“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.” — Neil Gaiman
Cheers everyone and welcome to Friday’s Morning Open Thread.
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Notes from Below Sea Level
“A Deep So Profound”
For the past couple weeks, I’ve explored a few of my old theology texts and favored writings of Catholic thinkers, particularly those that shaped the early cannons and influenced the ultimate shape of Catholicism. I have my favorites over these years, but have found myself routinely circling back to Augustine, Bishop of Hippo for ease of understanding and utter conviction. And I’ll add this about St. Augustine (besides the fact that I regularly read him when my partner’s visits end, which happened a couple weeks ago following her wintering down here in warmer climes of the bayou country) he is an interesting, if complicated, person in his own right. A Church Father, Doctor of Grace, Bishop, and (obviously) Catholic Saint, he wrote one of the most influential books in our history: Confessions. He also lived a wild and sinful life as a young man; his famous “Lord make me chaste, but not yet” was an actual pickup line he—as a budding theological student—used on women.
The patron Saint of brewers, printers, and theologians, he’s clearly got something to offer the brokenhearted. (Sure, I could loose myself in St. John of the Cross, but I save him for when I’m clinically depressed and brokenhearted.) Besides his well-know insights on chasteness, Augustine (eventually the Bishop of Hippo) had this idea that we are born rational beings with free will. Though he concedes that free will is subject to defilement by sin or (just as bad) the burden of physical things that can be lost, in his way of thinking we all initially possess the freedom to choose to do and say and be this or that. In his view, once free will is lost through our covetousness of things, lust for power, or even hatred toward others, only grace can restore us to our natural state.
But a bit of background might help flesh out how he reached that point. Augustine was a Berber, born of a Christian mother and pagan father. He was well educated and adventurous as a young man and early on adopted the world view espoused by Manichaeism, a popular non-Christian religion that preached a dualistic cosmology, where the light of good is in constant battle with the darkness of evil. While the simplistic approach was seductive to the young Augustine, he eventually made his way back to his mother’s church when he came under the influence of Saint Ambrose of Milan (that giant of logic, philosophy, and theology—and a master orator).
He studied, moved from Manichaesim to the more sophisticated and complex Neoplatonic thought, eventually got his degree and a teaching job, and life seemed fairly set. But after converting and wandering off from the university to found a monastery, he was ordained (by force) when he visited Hippo in search of fellow brothers for his new venture. From there he became a bit more serious about theology and eventually became Hippo’s Bishop. During that time, though, he was involved in two huge issues facing the young Church (we’re talking late fourth, early fifth centuries here)—issues whose outcomes would fundamentally determine the course of Catholicism.
The first was the question of the viability and of Donatism, a sect which held that ministers must be without fault—pure in thought and action and (simply put) without mortal sin. As a foundational doctrine, this school of thought refused to accept back into the church those members that renounced their faith to save their lives; those that re-entered the faith could not administer the sacraments because they had mortally sinned. In essence, if you weren’t willing to be boiled alive or drawn and quartered for your faith, then you clearly weren’t a good enough Christian to preach or receive the sacraments. The second great turmoil involved Pelagius, the British theologian who denied the existence of original sin and posited that salvation could come from one’s own choices; because man was born good, he could chose the path of salvation by following the laws of Moses and the teachings of Christ.
In the case of Donatism, Augustine argued that it was God’s faith that made sacraments valid and sacred, not an individual man’s moral state. In other words, God’s grace underpinned the sacraments and validity of the Church, not the morally upright clergy. As for Pelagius and our innate ability to find a way to salvation by being good, Augustine fought hard for his position of original sin and the ever-present battle of good and evil that needed God’s grace to grant us salvation. Donatism (elitist as it was) became a historical footnote as Augustine’s view held sway; Pelagius was declared a heretic at the synod of Jerusalem of 415, driven from the church, and eventually found sanctuary in Egypt where he was never heard from again.
Historically speaking, Augustine was setting up a Christian theology based on the rejection of the more popular and accepted Stoic and Gnostic approaches that bent toward the deterministic view of God. In other words, he spent the vast majority of his writing and teaching rejecting the entire idea of fate as the determining factor in one’s life. But like many early Christian thinkers, Augustine wasn’t always consistent when intellectually challenged by the other religious zealots of the time and partly reverted to his original fate-based, non-Christian Manichaean teachings later in life, which (though he vehemently denied it) he tried mightily to weave into his newly-found Christian understanding of God. Still, his free will pronouncements were the universally accepted church theology for over a century, or until the likes of Luther and Calvin rediscovered his deterministic writings and, ignoring his larger body of work, raised a flag on those few scraps of erudition and off we were to enjoy the Protestant Revolution.
Still—think biography here: an understanding of Augustine’s life, the winding road that was his trail to the church, might help explain his positions (clergy can be sinful but still good and we are born with sin) on sin and redemption. He wasn’t exactly the Saint-in-training as a young man.
That long introduction, though, gets me only to this one place where I wanted to start (with your company, which is why I dragged you along). He wrote this, a question posed that has fascinated me for decades:
Don't you believe that there is in man
a deep so profound as to be hidden even to him in whom it is?
— Saint Augustine
The question, as simple as it might seem, highlights the conundrum that is my 49-year relationship with someone who comes and goes from my life like a migrating butterfly—an enigma to me even after all these years. She speaks from a position of truth but without pretension or artifice and with a casualness that can make my left eye sting. Her ease with people and ideas both fascinates and annoys me. And so, as she takes her leave, I usher in Augustine and his ultimately-unanswerable questions. I will confess—I find a modicum of comfort in his vague musings that in each of us there is a deep so profound we may not recognize it in ourselves. He was, I know, searching for signs of God’s likeness; but for me, as an atheist, wades into non-sectarian waters that run as deep.
We on this site are all curious people (political junkies in one form or another). We keep up with the news, follow the latest races, read policy pronouncements and voice our opinions, we even revel in the missteps of our opponents. I also hold fast to the idea that in the long game grace will touch us each and light will overcome darkness. I truly believe we need to understand that overcoming obstacles—personal, familial, even political—involves lifting ourselves up.
There is a deep so profound in each of us. At least I’ve come to believe that despite the readily available data all around me that contradicts this conclusion. Call it “inner grace” or “dignity” or even “soulfulness,” but it’s there in each of us. We are so much more than the sins we’ve committed; at the end of the day, we are individuals trying our damndest to do the right thing. And perhaps we all need to be reminded of this on occasion.
(March 2020-2024)
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My hope for the day is that each of you celebrates life in one way or another and finds peace in these turbulent times. Be well, be kind, and appreciate the love you have in your life.
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Grab your coffee or tea and join us, please.
What's on your mind this morning?
