Learning to Speak Christian

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Stanley Hauerwas. Learning to Speak Christian

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Learning to Speak Christian

Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir

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evil does not exist, and not only for you for the whole of your creation as well, because there is nothing outside it which could invade it and break down the order which you have imposed on it. Yet in separate parts of your creation there are some things which we think of as evil because they are at variance with other things. But there are other things again with which they are in accord, and they are good. In themselves, too, they are good. And all these things which are at variance with one another are in accord with the lower part of creation which we call the earth. The sky, which is cloudy and windy, suits the earth to which it belongs. So it would be wrong for me to wish that these earthly things did not exist, for even if I saw nothing but them, I might wish for something better, but still I ought to praise you for them alone. . . . And since this is so, I no longer wished for a better world, because I was thinking of the whole of creation and in the light of this clearer discernment I had come to see that though the higher things are better than the lower, the sum of all creation is better than the higher things alone.31

There can be no question of the significance of the Platonists for Augustine, but this passage in praise of God’s creation indicates that for Augustine Platonism was a way station on the way for Augustine to become a Christian. Augustine never left his Platonism behind though I think the assumption that he remained more Platonist than Christian is clearly wrong. He understood that he could not remain a Platonist because to be a Christian requires that you believe that all that is is as it is because it has been created. Augustine tells us that “by reading these books of the Platonists I had been prompted to look for truth as something incorporeal, and I ‘caught sight of your invisible nature, as it is known through your creatures,’”32 but what he could not find in the Platonist books was “the mien of the true love of God. They make no mention of the tears of confession or of the sacrifice that you will never disdain, a broken spirit, a heart that is humbled and contrite (Psalm 50:19), nor do they speak of the salvation of your people, the city adorned like a bride (Revelation 21:2), the foretaste of your spirit (II Corinthians 1:22), or the chalice of your redemption.”33

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