The fifth installment of a series of podcasts 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 dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the publication of the principal documents of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, the Head of Formation for the Delegation of Rome and Vatican City, Professor Enzo Cantarano, Knight de Jure Sanguinis, 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 inner Teacher, going beyond classical pagan instruction in order to integrate faith and reason, with the goal of knowing God.
The Inner Teacher and Truth: Augustine maintains that human teaching is limited; true knowledge is not transmitted from the outside but is illuminated by God directly within the soul.
Pedagogical Aim: the goal is not merely erudition, but spiritual formation, religious instruction, and love for God, overcoming merely instrumental curiositas.
Method: a modern approach attentive to psychology, which avoids boredom, favors pedagogical love, and adapts to individual abilities, with instruction based on Sacred Scripture.
Integrated Formation: it values the liberal arts and pagan culture as auxiliary tools, but subordinates them to the knowledge of Scripture.
Introspection: education proceeds through self-examination and the narration of one’s own life in order to encounter God, uniting faith and reason.
Saint Augustine and Christian Pedagogy – Part Five
In the Retractationes (II, 4, 1), Augustine of Hippo informs us that he suspended the revision of his other works in order to complete the De doctrina christiana, adding a fourth book. In the Confessions, Augustine recalls having set aside Sacred Scripture because he had not been able to understand it (III, 5, 9), thus finding himself defenseless before the rationalistic criticisms of the Manicheans. Now he wishes to prevent the same from happening to others and, through his work, intends to assist those willing and capable of learning (De doctrina christiana, Prologue, 1).
In De doctrina christiana, Augustine simultaneously offers a synthesis of the Christian vision of life, “the principles of theological hermeneutics,” a program of secular studies as preparation for direct knowledge of the Bible, and, in the final book, a true pedagogy of preaching. It should be noted, however, that Augustine’s entire body of work is permeated by a lively educational sensitivity, even when the connection to pedagogy appears indirect. The term doctrina is in fact the literal translation of the Greek paideia, meaning education, formation, and culture. In Cicero and Quintilian, doctrina denotes the educational process that develops and humanizes nature; Augustine adds that, in the Christian perspective, this process also heals and sanctifies.
This work is among Augustine’s most original. In it, the saintly Doctor expresses for the first time a consciousness of the translatio imperii from classical civilization to the Christian one—not as a revolutionary rupture, but as cultural continuity. In the prologue, Augustine defends himself from possible misunderstandings. He is as far removed from the “fundamentalism” of the pagan party that idolized traditional culture as from those Christians who, in reaction, tended to demonize it. He considers utterly ridiculous the illusion of certain charismatics who believe they can bypass education, as if it were in itself an obstacle to faith (De doctrina christiana, Prologue, 5).
The enlightened interpretation of Scripture is always a gift of God, yet no one can claim, as a matter of principle, to possess this free and mysterious gift without engaging with others: “Whoever boasts of understanding all the obscurities of Scripture without any rule, but solely by virtue of a gift, rightly believes that this gift does not originate from himself but is given by God. But then, since he reads and understands without another’s explanation, why does he presume to explain it to others?” (De doctrina christiana, Prologue, 8).
The conditio humana finds its fundamental structure in the principle per homines hominibus—God gives Himself “to men through men.” Human beings cannot exist except among and with others. Thus arise language, experience, the transmission of faith, culture, teaching, and learning. The order of salvation does not abolish this structure; rather, “the human condition would be degraded if God refused to address men through the ministry of men” (De doctrina christiana, Prologue, 6). Without this principle, the supreme commandment of charity would collapse, and even the reality of the Christian community would become unintelligible, for within it God distributes both sacrament and word through human mediation. The refutation of the objections raised by the charismatics and the fideists also highlights the need for a Christian culture in “Christian times.” “For it is one thing to know simply what a man must believe in order to attain the blessed life, and another to know it in such a way as to make the reasons for one’s faith useful to the good and to defend them against the wicked” (De Trinitate XIV, I, 3).
Christian paideia is new in comparison with that of antiquity, yet it makes use of its methods and is eager to employ its riches to its own advantage. The ancient tradition fulfills a valuable preparatory function with its techniques and its great contributions in the scientific, aesthetic, and philosophical spheres. Augustine’s personal experience is persuasive here as well: from Socrates, Plato, Plotinus, Cicero, and Seneca he received many stimuli to seek God and a more worthy life; Cicero’s De oratore also offers excellent suggestions to those who proclaim the word of God. Whatever the errors, shortcomings, and even perversities of ancient culture, not everything in it is pagan, and many elements are even pre-Christian: the truths it glimpses, giving voice to the highest universal demands of human conscience, find themselves in spontaneous harmony with the Gospel message.
