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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
The aim of this essay is to bring the philosophical theology of St Augustine, and in particular his anthropology, into fuller dialogue with contemporary psychology, and to examine how psychology and theology might benefit from such an engagement. A further aim is to show that intra-psychic accounts of Augustine's Confessions are insufficient on cultural-psychological, philosophical and theological grounds. To the extent that the modern concept of ‘pure nature’ is incompatible with Augustine's philosophical theology, attempts to develop naturalistic intra-individual, psychological accounts of spiritual change will necessarily be limited once the full ‘ecstatic’ orientation of human existence is factored out. The picture of the person that emerges from naturalistic accounts of any mystical theologian may be plausible within the framework of a classical modern, post Cartesian concept of scientific rationality, and potentially useful for some purposes, but it will be over simplified and never wholly sufficient to account for the potentialities of human existence.
1 See Watts, Fraser, Theology and Psychology (Basingstoke: Ashgate, 2002)Google Scholar for a good example of compatibilism, and Hampson, Peter and Boyd-MacMillan, Eolene M., ‘Turning the Telescope Round: Reciprocity in Psychology-Theology Dialogue’, Archive for the Psychology of Religion 30 (2008), pp. 93–113Google Scholar, for recommendations of a wider engagement.
2 Examples already exist. See for example Gerd Theissen, Psychological Aspects of Pauline Theology (Edinburgh: T and T Clark, 1987), but there is considerable scope for wider and more detailed interactions.
3 Reich, K. Helmut, ‘Extending the Psychology of Religion: A Call for Exploration of Universals, More Inclusive Approaches, and Comprehensive Models’, Archive for the Psychology of Religion 30 (2008), pp. 115–134CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially pp. 122–123.
4 Itself part of the wider debate on faith and reason.
5 MacIntyre, Alasdair, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy and Tradition (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992)Google Scholar.
6 We can extend this account in various ways, and, though this is not our immediate intention here, it is interesting at least to list these future possibilities since they do form an implicit backdrop to what follows. So, to extend the idea of rational traditions, these are inevitably the source of background assumptions or social imaginaries which may be conflictual. For instance psychologists may uncritically adopt an ontological naturalism not recognising why anything but a naturalist account of the person may be needed, while some theologians may fail to see why any naturalist account might even be necessary. Second these assumptions are brought to bear in conversations which may be of varying quality. Some may be based on prevarication and pretence, others on opinion, yet others, based in fact and scholarship, will allow more purpose driven dialogue to take place. Third, conversations can vary to the extent that they make use of so called ‘integrative complexity’ and ‘relational and contextual reasoning’ (RCR). Thus Reich, op. cit., has argued that high levels of RCR are needed to negotiate the apparent paradoxes of interdisciplinary debates. Fourth conversations are likely to vary as a function of the fiduciary commitments of the participants and the extent to which they indwell one or other rational tradition. Fifth, debates are not without emotional, ethical and moral dimensions and at best are characterised by a hospitable engagement of one tradition with the other.
7 Taylor, Charles, A Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, HUP, 2007), pp. 171–176Google Scholar; Hampson, Peter, ‘Psychology and religion: continuing an interrupted conversation’ Irish Journal of Psychology 29 (1) (2008), pp. 139–152CrossRefGoogle Scholar, (invited contribution to special issue celebrating the life and work of Liz Dunne).
8 See Hampson and Boyd-MacMillan, ‘Turning the Telescope Round’, pp. 94–95 for a brief discussion of liminal space in interdisciplinarity.
9 Capps, Donald, ‘Augustine's Confessions: The Story of a Divided Self and the Process of its Unification’ Archive for the Psychology of Religion 29 (2007), pp. 127–150CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Charry, Ellen, ‘Reviving Christian Psychology’, Fuller Theological Seminary Integration Symposium, (Fuller Seminary, Oakland, Pass. CA, 2007)Google Scholar.
