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November 386 (On St. Augustine’s Catechumenate)

  • What is truth? Can we know the truth?
  • What comprises the happy life? Can we live it?
  • What is the relationship of the order of the created world and evil? Does the order of the created world ensure that evil does not increase?
  • What is the soul? Why is it so important?

These are the questions St. Augustine wondered about from his late teens all the way up to shortly after his conversion to Christianity.

Saint Augustine (c.1645-c.1650)

by Philippe de Champaigne

The Spiritual Journey of St. Augustine

In August of 386, when he was 31 years old, Augustine converted to Christianity after a very long and complicated spiritual journey (which in large part was related to these questions) that led him to abandoning his simple Christian upbringing, to joining the Manichaean heretical group, to cohabiting with his mistress for close to 16 years, and to finally settling on Skepticism, which in the ancient world referred to a philosophical position that claimed to not be able to know anything about the truth.  In other words, this was an extreme form of atheism and nihilism.

Things began to change when he crossed paths with St. Ambrose, a charismatic preacher and intellectual who was the bishop of Milan, in the city where St. Augustine had opened a school whose students failed to pay him at the end of the year.  When he met St. Ambrose, he was struck by two things: first the character of St. Ambrose, and second, the fact that St. Ambrose could answer the questions that he thought were so unanswerable with not only strong answers, but also with a gentle disposition.

This led to St. Augustine taking the Christian faith seriously, and unlike in his childhood, he began to engage it with understanding.  This led to his reading Christian literature such as the epistles of the Apostle Paul and The Life of Antony by St. Athanasius.  Reflecting on the faith of his mother (and also more mysteriously being guided by her prayers for nearly two decades), and the faith of St. Ambrose and the Christian community, and what little he now correctly understood from the Scriptures, he came to believe, with the list of the questions I mentioned above still unanswered.

That may seem strange, and it may seem irrational, but it actually isn’t.  Christianity is not a faith whose main channel is the mind, nor is it a faith whose main channel is the heart, but it is a living faith of the whole human being.  For that reason, we convert when we assent to the life of Christ and His Church, even though we may have lingering questions.  To give an analogy, it is like how we assent to going to a graduate school even though we know it will be so incredibly hard.  We assent not because we have answered our questions, nor because it feels good (because graduate school is anything but comfortable), but because we have seen the community that has graduated from such schools and those that are finishing their course in there, and we see what type of people they have become, so we assent to that way of life even though we may not feel comfortable or have all of our questions answered.  It is the transformation that we see in others that draws us in, so we have faith that we too can have that state of being.

This is the best way I can explain the conversion of St. Augustine.  (It would also be good to reflect on most people’s conversion stories and whether they resemble his).

The Retreat at Cassiciacum

Following his conversion, St. Augustine and his mother, his son, his brother, a few of his friends, and two of his students retreated to a villa on the estate of one of his friends where they spent the late summer of 386 through spring of the following year.  This estate was called Cassiciacum.

Early in the retreat, in November of 386 (before, during, and after his 32nd birthday which was on November 13), he framed his questions better and began (and only began) to answer them over a series of discussions with all of these people involved.

What is truth?  Can we know the truth?

The first of these conversations addressed the questions: “What is truth?” and “Can we know the truth?”

He had this discussion with his friends, his students, and his son.  This discussion was recorded in dialogue form in the book titled Against the Academics.  As I mentioned above, the Academics were hardcore Skeptics who descended from Plato’s Academy, but radically departed in worldview from Plato’s original vision.  They claimed that there is something known as truth, but we can never know it, but only know something having the appearance of truth.

If you have ever read St. Augustine, you know how beautiful his style of writing is and how the ideas flow smoothly, but these early conversations do not have that polish, as you can bear in mind that these are his earliest writings.

Rather, what this conversation models well for us, especially for us Christians who have an intellectual side, is how to approach these questions honestly, coherently, and logically and what type of labor we must go through in framing and reframing the questions and testing the coherence of the answers given to these questions.

The reason he had ever raised these deep questions was because the Bible makes claims, and if we cannot know the truth, then it doesn’t matter if the Bible’s claims are true because we can never know what is true.  But, if we can know the truth, then we can determine whether the Bible’s claims are true or not.

The conclusion that he and his group arrive at is that we can indeed know the truth because of three principles which are now known in philosophy as:

  1. The Law of Identity
  2. The Law of Non-Contradiction
  3. The Law of the Excluded Middle

although they are not referred to by these names in the dialogue.  This is an important conclusion for those who doubt the possibility of knowing the truth because these three principles help us cancel out what is certainly not true and can help us gain greater confidence in the possibilities that remain.