Christians must free these truths from the bondage of the systems in which they are imprisoned and from their mixture with errors and unworthiness. In this, Augustine is the heir to a mentality and a practice that go back to the first Christian philosopher, Justin, to the Alexandrian school, to Greek patristics, and to his contemporary Jerome. “If by chance the philosophers, and especially the Platonists, have expressed ideas that are true and in accordance with our faith, we must not only not distrust them, but claim them for our own use” (De doctrina christiana II, 40, 60). In the prologue to the Gospel of John it is said that the Word is “the light that enlightens every man coming into the world” (Jn 1:9), and therefore the constitutive relationship of the soul to the divine Word makes it possible for natural reason as such, even before and outside “Christian times,” to attain not a few truths. “Every Christian must understand that truth, wherever it is found, belongs to the Lord” (De doctrina christiana II, 18, 28). For it is the Word of God who is the one true Teacher who enlightens every man who comes into the world.
The theme of the Word that enlightens every person coming into the world, being the inner Teacher of each, is perhaps the fundamental motif that runs through and unifies all of Augustine’s writings and discourses. “The sound of my words strikes your ears, but the inner Teacher is within” (In Joh. 26, 7). “I speak to you outwardly; the Word stirs you inwardly” (Sermo 179, 7, 7). “I who speak and you who listen know that we are fellow disciples of a single Teacher” (Sermo 23, 2, 2). And again in his later years: “Whatever you may learn from me, only he will be your teacher who is the inner Teacher of man” (Epistola 266, 4).
Therefore, wherever the Christian discovers it, he has the right and the duty to appropriate it and to lead it back to its original divine source, making it rightly serve the proclamation of the Gospel. This is what many of our good faithful have always done—the revered teachers Cyprian, Victorinus, Lactantius, Hilary among the Latins, and many others among the Greeks (De doctrina christiana II, 40, 61). And did not Augustine himself do the same with regard to Neoplatonism (Confessions VIII, 9, 15)? In the “Christian times” in which one lives, the recovery of what natural reason has been able to attain that is true and just must be joined to the effort to make explicit and develop the cultural and formative potential of the Christian vision of life.
The understanding of faith never comes to an end; indeed, the Bishop of Hippo achieved an ever deeper penetration of the Bible and wanted it to be the Christian classic par excellence as the foundation of spiritual life and cultural formation. Nevertheless, his cultural program “was shaped by the concern not to recreate, in the study of the Bible and in preaching, the paralyzing affectation of traditional education” (Peter Brown, Augustine). For this very reason, De doctrina christiana appears as a very modern work. Augustine gives ample space in education to spontaneous interests, talent, and intuition, and he is sincerely concerned that intelligence not be stifled by pedantry (De doctrina christiana II, 33, 51 and 34, 52). Intellectual and moral life is Christian only if it is devoted to fostering within us the love of God and of neighbor, which is inseparably united to it. Culture, insofar as it is the search for truth that humanizes, does not hinder the soul’s impulse toward God but is inserted into it, is its expression and support; it unifies and does not scatter, it is a synthesis—always to be realized—of truth and charity, of inquiry and service, in a dynamic tension that is nourished by its own achievements. “If you say that there is nothing more to know, you are lost” (In Joh. 14, 5).
The world of creation is not without a voice (In Joh. 24, 6); the depths of the human soul will never cease to be explored, and the reality of God, though it is most intimate to each of us, is higher than anything the human mind can conceive (Confessions III, 6, 11). In Augustine, the orientation of the human spirit toward the One Necessary never limits but rather expands the horizons of inquiry. For the African, the search never ends: the believer is happily obliged to pursue without rest “He who is” and who can never be fully possessed. One seeks in order to find and finds in order to seek again with greater ardor (De Trinitate IX, 1, 1 and XV, 2, 2). Augustine’s perspective is that of a perpetual movement of the soul in search of Wisdom (Epistola 55, 11, 21). “I have desired to see with the mind what I have believed through faith. May it never happen, O Lord, that, weary, I should no longer wish to seek you” (De Trinitate XV, 28, 51).
Whatever the limits of Augustine’s personal culture may have been—a question that risks becoming idle and misleading—it should first be noted simply that one must not conceive of culture in an innocently encyclopedic way, and that one may be a great genius without knowing everything. Certainly no one can accuse Augustine of superficiality or of having prepared, through his immense work and astonishing genius, the cultural impoverishment and the decline of speculative thought in the centuries dominated by the barbarians.
As has been seen, Augustine’s critique of curiositas, consistently developed from his earliest works (De ordine I, 11, 31; II, 5, 17; II, 15, 42; II, 12, 37; De vera religione 39, 52, etc.) to his latest, cannot be interpreted as a factor of cultural decline or renunciation. Yet there are even those who go so far as to see grounds for accusation in the fact that Augustine sought to provide the West with scientific manuals, indispensable for the basic formation of Christians in need of education. De musica was the only one of the planned manuals completed, and it is by no means a minor work. In any case, it is not clear why manuals in themselves cannot be instruments of progress in the field of education; they become dangerous only when, instead of being a support or a stage in the initiation into culture, they become the whole of culture.
He was certainly not pessimistic about the destiny of culture, despite the harshness of the times—that man who, close to death, according to Possidius, friend and biographer of Augustine, “gave orders that the church library and all the manuscripts be carefully preserved for posterity” (Life 31, 6).
