Christianity as Mystical Fact
GA 8
12. Augustine and the Church
[ 1 ] The full force of the conflict which was enacted in the souls of Christian believers during the transition from paganism to the new religion is shown in the person of Augustine (354–430). When we see how this conflict has become resolved in the spirit of Augustine we are enabled in a mysterious way to penetrate the spiritual struggles of Origin, Clement of Alexandria, Gregory of Nazianzus, Jerome and others.
[ 2 ] Augustine was a personality in whom deep spiritual needs developed out of a passionate nature. He passed through pagan and half-Christian ideas. He suffered deeply from the most dreadful doubts which can attack a man who has felt the impotence of many varieties of thought in the face of spiritual problems, and who has tasted the depressing effect of the question, Can man know anything at all?
[ 3 ] At the beginning of his struggles Augustine's thoughts clung to the transitory things of the material world. He could conceive of the spiritual only in material images. It is a deliverance for him when he rises above this stage. He describes this in his Confessions: "When I desired to think upon my God, I knew not how to think of Him except as a mass of bodies, for what was not of such a nature seemed to me to be nothing. This was the greatest and almost the only cause of my78Augustine, Confessions, Book V, Ch. 10. inevitable error." Thus he indicates the point which a person is bound to reach who is seeking the true life in the spirit. There are thinkers—and they are not few—who maintain that it is impossible to arrive at pure thought, free from any material substance. These thinkers confuse what they believe they ought to say about their own soul life with what is humanly possible. On the contrary, the truth is that it is only possible to arrive at higher cognition when thought has been freed from all material substance; when a soul life has been developed in which images of reality do not cease when their demonstration in sense-impressions comes to an end. Augustine relates how he achieved spiritual vision. Everywhere he asked where the "divine" was to be found. "I asked the earth and it said, I am not He; and all things that are in the earth confessed the same. I asked the ocean and the depths and all that lives in them, and they answered me: We are not thy God. Seek above us. I asked the fleeting winds, and the whole air, with all its inhabitants made answer: The philosophers who seek for the essence of things in us are deceived. We are not God. I asked the heavens, the sun, moon and stars, and they said: Neither are we the God whom thou seekest."79Augustine, Confessions, Book X, Ch. 6. And Augustine perceived that there is but one thing which can answer his question about the divine: his own soul. The soul said, No eyes nor ears can impart to you what is in me. for I alone can tell you, and I tell you in such a way that doubt is impossible. "Men may doubt whether vital force lives in air or in fire, but who can doubt that he himself lives, remembers, understands, wills, thinks, knows and judges? If he doubts, it is a proof that he is alive, he remembers why he doubts, he understands that he doubts, he will assure himself of something, he thinks, he knows that he knows nothing, he judges that he must not accept anything hastily."80Augustine, De Trinitate, Book X, Ch. 14. External things do not defend themselves when their essence and existence are denied. But the soul does defend itself. It could not be doubtful of itself unless it existed. By its doubt it confirms its own existence. "We are and we perceive our existence and we love our own existence and cognition. On these three points no error disguised as truth can trouble us, for we do not apprehend them with our bodily senses like physical things."81Augustine, De civitate Dei, The City of God, Book XI, Ch. 26. Man learns about the divine by bringing his soul to perceive itself as spiritual in order that it may find its way as spirit into the spiritual world. Augustine had struggled through to this perception. Out of such an attitude of mind grew the desire in pagan personalities seeking cognition, to knock at the portal of the Mysteries. In the age of Augustine such convictions could lead a man to become a Christian. Jesus, the Logos become man, had shown the path which must be followed by the soul if it would attain the goal of which it must speak when in communion with itself. In 358 at Milan Augustine received the teachings of Ambrose. All his doubts about the Old and New Testaments vanished when the most important passages were interpreted by his teacher, not in a merely literal sense, but "were spiritually laid open and expounded by him, the mystical veil thereof being removed."82Augustine, Confessions, Book VI, Ch. 4. What had been guarded in the Mysteries was embodied for Augustine in the historical tradition of the Gospels and in the community where that tradition was preserved. By degrees he comes to a conviction regarding Church doctrine, of which he says, "I felt it was with moderation and honesty that it commanded things to be believed that were not demonstrated." He arrives at the idea, "Who could be so blind as to say that the Church of the Apostles deserves to have no faith placed in it, when it is so loyal and is supported by the conformity of so many brethren; when these have handed down their writings to posterity so conscientiously, and when the Church has so strictly maintained the succession of teachers down to our present bishops?"83Augustine, Confessions, Book VI, Ch. 5. Augustine's method of thinking told him that since the Christ event other conditions had begun for souls seeking the spirit in place of those which had existed previously. For him it was firmly established that in Christ Jesus there had been revealed in the outer historical world what the mystic had sought through preparation in the Mysteries. One of his most significant utterances is the following: "What is now called the Christian religion already existed among the ancients, and was not lacking at the very beginnings of the human race. When Christ appeared in the flesh, the true religion already in existence received the name of Christian."84Augustine, Contra Faustum, 33:6. Two paths