10 Augustine, , On the Trinity, (Edited by Matthews, Gareth, Cambridge, CUP: 2002), XII, 15, 25Google Scholar.
11 Which, contrary to frequent false assumptions in theology, is wider than psychoanalysis of course.
12 Of course to find that psychology is limited, and then to claim that theology is therefore justified in asserting the limits of rationality, would be logically invalid. It might be that psychology needs to improve its methods or extend its scope, for example, and that scientific reason alone is powerful enough to do this without assistance from philosophy or theology. However, we maintain, from a wider coherentist point of view, that the weight of additional circumstantial evidence against unbridled rationality (or better ‘ratiocination’) from other fields is so compelling (through inference to the best explanation) that our rejection of ‘ratiocination’ need not depend on the status of psychological accounts. Instead, the rejection of ratiocination on wider grounds predicts that psychological explanations which assume reason's limitless power will be found to be limited, as indeed we claim they are. If, however, we are shown to be incorrect, and psychology, as currently constructed, turns out to be stronger in explanatory power than we claim, then arguments for the limits of scientific rationality are weakened. Space prohibits a full exploration of this trope but related ‘coherentist’ aspects of theological method are explored in Murray, Paul, Reason, Truth and Theology in Pragmatist Perspective (Leuven: Peeters, 2005)Google Scholar. For an exploration of the limits of ratiocination on wider philosophical grounds see Johannes Hoff, Das Subjekt entsichern. Zur spirituellen Dimension des Subjektproblems angesichts der Dekonstruktion des cartesianischen Wissenschaftsparadigmas. In: Heinrich Schmidinger; Zichy, Michael (Ed.), Tod des Subjekts? Poststrukturalismus und christliches Denken (Innsbruck - Wien: Tyrolia 2005), pp. 213–242Google Scholar, and starting from the philosophical foundations of modern mathematics Hoff, Johannes, Kontingenz, Berührung, Überschreitung. Zur philosophischen Propädeutik christlicher Mystik nach Nikolaus von Kues (Freiburg/Br.: Alber, 2007), 85–148Google Scholar, 196–225, 283–301.
13 Charry, Ellen, ‘Reviving Christian Psychology, Lecture 1: Psychological Theology’, Fuller Theological Seminary Integration Symposium, (Fuller Seminary, Oakland, Pass. CA, 2007)Google Scholar, see also Charry, Ellen, ‘Augustine of Hippo: Father of Christian Psychology’, Anglican Theological Review 88 (2006), pp. 575–589Google Scholar.
14 Contemporary attempts to overcome this standard misreading of Augustine may be traced back to Henry de Lubac's genealogy of modern Augustinianism. See: Lubac, Henri de, Augustinianism and modern theology. Ed. by Sheppard, Lancelot (New York, NY: Crossroad Pub, 2000)Google Scholar; Lubac, Henri de, The mystery of the supernatural (New York:Crossroad Pub, 1998)Google Scholar.
15 See Dennett, Daniel, Consciousness Explained (London: Penguin, 1991), pp. 101–138Google Scholar, for a critical exposition of the ‘Cartesian theater’ (sic.).
16 Taylor, Charles, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge: CUP, 1989), pp. 132–133Google Scholar.
17 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations (Cambridge: CUP, 1953), §1–10Google Scholar; also Taylor, Sources of the Self, p. 132.
18 Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought (New York: Basic Books, 1999)Google Scholar for a stimulating and provocative account of the turn to embodiment and its metaphorical implications.
19 For a generally well nuanced and scholarly treatment of the divided self in theology and psychology, with a critical examination of the notion that self-multiplicity is necessarily pathological (in both psychological and theological senses) see Léon Turner, Theology. Psychology and the Plural Self (London: Ashgate, 2008). Sophisticated though it is overall, and accepting that his discussion of Augustine is really only in passing, Turner's account nevertheless has a tendency to ‘back project’ modern categories onto him, claiming Augustine as ‘the creator of the inner self’ for example, op cit., p.1. Setting aside the anachronistic use of modern psychological terminology, Augustine would probably have appreciated the unintended irony of his dramatic elevation to the status of self ‘creator’.
20 Mathewes, Charles T., Evil and the Augustinian Tradition (Cambridge: CUP, 2001), p. 61CrossRefGoogle Scholar, n. 3. It is certainly not difficult to support Rist's view that some misreadings unintentionally suggest ‘that Augustine's range of intellectual concerns was limited to those of a typical member of an Anglo-American philosophy department.’, cf. Rist, John M., Augustine (Cambridge: CUP, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
21 This is quite apart from the more florid, postmodern demonstrations of the multiplicity of readings that are possible of Augustine as counter examples to supposedly definitively veridical ones, see for example Dorado, Robert, ‘Augustine and Derrida on their Selves’, In Caputo, John D. and Scanlon, Michael (eds.), God the Gift, and Postmodernism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), pp. 79–111Google Scholar.
22 We have used the term intra-psychic, here and elsewhere, to denote accounts which deal with basic, individual or internal psychological mechanisms and their experiential correlates, and which, tacitly or explicitly deem these sufficient in psychology to explain first person descriptions of spiritual and religious experiences, numinous or otherwise, and of a prolonged as well as of a briefer episodic character. Such accounts typically fail to consider in any detail interpersonal, cultural, historical, philosophical, and of course theological factors. Classic psychodynamic accounts are good examples of this category.
23 Shults, F. LeRon and Sandage, Steven J., Transforming Spirituality: Integrating Theology and Psychology (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2006), pp. 187–217Google Scholar; 242–270 for a thorough discussion of related issues.