What comprises the happy life?  Can we live it?

Then St. Augustine on the day of his birthday, November 13, and the following two days gave his friends what he called “a banquet,” but not of food, but rather of ideas and rational delight (“rational” in the ancient world refers to both the soul and the mind; they are the same in ancient thought).

We often have a lot of thoughts on our birthdays, specifically about our origins, our span of life both past and future, and we become increasingly sensitive to how old we are becoming.  I even had a student a few years ago who was afraid of her birthday.  But in the midst of all this, we think about what it is that makes us happy.

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How We Perceive the Saints

I wrote another article on the saints titled “Saints: The Imitators of Christ.”  It serves as a good prologue to this article.  You may want to read it first, but you can also read today’s article as a standalone.

Perception

How we perceive a thing affects how we interact with that thing and how we interpret the relationship between us and that thing.

This is true about the way we perceive the saints.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines perception as “A thought, belief, or opinion, often held by many people and based on appearances.”

The dictionary on Google defines perception as “a way of regarding, understanding, or interpreting something; a mental impression.”

Both definitions are right, and we could combine them to mean “How we regard, understand, and interpret is based onthe thoughts, beliefs, or opinions we hold.”

Now how we perceive the saints makes the difference between a stagnant spiritual life and a vibrant one.

There is this widespread perception about the saints that they are those who show us how to live a simple life following God.

Well, what is simplicity then?

Those who advocate for simplicity will define it as something like this “The practice of virtue without thinking about how to do it.  Thinking just complicates things, but what is important is what we do and how we live.  Such virtue also comes through intense struggle.”

This is a misperception.  Now let’s take a look at how this affects how we understand the saints.

Our Perceptions Affect How We Remember the Saints

The intellectual saints such as St. Athanasius, St. Basil, and St. Gregory the Theologian, who together have left us hundreds of writings ranging from treatises, to orations, to sermons, letters, and poetry, when they are mentioned in the synaxaria of the Church, which are read in liturgical services to commemorate the saints and to share their lives with the congregation, almost nothing of substance is mentioned of their writings.  Rather, they are treated as simpletons that we should imitate for their virtue alone, and the impression given of their writings is nothing more than a cherry sprinkled on the top of their stories.

Here are two examples of synaxaria entries for St. Athanasius.

The first is from the Coptic synaxarion for his feast day on May 15.  Toward the end of the entry, only one paragraph mentions his writings, and it reads:

“He wrote several books about the Arians, on the Incarnation, and other subjects. Abba Cosma (The 44th. Patriarch) praised these publications by saying: ‘I ask anyone who would find the books of Athanasius to write them on paper, and for those who could not find paper, to write them on their clothes’” (“Feast of the Departure of St. Athanasius,” 7 Pashons; May 15, Coptic Synaxarion).

The powerful comment by the Patriarch Cosma makes sense if you have read his writings, or at the very least know something about them.  If you don’t know anything about St. Athanasius, it does not become clear why we should do as the Patriarch Cosma said, and how St. Athanasius’s books are different from any other writer in the Church.  And if all we know about Christian literature are modern books, and we operate on the bias that the present is better than the past, then we think that there is little value to reading the writings of St. Athanasius and that his only virtue was in resisting accusations and the heretics, or persevering under persecution, or enduring his exiles patiently.  While these are definitely virtues that he had that we can emulate, such a portrayal presents an incomplete picture of the saint.

Now when we go to the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America’s Synaxarion, this is all that is said about his writings:

“The great Athanasius passed the remaining seven years of his life in peace. Of his fifty-seven years as Patriarch, he had spent some seventeen in exiles. Shining from the height of his throne like a radiant evening star, and enlightening the Orthodox with the brilliance of his words for yet a little while, this much-suffering champion inclined toward the sunset of his life, and, in the year 373, took his rest from his lengthy sufferings, but not before another luminary of the truth, Basil the Great, had risen in the East, being consecrated Archbishop of Caesarea in 370. Besides all his other achievements, Saint Athanasius wrote the life of Saint Anthony the Great, with whom he spent time in his youth; ordained Saint Frumentius first Bishop of Ethiopia; and in his Paschal Encyclical for the year 367 set forth the books of the Old and New Testaments accepted by the Church as canonical. Saint Gregory the Theologian, in his Oration On the Great Athanasius, said he was ‘Angelic in appearance, more angelic in mind; … rebuking with the tenderness; of a father, praising with the dignity of a ruler … Everything was harmonious, as an air upon a single lyre, and in the same key; his life, his teaching, his struggles, his dangers, his return, and his conduct after his return … be treated so mildly and gently those who had injured him, that even they themselves, if I may say so, did not find his restoration distasteful’” (“Removal of the Relics of St. Athanasius,” May 2, GOARCH Synaxarion).

