Not As The Scribes

In Book VIII of his Confessions, Augustine of Hippo proffers a luminous account of the human person. As we shall see by closely attending to Book VIII, Augustine believed that the human person is not, as the Manicheans thought, an actualized confluence of dualistic natures, but rather a single subject principally governed by a will. More specifically, we shall see that for Augustine, the will (1) always determines one’s acts and (2) the will always already coheres with itself.

If we are to understand Augustine’s theology of the will as expressed in Book VIII of the Confessions, we would do well to first briefly outline the rival theory he was seeking to subvert: Manichaeism. We are told in Mani’s Letter of Foundation that “hearers” of Mani’s teachings are “illumined” with a certain “knowledge of the reason of things.” Principally, Mani’s gnosis reveals to such “hearers” that the entire cosmos consists in two equiprimal and equipotent eternal forces: “The Kingdom of Light” and the “The Kingdom of Darkness”—good and evil, respectively. As such, humans are also dualistic in nature: while one’s self is partly good, there is an evil self as well. Therefore to escape evil altogether, one’s “good soul” must be “set free” from its evil counterpart and “return”—be united completely—with “the Kingdom of Light.” In respect to their liberation from evil, Manicheans were thoroughgoing rationalists; after being “illumined,” a Manichean believed that she could liberate her “good soul” by simply acting “reasonably.”
Augustine himself was at one time drawn to Manichaeism for its high view of human intelligence and its optimistic rationalism. But as Peter Brown shows, what initially drew Augustine to Mani’s teaching is precisely the thing that eventually caused him to abandon it. Manichaeism deliberately ignored “the complexities of doubt [and of] ignorance … [in sum the] deep-rooted tensions within the citadel of the will itself.” Years later after leaving Manichaeism, the Catholic Augustine attempted what he felt Manichaeism could not: to develop a theology of the deep-rooted conflict that inheres in the human person. It is to that theology that we now turn.

In Augustine’s view, each human person possesses a singular will. As the center of active volition, the will is not regarded as something secondary or peripheral to one’s decisions. Rather, for Augustine the will is always determinative of one’s acts. Hence, when one wills, one acts: “the very act of willing is actually to do the deed.”
To put it this way should not suggest that Augustine admitted no division of the human faculties. Augustine also wrote frequently of the “heart” and “mind.” But in every case, Augustine shows that the will precedes and governs these faculties. This, Augustine tells us, is why even though the Lord’s “words had stuck fast in the depths of [his’] heart” he still remained in “a class of impious men, who ‘knowing God, have not glorified him as God, or given him thanks.” Although Augustine’s heart and mind were “encompassed by [the Lord],” his will had not yet been “raised up.” Therefore, recounts Augustine, “still I hesitated.”
At this point, one might conjecture that Augustine’s theology of the will is not so different from the Manichean’s. It could be argued that since Augustine admits that the heart or mind might oppose the will, his view significantly comports with the Manichean notion of a self divided between opposing principles. A statement such as this is only conjecture and is to be dismissed on patently clear textual grounds. When Augustine suggests that the mind opposes the will, it is qualified to suggest that the mind has not really but only seemingly opposed the will: “mind commands mind to will … [and yet] it does not do so.” The reason the mind is at times not able to obey even itself is that, “… [the mind] commands a thing only in so far as it wills it, and in so far as what it commands is not done, to that extent it does not will it.” In other words, one’s mind is able to direct one’s self only in so far as one’s mind agrees with one’s will. Although one might think to act, the act is only eventuated to the extent that one completely wills the act. If one does not will an act completely, it is not done, “for if it were a complete will, [the mind] would not command it to be, since the thing would already be in being.” Disagreements concerning nuance notwithstanding, the point we are making is that although Augustine partitions the human person, he does not allow for a Manichean notion of equipotent opposing principles inhering in the human person. Augustine rather believes that the human person is united in all of her faculties by a singular will that does not oppose, but rather determines one’s emotive, cognitive, and physical acts.
In the Augustinian paradigm, the will is understood as the center of volition that always already coheres with itself. Stated negatively, this means that the human will cannot contradict itself; it cannot will anything other than what it wills. In Augustine’s words, “the will commands that there be a will, and that this be itself, and not something else.” Accordingly, Augustine recollects that prior to his conversion when reading the Apostle Paul’s words, “Rise, you who sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ will enlighten you …” he could only answer, “Right away. Yes, right away …” full knowing that “ … ‘right away’ was never ‘right now’” and that “‘Let me be for a little while’ [would stretch] out for a long time.” Similarly, Augustine is famously remembered for having pleaded with God, “Give me chastity and continence, but not yet!” While this phrase could be distorted to suggest that Augustine thought himself capable of abating his conversion, in context its meaning conveys just the opposite. For here, Augustine is lamenting his former life wherein he was as yet unable to refuse “that disease of lust.” The reason Augustine could only say “right away” and not “right now”—why even his sincerest plea for piety was followed by a “but not yet” is because his unconverted will could not yet say “right now.” To do otherwise would have contradicted his will and this is the very thing Augustine is at pains to prove impossible. Reflecting upon his former state, Augustine wrote, “Unhappy man that I was! Who would deliver me from the body of this death, unless your grace through Christ Jesus our Lord?”

Here also Augustine’s theology of the will could hardly be more opposed to the Manichean position. Having done away with the rationalism and the optimism that characterized such rival claims, Augustine’s theology always everywhere denied the human powers of reason to liberate oneself from evil acts. While Augustine had clearly not come to disregard the merits of intellectual acumen, he had been convinced that no amount of cognitive dexterity could enable one to “cast [oneself] trustfully on God.” The Manichean, contra Augustine, trusted that by being “filled with light”—with “the knowledge of the reason of things,” she could “know her [own] soul” and be converted to God. Having traveled the Manichean’s furtive course, Augustine knew better; for this reason, when remembering his conversion he truthfully confessed to God, “you had converted me to yourself …”

In closing, we have seen that Augustine’s theology of the human will in Book VIII of his Confessions functions as both a constructive analysis and a polemic against the Manichean view of the human person. After briefly exploring the dualism and rationalism characteristic to Mani’s teaching, we were better able to examine the unique features of Augustine’s theology of the will. In sum, it became clear that unlike his Manichean opponents, Augustine believed that the emotive and cognitive faculties of the human person are united in and proceed from the will. To be sure, Augustine saw a division of the human faculties, but believed they could never truly override the will. We also noted that Augustine found at the center of the human person a singular will that predicates actions consistent with itself.
Serendipitously, the exploration of our thesis has also led to some unexpected discoveries that register not a few curious questions. Notably, we are made to wonder, “What is the connection between one’s view of human rationality and salvation?” It is perhaps not coincidental that the optimism of the Manichean commitment to the powers of reason is complimented by a soteriology that invests humans with the ability to transcend their depravity. One is reminded of a similar connection in present-day worldviews. Contemporary manifestations of optimism towards the power of human reason, in forms both religious and secular, pervade Western culture. We need not look further than the burgeoning popular interest in eugenics, psychotropic drugs, and applied psychology to find thoroughly “modern” people expressing a similar hope that human reason is capable of transcending the human condition. Perhaps if Augustine were with us today, he might ask, “Have today’s ‘experts,’ much like the Manicheans, too quickly brushed aside the dense and thorny reality of doubt, ignorance, and depravity? What will happen if they continue ignoring the ‘deep-rooted tensions within the citadel of the will itself?’”