24 For a well argued account of the locative self as a system for navigating physical, psychological and cultural worlds see Benson, Ciarán, The Cultural Psychology of Self (London: Routledge, 2001)Google Scholar.
25 Charry, Ellen, ‘Reviving Christian Psychology, Lecture 2: Understanding Saint Augustine's Theological Psychology’. Fuller Theological Seminary Integration Symposium, (Fuller Seminary, Oakland, Pass. CA, 2007)Google Scholar.
26 This is the background of de Lubac's criticism of the modern concept of ‘pure nature’ (natura pura). By contrast de Lubac's Augustinianism focuses on the paradoxical concept of a ‘natural desire for the supernatural’ (desiderium naturale visionis dei). See fn. 14.
27 Luke Bretherton, Hospitality as Holiness: Christian Witness Amid Moral Diversity (Basingstoke: Ashgate Press, 2006) and Murray, Reason, Truth and Theology in Pragmatist Perspective, introduce and explore the ideas of hospitable reading. See also Derrida, Jacques, Politics of Friendship (London: Phronesis, 1997)Google Scholar.
28 Capps, ‘Augustine's Confessions’, p. 127.
29 Ibid., p. 168, citing William James.
30 Ibid., p. 163.
31 Dodds, E.R., ‘Augustine's Confessions: A Study of Spiritual Maladjustment,’ The Hibbert Journal 26 (1927–28), pp. 459–473Google Scholar. Without wishing to question the quality of Dodds’ classical scholarship it is noticeable that he rather uncritically accepts and applies Freudian and Jungian approaches as somehow definitive of (then) contemporary psychology, and makes no reference to wider approaches to personality. The reader may wish also to examine his Wiles Lectures, Dodds, E.R., Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine (Cambridge: CUP, 1963), pp. 28Google Scholar, 88 fn. 4, 91 fn. 2, for examples of somewhat uncritical application of psychodynamic constructs.
32 Ibid., p. 138.
33 Ibid., p. 141.
34 Ibid., p. 147.
35 Ibid., p. 149.
36 Denys Turner, The Darkness of God, p. 54.
37 Ibid., p. 52.
38 For a nuanced and sophisticated treatment of representational redescription, see Karmiloff-Smith, Annette, Beyond Modularity: a Developmental Perspective on Cognitive Science (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992), pp. 15–26Google Scholar.
39 The term ‘intra-psychic’ is used in the sense of an internal, individual psychological account of the cognitions, behaviours and affects of the person concerned. It is to be contrasted with an inter-subjective account of the person or, more fully, a cultural psychological account in which the person is seen as embedded within, shaped by, and ultimately able to contribute to the world of language, meanings and cultural forms. See Hampson, Peter, ‘Beyond Unity, Integration and Experience: Cultural Psychology and Mediaeval Mysticism’, New Blackfriars, 861 1006 (2005), pp. 622–641CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
40 See Hampson, Peter, ‘Cultural Psychology and Theology: Partners in Dialogue’, Theology and Science, 3 (2005), pp. 259–274CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for an extended discussion of the cultural psychological perspective.
41 Turner, The Darkness of God, p. 55.
42 Ibid., p. 54.
43 Ibid.
44 The idea that there is a single ‘definitive’ commentary on the Confessions can be deconstructed from a literary-philosophical perspective as well as from the position that an intra-psychic reading is insufficient, see for example Robert Dorado, ‘Augustine and Derrida on their Selves’, p. 100, fn. 2.
45 Heidegger's considerations on the ecstatic dimension of time connect with Husserl's lectures on ‘internal time consciousnesses’. As Husserl explicitly acknowledges: “The first person who sensed profoundly the enormous difficulties inherent in this analysis, and who struggled with them almost to despair, was Augustine. Even today, anyone occupied with the problem of time must still study Chapters 14–18 of Book XI of the Confessions thoroughly. For in these matters our modern age, so proud of its knowledge, has failed to surpass or even to match the splendid achievement of this great thinker who grappled so earnestly with the problem of time.” Edmund Husserl, On the phenomenology of the consciousness of internal time (1893–1917). Transl. by John B. Brough (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers 1991), p. 3. For an account of the influence of Augustine on Heidegger's and Husserl's phenomenology of time see: Friedrich Wilhelm von Herrmann, Augustine and the phenomenological question of time. Transl. prologue, epilogue, and annotation by Frederick van Fleteren and Jeremiah Hackett (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 2008). Heidegger draws substantively from Augustine and is deeply inspired by his writings. See De Paulo, Craig J. N. (Ed.), The influence of Augustine on Heidegger. The emergence of an Augustinian phenomenology (Lewiston, N.Y: Lewiston, N.Y, 2006)Google Scholar.