The Greek Synaxarion’s wording is so incredibly beautiful and poetic, which I think should be necessary for any Synaxarion entry, but as you can see in the only section about his writings, that there is no detail about what they were other than the Life of Anthony and his Paschal Encyclical.

But who was St. Athanasius and why is he a saint?  What is it that we should emulate most from him?  The unique trait of St. Athanasius (and the main reason that the Church universally recognized his sainthood) is how he clearly he articulated the belief of the early Church including using powerful analogies to build an understanding of the faith in his readers.  How widely he appealed to the Scriptures and explained them in his texts is also exemplary, especially for someone who did not have a computer to search for verses.  Such a mind and the attitude that underlies it is what is worthy of emulation.  The best way I can describe St. Athanasius is that he is the C.S. Lewis of the early Church.  And it is fitting that I should give such a description because C.S. Lewis was highly influenced by St. Athanasius’s thought and style as evidenced by his multiple references to him (such as in the “Introduction to On the Incarnation,” Miracles, and The Discarded Image).

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Episode 11: Fasting

The Mind of the Early Church Podcast

“Nothing is more misunderstood today than Christian asceticism, especially seasons of fasting. Some think that fasting is a way to please God and to show him how good we are. Others disapprove of this type of thinking, supposing those who think so have a wrong understanding of God, and that God does not desire that we fast for that would be a works-based salvation, meaning salvation is on us and not on God.

Yet still, some think that periods of fasting indicate that the churches who do so are unnecessarily legalistic, and thus imposing a fast encroaches upon the freedom we have in Christ. Others think that fasting by itself makes them more spiritual.

All these things just mentioned are misconceptions. These misconceptions can be corrected if we understand how the early Christians practiced fasting. The result will also be that our spiritual lives will be deepened and transformed in the process.”

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Episode 9: What is the Liturgy?

The Mind of the Early Church Podcast

“What is the Liturgy? This questions leads to so many different and confused answers. Some think it is nothing more than a cultural expression. Others simply pray liturgically without understanding the depth and meaning of the Liturgy. In short, the Liturgy is a response to God’s being and work throughout history especially in our Lord Jesus Christ. This episode looks at the idea of liturgy in the Old Testament.”

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Episode 8: Education and Spirituality (feat. a discussion with Andrew Kern)

The Mind of the Early Church Podcast

“Education today is viewed as a means to an end: namely a good job, money, and a comfortable life. But this was not how education was viewed in the ancient world nor by the early Christians. For the early Christians education was the natural contemplation of God in the world, and the development of the Image of God within by beholding God’s work in the world. This episode is a discussion between Daniel Hanna and Andrew Kern of the CiRCE Institute.

To visit the webpage for the CiRCE Institute, click here: http://www.circeinstitute.org”

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Poems on the Virus: “Greed Is a Creator of Poverty”

Greed is a creator of poverty,
And it bothers me.

When people have greed,
We can’t get what we need.
And those we love we can’t feed.

When people have greed,
They forget their creed,
To give those in need:
“Inasmuch as you did to one of the least of these…
You did to Me.” [1]

Greed is a creator of poverty,
And it bothers me.

Greed blinds like a mirror does,
They buy in bulk just because
They’re afraid the life that was
Will fall to COVID’s jaws.

Greed blinds like a mirror does,
They’re afraid the life that was
Will soon come to a pause,
In the sight of the virus’s jaws.

Greed is a creator of poverty,
And it bothers me.

The world is coming to an end,
And no one cares about his friend.
And there is no one on whom you can depend,
Leaving everyone for themselves to fend.

Greed is venomous;
The antidote is to be generous.

Yet, now we have learned the value of a friend,
And what it means of a hand to lend,
And the luxury we once had, we now comprehend.

This way we will beat the effects of greed,
When we are generous in deed;
And we will learn the paradox
That when we freely give,
Then we will all be rich.

[1] Matthew 25:40

For more of my Poems on the Virus, click here.

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Poems on the Virus: “The Captivity of the Church”

I can’t help but see this as a captivity of the Church –

God has us fasting from church

Because we took it for granted

When we stood in church and chanted.

 

We took it as a joke,

And we didn’t live it; we only spoke:

To hide how we are spiritually broke.

 

“Only God can judge me,” say the judgment-worthy,

Now we realize we had been abusing his mercy.