of development were possible for such a mode of thinking. One is that if the human soul develops within it the forces leading it to the cognition of its true self, if it but goes far enough, it will also come to cognition of the Christ and of everything connected with him. This would have been a Mystery knowledge enriched through the Christ event. The other way is that actually taken by Augustine, by which he became the great example for his successors. It consists in cutting off the development of the forces of the soul at a certain point and in receiving the ideas connected with the Christ event from written accounts and oral traditions. Augustine rejected the first way as springing from pride of soul; he thought the second way was the way of true humility. Thus he says to those who wished to follow the first way: "You may find peace in the truth, but for this, humility is needed, which does not suit your proud neck."85Augustine, De quantitate Animae, 70–76. On the other hand he was filled with boundless inward happiness by the fact that since the "appearance of Christ in the flesh" it was possible to say that experience of the spiritual can be attained by every soul which goes as far as it can in seeking within itself, and then, in order to reach the highest, has faith in what the written and oral traditions of the community of Christians tell about the Christ and his revelation. On this point he says: "What bliss, what abiding enjoyment of supreme and true good is offered to us, what serenity, what a breath of eternity! How shall I describe it? It has been expressed, as far as it could be, by those great incomparable souls who we admit have beheld and still behold ... We reach a point at which we acknowledge how true is what we have been commanded to believe and how well and beneficiently we have been brought up by our mother the Church, and of what benefit was the milk given by the Apostle Paul to the little ones ..."86“And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able.”—I Corinthians 3:1–2 (It is beyond the scope of this book to give an account of the alternative method of thinking which is evolved from the Mystery knowledge enriched through the Christ event. The description of this method will be found in my outline of a Geheimwissensch aft.)—Whereas in pre-Christian times one who wished to seek the spiritual foundations of existence was necessarily directed to the way of the Mysteries, Augustine was able to say, even to those souls who could find no such path within themselves: Go as far as you can on the path of cognition with your human powers; from there, faith (belief) will carry you up into the higher spiritual regions. It was only going one step further to say: It is in the nature of the human soul to be able to arrive only at a certain stage of cognition through its own powers; from there it can advance further only through faith, through belief in the written and oral tradition. This step was taken by the spiritual movement which assigned to natural perception a certain sphere above which the soul could not rise by its own efforts, but everything which lay beyond this sphere was made an object of belief which has to be supported by written and oral tradition, and by faith in its representatives. Thomas Aquinas (1224–1274), the greatest teacher of the Church, has set forth this doctrine in the most varied ways in his writings. Human perception can only attain to that which led Augustine to self knowledge, to the certainty of the divine. The nature of the divine and its relation to the world is given by revealed theology, which is not accessible to man's own perception, and as an article of faith, is superior to all cognition.
[ 4 ] The origin of this point of view may be observed in the world conception of John Scotus Erigena, who lived in the ninth century at the court of Charles the Bald, and who represents a natural transition from early Christianity to the point of view of Thomas Aquinas. His conception of the world is expressed in the sense of Neoplatonism. In his treatise, De Divisione Naturae, Erigena has elaborated the teaching of Dionysius the Areopagite. This teaching started with a God far above the transitory things of the material world and it derived the world from Him. Man is involved in the transformation of all beings toward this God, Who finally attains to what He was from the beginning. Everything falls back again into the Godhead which has passed through the universal process and finally has become perfected. But in order to reach this goal man must find the way to the Logos who became flesh. In Erigena this thought leads to another, that faith in the content of the writings which give an account of the Logos, leads to salvation. Reason and the authority of the Scriptures, belief and cognition, stand side by side. The one does not contradict the other, but faith must bring that to which knowledge alone can never raise itself.
[ 5 ] The cognition of the eternal which the ancient Mysteries withheld from the multitudes, when presented in this way by Christian thought and feeling, became an article of faith which by its very nature was related to something unattainable by mere knowledge. It was the conviction of the pre-Christian mystic that to him was given cognition of the divine, and to the people, a faith expressed in imagery. Christianity came to the conviction that God has given His wisdom to mankind through His revelation, and man attains an image of the divine revelation through his cognition. The wisdom of the Mysteries is a hot-house plant which is revealed to a few mature individuals; Christian wisdom is a Mystery revealed as cognition to none, but as an article of faith it is revealed to all. In Christianity the viewpoint of the Mysteries lived on. But it lived on in an altered form. All, not only the special individual, were to share in the truth. But it should so happen that at a certain point man perceived his inability to penetrate further by means of cognition, and from there on ascended to faith. Christianity brought the content of the Mysteries out of the darkness of the temple into the clear light of day. The one spiritual stream within Christianity outlined here led to the idea that this content must necessarily be retained in the form of faith.
