s immense body of work there are numerous and precious contributions intentionally directed toward the elaboration of theoretical principles, methodological indications, educational psychology, and didactic means.

There is, however, another direction in which research must move. There exists, in fact, an “implicit pedagogy,” to use the felicitous expression of Aldo Agazzi, one of the most important Catholic pedagogues of his time, which permeates all of Augustine’s writings and deserves fuller recovery than it has thus far received. Among the works most worthy of exploration from this perspective are those addressed directly to the Christian people: his Commentary on the Psalms, the Sermons, and the Letters.

The reading of the Sermons, for example — although the texts that have come down to us only remotely reproduce the actual spoken discourse — allows us to perceive how Augustine exercised his highest magisterium precisely when speaking to the people. He mastered the sacred text from memory, adapted himself to circumstances and to the inspiration of his own heart, awakened the dynamism of interior life in his listeners, and elevated them toward a lofty, often sublime vision of existence, directing them toward the most decisive questions and ultimate goals.

In the pulpit Augustine felt himself not only at the service of his people, but part of them before God. He never says “you,” but always “we.”

“What purpose do my sermons serve, what purpose does my life serve? The only purpose is that we may finally come to live together the life of Christ! For this I labour; this is my honour, my joy, my glory, my inheritance. I do not wish to be saved without you.” (Sermo 17,2)

Only the twenty-four Sermons on the Gospel of John and a few others were written by Augustine before delivery; the countless others have survived only because of their success and thanks to those who stenographically transcribed them. Augustine himself was unable completely to revise the texts collected and edited by the shorthand writers, as he acknowledges in the Retractationes (II,93,2).

This portion of Augustine’s work, with its splendid digressions, psychological observations, and passionate educational force, possesses inexhaustible richness and fascination. In his Sermons Augustine speaks in the name of the Church, forms believers in the Faith, and offers clear and brilliant syntheses in response to the most difficult questions. In the very act of becoming an educator, Augustine strips his doctrine of the excesses of controversy. As educational orthopraxis, the entirety of Augustine’s Christian paideia reaches its deepest and most persuasive expression.

It is always difficult to define pedagogy universally and exhaustively, since it appears as a polysemic and dynamic cultural discourse centred upon education as the promotion of integral human development. Pedagogy, like education itself, has man as its object.

Yet this principle also applies to philosophy, and already in antiquity the relationship between philosophy and pedagogy was close. Augustine enriches and perfects the classical human ideal with a new meaning found in Christianity. This new ideal is synthesized in Love: God’s love for man and man’s love for God.

The possibility of seeking and loving God is rooted in the very nature of man, created in the image and likeness of the Blessed Trinity. The triple hypostasis of divine nature is inscribed in the threefold structure of human nature: memory, intelligence, and will (Confessiones 13,11,12). The same may be said regarding the immortality shared in divine eternity.

To be created in the image of God means to be enabled to seek the origin of that likeness — to seek, that is, the Original from which one derives. This spirit of inquiry is connatural to man who, just as he naturally recognizes his own reflected image in a mirror, likewise recognizes within himself his divine Original. Since that Original is essentially Love, this reflection is not neutral but leads to affective as well as rational recognition.

By reflecting himself in the Love that is God, man is able to love God, to love himself, and to love the Other just as God does both ad intra within the Blessed Trinity and ad extra within Creation.

This possibility, given to every human being, requires a personal choice in order to pass from potentiality to actuality. God-Love is essentially also God-Truth. When man perceives within himself the image of God-Truth, he recognizes it as existing, at least potentially, within his own being. This recognition leads him to seek the foundation of Truth and to pursue it through Love, including love for wisdom and knowledge, by means of both intellectual and spiritual faculties.

Thus man discovers God also within his own conscience. If created reality questions man from the outside, then inwardly, within the soul, Truth enlightens him, and man becomes a person capable of understanding, willing, and loving. In this sense Faith and philosophy are integrated, and God becomes the ultimate end of both rational and spiritual inquiry. Faith enlightens reason and reason strengthens Faith. Upon these foundations Augustine constructs his philosophy as an itinerary of the mind toward God.

He assigns the same goal and the same path to Christian education. Every aspect of Creation bears the imprint of the Creator; wisdom is therefore reflected even in sensible things, and the educational process must guide man from the material to the immaterial, from temporal realities to eternal ones.

In this process Revelation, willed by God in the historically determined form of Sacred Scripture, generates knowledge of the content of Faith and leads to blessedness (De Trinitate 14,1,3). For this reason it must be included among the sciences, since it teaches man the distinction between what may be enjoyed and what may merely be used in order to attain the ultimate goal of the knowledge of God. The misuse and disordered enjoyment of things corrupt human life (De Trinitate10,10,13).

No science is an end in itself, but rather a means to attain Wisdom through a harmonious relationship between Faith and reason, philosophy and theology, pagan learning and Christian wisdom. Consequently, the teacher is not the possessor of Truth. Teaching and pedagogy must instead serve as a loving encouragement, prompting the student to discover Truth within himself.

Teaching is not the transfer of ideas, but an education — an invitation for the soul to return into itself in order to rediscover and strengthen, through divine illumination and Love, its dormant faculties.

Education, didactics, and pedagogy are therefore nothing less than acts of Love, making the teacher an instrument of God in the instruction of the disciple. From this concept arises a series of methodological insights that render Augustinian pedagogy complete, perpetually relevant, and adaptable to every type of learner.

In order always to remain present to Truth, the teacher himself must continue, with humility, his own search for Truth and Love. Augustine perfectly understood the novelty that Christ brought into the world, inaugurating the new age of Christian culture through the new divine-human anthropology embodied in the Son of God.

The message is clear: man does not find fulfilment in the use of reason and science alone, but only in the search for divine Wisdom manifested in the living signs of Creation. He must overcome the desire for omnipotence in order to realize his true nature and attain the eternal happiness promised by the Creator.