Yet, in his grace, He has given us the best chance to reflect

And we can take this time to think and introspect.

 

We have been given a true retreat,

But as we look out on our streets,

And when we sit in our homes in our seats,

We feel that we are strangers in our own land.

 

So that when we stand in front of our own screens,

And someone asks us to “Sing us one of Zion’s songs”

We respond, “How shall we sing the LORD’s song in a foreign land?”[1]

And it just feels somewhat off or wrong.

 

We have learned the meaning of place,

To have a place for gathering, playing, and praying.

And now we know how it is a grace.

 

Yet if you think about it, all these things begin in the home,

And from there we shine them outward.

We have now diagnosed the syndrome

So now it’s time to focus inward.

 

It is interesting that all this has happened in Lent,

So we could practice praying and repent.

He has caused to give up so much more this Fast,

So we could see the contrast.

 

It’s time to redeem what made us human in the first place:

Take responsibility, build your families up, don’t try to escape.

Don’t be afraid because it’s time to own up,

If you care for your own, you won’t be runner-up.

 

Don’t be afraid because it’s time to own up

It’s time for us kids to be grown-ups.

And if we take the next week to truly fast,

Maybe we’ll get what we asked.

 

Maybe more.

 

 

[1] Psalm 137:3-4

For more of my Poems on the Virus, click here.

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Episode 7: The Logos

The Mind of the Early Church Podcast

“This episode features a discussion on the doctrine of the Logos with Thilo Young and Peter Ibrahim. The doctrine of the Logos is the most foundational doctrine for Christian theology and philosophy. The Gospel of John says, “The Logos became flesh and dwelt among us…and of His fullness we have all received and grace upon grace” (John 1:14, 16). This is God’s ultimate revelation: it reveals to us who God is, who we are, and what it means for how we should live. There is also a discussion on the ideas of the Perfect Logos and the seminal logos as discussed in the Church Fathers.”

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Judas

Up until a few years ago if you asked anyone from 12 years old and up what the most notable example of betrayal was, the names of our Lord Jesus and Judas would have come up. This is what Judas is most remembered for, and indeed it is the most memorable example of betrayal in history because of the people involved. The Son of God who became Man who preached the Kingdom of God, who elevated those who were not even seen, those who were faceless, into the light and dignified them, who came to share our own life, was betrayed by one of His chosen twelve apostles, one from his inner circle, one who spent 3 ½ years with Him, saw His miracles, and shared in the preaching of His Gospel. And the type of betrayal is most memorable because he sold his Teacher for money, and not for any other reason.

Yet, there is a lot we can learn from Judas the former Apostle because no one can come into contact with the Son of God, especially in close contact, and their own lives cannot become a lesson of what it means to have come near God.

Judas by Fyodor Bronnikov, 1874

Lessons from Judas

Lesson # 1: You cannot change unless you choose to respond to God

The first lesson we learn from Judas is that a person cannot change (no matter what) unless they choose to change. In the case of changing into what God wants, we must choose to respond to God’s call.

Judas spent 3 ½ years watching God Himself Incarnate preaching and showing the Way to him, the way to deal with our neighbors, and how to live according to the purpose with which God created us. He saw countless miracles more than anyone has ever seen except for the other apostles. He had the Teacher and Shepherd who over the course of history has had billions respond to His call and who have followed Him. Our Lord Jesus is the Teacher and Shepherd who began the largest revolution in the history of humanity, but with all this, Judas still fell.

This teaches us that if there are some who fall, it is not always the fault of their teachers, shepherds, parents, or families, but in the end it can and often will be because of the person himself or herself.

To illustrate, imagine this: You have the greatest elementary school teacher on the planet. They can take children who don’t know how to read at the beginning of the year and who are coming in far behind what a student their grade level should be performing, and this teacher has been proven time and time again. Now, imagine that you have a student in that class who refuses to listen, goes on to the computer only to play games and chooses to not learn. The student himself or herself understands that the teacher is highly skilled; they have seen the work of the teacher evident in the lives of the students around them, but this one student doesn’t care at all. Their only response is a grudging acknowledgment, but their actions are totally focused on gratifying themselves.

This was Judas. His only focus was on what he could gain from our Lord Jesus, not to live according to His life, but to follow Him in order to get something to gratify himself.

Lesson # 2: Judas could have been a name we all name our children

This leads us to the second lesson we learn from Judas:

Judas could have been a name we all name our children. What?! Why?! Because Judas could have been the greatest example of repentance. It is interesting to see that in the narrative of Judas’s betrayal, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke also focus on the Apostle Peter’s denial, which was a betrayal by mouth. This creates a contrast between two people who acted against our Lord Jesus Christ and thus lost hope, but one dealt with his loss of hope by taking his own life, and the other by remembering, remembering Jesus, and how He taught repentance, had hope, and eventually repented.