Augustinus und die Kirche
[ 1 ] Die volle Gewalt des Kampfes, der sich in den Seelen christlicher Bekenner beim Übergang aus dem Heidentum zu der neuen Religion abgespielt hat, kommt in der Persönlichkeit des Augustinus (354–430) zur Anschauung. Man betrachtet die Seelenkämpfe eines Origenes, Clemens von Alexandrien, Gregors von Nazianz, Hieronymus und anderer in geheimnisvoller Art mit, wenn man sieht, wie diese Kämpfe in dem Geiste des Augustinus zur Ruhe gekommen sind.
[ 2 ] Augustinus ist eine Persönlichkeit, in der sich aus einer leidenschaftlichen Natur heraus die tiefsten geistigen Bedürfnisse entwickeln. Er geht durch heidnische und halbchristliche Vorstellungen hindurch. Er leidet tief unter den furchtbarsten Zweifeln, wie sie einen Menschen befallen können, der die Ohnmacht vieler Gedanken gegenüber den geistigen Interessen erprobt hat, und der die niederschlagende Empfindung gekostet hat von dem: Kann denn der Mensch überhaupt etwas wissen?
[ 3 ] Im Anfange seines Strebens hafteten die Vorstellungen des Augustinus am Sinnlich-Vergänglichen. Er konnte sich das Geistige nur in sinnlichen Bildern veranschaulichen. Er empfindet es wie eine Befreiung, als er sich über diese Stufe erhoben hat. Das schildert er in seinen «Bekenntnissen»: «Daß ich mir, wenn ich Gott denken wollte, Körpermassen vorstellen mußte, und glaubte, es könne nichts existieren als derartiges, das war der gewichtigste und fast der einzige Grund des Irrtums, den ich nicht vermeiden konnte.» Damit deutet er an, wohin der Mensch kommen muß, der das wahre Leben im Geiste sucht. Es gibt Denker, welche behaupten — und diese Denker sind nicht wenig zahlreich —: man könne zu einem reinen, von allem sinnlichen Stoffe freien Vorstellen überhaupt nicht gelangen. Diese Denker verwechseln dasjenige, was sie glauben von ihrem eigenen Seelenleben sagen zu müssen, mit dem menschlich Möglichen. Die Wahrheit ist vielmehr, daß man zu einer höheren Erkenntnis erst kommen kann, wenn man sich zu einem von allem sinnlichen Stoffe freien Denken entwickelt hat; zu einem solchen Seelenleben, dessen Vorstellungen nicht mehr dann aufhören, wenn die Veranschaulichung durch sinnliche Eindrücke aufhört. Augustinus erzählt, wie er zum geistigen Schauen aufgestiegen ist. Er fragte überall an, wo das «Göttliche» ist. «Ich fragte die Erde und sie sprach: Ich bin es nicht, und was auf ihr ist, bekannte das Gleiche. Ich fragte das Meer und die Abgründe, und was von Lebendem sie bergen, und sie antworteten: Wir sind nicht dein Gott; suche über uns. Ich fragte die wehenden Lüfte, und es sprach der ganze Dunstkreis samt allen seinen Bewohnern: Die Philosophen, die in uns das Wesen der Dinge suchten, täuschten sich: wir sind nicht Gott. Ich fragte Sonne, Mond und Sterne, sie sprachen: Wir sind nicht Gott, den du suchst.» Und Augustinus erkannte, daß es nur eines gibt, das Antwort erteilt auf seine Frage nach dem Göttlichen: die eigene Seele. Sie sprach: Kein Auge, kein Ohr kann dir mitteilen, was in mir ist. Das kann ich dir nur selbst sagen. Und ich sage es dir auf unzweifelhafte Weise. «Ob die Lebenskraft in der Luft oder im Feuer liegt, darüber konnten die Menschen zweifelhaft sein, aber wer wollte zweifeln, daß er lebt, sich erinnert, versteht, will, denkt, weiß und urteilt? Wenn er zweifelt, so lebt er ja, erinnert er sich ja, weshalb er zweifelt, versteht er ja, daß er zweifelt, will er sich ja vergewissern, denkt er ja, weiß er ja, daß er nichts weiß, urteilt er ja, daß er nichts voreilig annehmen dürfe.» Die Außendinge wehren sich nicht, wenn wir ihnen Wesenheit und Dasein absprechen. Aber die Seele wehrt sich. Sie könnte ja nicht an sich zweifeln, wenn sie nicht wäre. Auch in ihrem Zweifel bestätigt sie ihr Dasein. «Wir sind und wir erkennen unser Sein und lieben unser Sein und Erkennen: in diesen drei Stücken kann uns kein dem Wahren ähnlicher Irrtum beunruhigen, denn wir ergreifen sie nicht wie die Außendinge mit einem körperlichen Sinne.» Vom Göttlichen