46 Heidegger, Martin, The metaphysical foundations of logic. Transl. by Heim, Michael (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 205Google Scholar; as for the ecstatic character of temporality see also Heidegger, Martin, Being and time. Translation of Sein und Zeit. Transl. by Stambaugh, Joan (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996), §§ 67–77Google Scholar.
47 Martin Heidegger, The metaphysical foundations of logic, 207.
48 Ibid. 206.
49 Ibid. 212.
50 Louth, Andrew, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), p.141Google Scholar. For the recovery of the Augustinian tradition against the backdrop of Heidegger's criticism of the ‘occidental onto-theology’ see: Johannes Hoff, Mystagogy beyond Onto-Theology. Looking back to Post-modernity with Nicholas of Cusa. In: Moritz, Arne (Ed.), Brill's Companion to Nicholas of Cusa (Leiden: Brill, 2010)Google Scholar (forthcoming). See also Hoff, Johannes, Kontingenz, Berührung, Überschreitung. Zur philosophischen Propädeutik christlicher Mystik nach Nikolaus von Kues (Freiburg/Br.: Alber, 2007)Google Scholar.
51 Charry, Ellen, ‘Reviving Christian Psychology, Lecture 2: Understanding Saint Augustine's Theological Psychology’, Fuller Theological Seminary Integration Symposium, (Fuller Seminary, Oakland, Pass. CA, 2007)Google Scholar. (All references in this paragraph to Lecture 2).
52 See fn. 19.
53 Augustine, , The Trinity, Translation, introduction and notes, Edmund Hill (Brooklyn, New York: New City Press), XII, 4, 25Google Scholar.
54 Ibid., XIII, 6, 24.
55 Taylor, A Secular Age, pp. 171–176.
56 Peter Hampson made a similar point in more general terms in ‘Cultural Psychology and Theology’, pp. 265–266.
57 Turner, rightly in our opinion, critiques and nuances the term ‘introspection’ in this context, suggesting that Augustine is conducting an act of ‘explicating self-reflection [ … ] primarily an act of epistemological inference, not an act of psychological introspection’, cf. Turner, The Darkness of God, p. 88. This maps well onto the construct of ‘representational redescription’ within a cultural and epistemic framework, cf fn. 38.
58 For a critical discussion of Heidegger's own and subsequent philosophical attempts to abstract from the context of the original Christian narrative see: Johannes Hoff, Das Paradox des Glaubens und der Holzweg moderner Entscheidungslogik. Kierkegaards Lektüre von Genesis 22 und ihre Wirkungsgeschichte von Heidegger bis Derrida und darüber hinaus. In: Hoping, Helmut; Knop, Julia; Böhm, Thomas (Ed.), Die Bindung Isaaks. Stimme, Schrift, Bild (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2009), pp. 238–258Google Scholar.
59 Augustine, City of God, XIV, 4.
60 Ibid., XIV, 2 (italics added).
61 Rist argues more circumspectly for a more dualistic interpretation of Augustine but notes that this is variously expressed, ‘to some extent to the degree of hostility to the body which Augustine exhibits’, cf. Rist, Augustine, pp. 98.
62 Turner, The Darkness of God.’ p. 90.
63 Ibid., p. 99.
65 City of God, XIV, 3.
66 City of God., XIV, 13 (italics added).
67 The term ‘pride’ may be better replaced with the modern word ‘narcissism’. Simone Weil makes the point poetically that ‘(t)he self is only the shadow which sin and error cast by stopping the light of God, and we take this shadow for a being.’ Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace (London: Routledge, 1963), p. 35. To what extent removal of the ‘self’ can be fully achieved is questionable: since ‘(u)prightness is in the actions of this life, purity only to be reached at the end.’, Evans, G.R., Augustine on Evil Cambridge (CUP, 1982), p. 162Google Scholar.
68 Augustine, Confessions, X, 36.
69 Hampson and Boyd-MacMillan, ‘Turning the Telescope Round’, p. 106; see also Hampson, ‘Psychology and Religion’, pp 146–148.
70 Cf Macintyre, Three Rival Versions, p. 5.
71 KReich, . Helmut, Developing the Horizons of the Mind: Relational and Contextual Reasoning and the Resolution of Cognitive Conflict (Cambridge: CUP, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The related approach of integrative complexity is associated with the work of psychologist Peter Suedfeld, see for example: Suedfeld, P., Leighton, D.C. & Conway, L.G. III, ‘Integrative Complexity and Cognitive Management in International Confrontations: Research and Potential Applications’ in Fitzduff, M. & Stout, C.E. (eds.), The Psychology of Resolving Global Conflicts: From War to Peace, Volume 1 (New York: Praeger, 2006), pp. 211–237.Google Scholar
72 Hampson, ‘Cultural Psychology and Theology’, p. 261.