To make a connection with the worship of the Church, there is a haunting ritual on Holy Thursday in the Coptic Orthodox Church. It is a hymn and a procession. The name of the hymn is “Judas.” That hymn has a tone that is unlike any other hymn in the Coptic Orthodox Church. And for the only time in all of Coptic ritual, the procession around the church is done clockwise, which is opposite of the counterclockwise motion which all processions do. In addition, those playing the cymbals invert the cymbals so that they clang.

Everything is turned upside down and goes backwards.

The hymn is 4 stanzas long. Each stanza is preceded by the refrain calling “Judas” 6 times, the number that signifies imperfection, having fallen short of 7, and calls him “the breaker of the law” or “the lawless one” (in Greek ou paranomos). It tells Judas:

1. What he has done
2. What happened to our Lord Jesus Christ
3. How our Lord Jesus Christ died
4. How He rose from the dead.

Of course, there are several sad ironies in all this.

First, Judas did not consider and grasp what his actions were going to ultimately lead to. Even though he knew that the Pharisees and chief priests were plotting to kill Jesus, he was blinded by his love for money.

Then, as the chanter calls Judas to hear, we know that Judas cannot be moved by any words because his mind has been set on gratifying himself.

Third, our Lord died for everyone’s sake to forgive us our sins including this betrayal had Judas chosen to repent. The chanter calls Judas, but there is no answer, because ultimately there was no answer from Judas, no response that looked to Christ, but it was all centered on the self. He had the spark, the moment of awakening, when He saw what was happening to our Lord Jesus and when he felt remorse, but the response was self-centered having chosen to take His own life instead of facing what He had done and repent as our Lord taught.

While there was another Apostle who was named Judas, because of the intolerability that the name Judas brings to mind, in certain languages the name is slightly modified in pronunciation. For example, the other Judas is called Jude in English. When was the last time you heard someone named Judas? Now, when was the last time you heard the name Peter? The reason the name Peter is so common is because of what he did following his denial of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Apostle Peter, on the other hand, also betrayed our Lord in a sense. He denied knowing Him after all they had been through together. He is the one who told our Lord Jesus “See, we have left all and followed you.” “To whom shall we go?” (Matthew 19:27; John 6:68). Then, when he denied our Lord Jesus Christ, He did it in sight of our Lord, and even our Lord turned to look at him (Luke 22:61). This added to the pain and suffering of our Lord Jesus Christ. He was not only under trial, but now He was alone emotionally in addition to physically.

Yet, the Apostle Peter did not lose hope. He might have been in a state where he was spiritually homeless not being able to know where to go and what to do, but with the Resurrection of our Lord, his hope increased even more that He could make things right.

At the end of the Gospel of John, our Lord asks the Apostle Peter three times about whether he loves Him (in Greek agape, which signifies the highest Christian love, one that is unconditional). The Apostle Peter is honest by replying the first two times with the words philo se , which is a lesser type of love, one that is conditional, which can be translated “You’re my friend,” meaning he is acknowledging that he has not risen to our Lord’s command for love which was agape. Our Lord had characterized agape as the love for which one is willing to die for His friends, which our Lord Jesus Christ did.

But the third time our Lord asks the Apostle Peter, in Greek he changes the question to ask the Apostle Peter if he loved Him with philia, that is, friendship. That grieves the Apostle Peter because he feels he has nowhere to go, and he answers again as truthfully as possible saying that he does love our Lord as his friend, that is the lesser type of love. Our Lord then prophesies about how the Apostle Peter will meet his end, and while it may not be clear to English readers why our Lord Jesus would bring this up after these questions, it is because the Apostle Peter’s end is exactly what agape is and does, which is to lay down one’s life for his friend. Our Lord Jesus is restoring the Apostle Peter’s hope by showing him that one day he will indeed get to that type of love. He restores him as at the beginning and tells him, “Come, follow Me.” So the Apostle Peter now knows where to go and what to do.

That could have been Judas too. While God does bestow His love and grace upon us, it is up to us to accept His love and grace. Judas didn’t, but the Apostle Peter did.

So in the end we learn something from all the Apostles by their responses to our Lord Jesus Christ who is God Incarnate. No matter what anyone does including God Himself, we have to participate in our own salvation by responding to and accepting the gift of God. We do this by first repenting, and then by following Him, putting His desire first and ours in accordance with His.

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