erfährt der Mensch, indem er seine Seele dazu bringt, sich selbst erst als Geistiges zu erkennen, um als Geist den Weg in die geistige Welt zu finden. Dazu hatte sich Augustinus durchgerungen, dieses zu erkennen. Aus solcher Stimmung heraus erwuchs im heidnischen Volkstum den Erkenntnis suchenden Persönlichkeiten das Verlangen, an die Pforten der Mysterien anzuklopfen. Im Zeitalter des Augustinus konnte man mit diesen Überzeugungen Christ werden. Der menschgewordene Logos, Jesus, hatte den Weg gewiesen, den die Seele zu gehen hat, wenn sie zu dem kommen will, wovon sie sprechen muß, wenn sie mit sich selbst ist. In Mailand wurde Augustinus 385 die Belehrung des Ambrosius zuteil. Alle seine Bedenken gegen das Alte und Neue Testament schwanden, als ihm der Lehrer die wichtigsten Stellen nicht bloß dem Wortsinn nach sondern «mit Aufhebung des mystischen Schleiers aus dem Geiste» deutete. In der geschichtlichen Tradition der Evangelien und in der Gemeinschaft, von der diese Tradition bewahrt wird, verkörpert sich für Augustinus das, was in den Mysterien behütet worden ist. Er hält sich allmählich davon überzeugt, daß «ihr Gebot, das zu glauben, was sie nicht bewies, maßvoll und ohne Arg sei». Er kommt zu der Vorstellung: «Wer möchte so verblendet sein, zu sagen, die Kirche der Apostel verdiene keinen Glauben, die so treu ist und von so vieler Brüder Übereinstimmung getragen, daß diese deren Schriften gewissenhaft den Nachkommen überlieferten, wie sie auch deren Lehrstühle bis zu den gegenwärtigen Bischöfen herab mit streng gesicherter Nachfolge erhalten hat.» Des Augustinus Vorstellungsart sagte ihm, daß mit dem Christusereignisse andere Verhältnisse für die nach dem Geist suchende Seele eingetreten waren, als sie vorher bestanden hatten. Für ihn stand fest, daß in dem Christus Jesus dasjenige in der äußeren geschichtlichen Welt sich geoffenbart hat, was der Myste durch die Vorbereitung in den Mysterien suchte. Einer seiner bedeutsamen Aussprüche ist: «Was man gegenwärtig die christliche Religion nennt, bestand schon bei den Alten und fehlte nicht in den Anfängen des Menschengeschlechtes, bis Christus im Fleische erschien, von wo an die wahre Religion, die schon vorher vorhanden war, den Namen der christlichen erhielt.» Für eine solche Vorstellungsart waren zwei Wege möglich. Der eine ist der, welcher sich sagt, wenn die menschliche Seele diejenigen Kräfte in sich ausbildet, durch welche sie zur Erkenntnis ihres wahren Selbst gelangt, so wird sie, wenn sie nur weit genug geht, auch zur Erkenntnis des Christus und alles dessen kommen, was mit ihm zusammenhängt. Dies wäre eine durch das Christus-Ereignis bereicherte Mysterien Erkenntnis gewesen. — Der andere Weg ist derjenige, welchen Augustinus wirklich eingeschlagen hat, und durch welchen er für seine Nachfolger das große Vorbild geworden ist. Er besteht darin, mit der Entwicklung der eigenen Seelenkräfte an einem bestimmten Punkte abzuschließen und die Vorstellungen, welche mit dem Christus-Ereignis zusammenhängen, aus den schriftlichen Aufzeichnungen und mündlichen Überlieferungen über dasselbe zu entnehmen. Den ersten Weg wies Augustinus als dem Stolze der Seele entspringend ab, der zweite entsprach für ihn der rechten Demut. So sagt er zu denen, welche den ersten Weg gehen wollen: «Ihr könntet Frieden finden in der Wahrheit, aber dazu bedarf es der Demut, die eurem starken Nacken so schwer ankommet.» Dagegen empfand er in unbegrenzter innerlicher Seligkeit die Tatsache, daß man seit der «Erscheinung des Christus im Fleische» sich sagen konnte: jede Seele kann zum Erleben des Geistigen kommen, welche in sich selbst suchend so weit geht, als sie eben gehen kann, und dann, um zum Höchsten zu kommen, Vertrauen haben kann zu dem, was die schriftlichen und mündlichen Überlieferungen der christlichen Gemeinschaft über den Christus und seine Offenbarung aussagen. Er spricht sich darüber aus: «Welche Wonne und welch dauernder Genuß des höchsten und wahren Gutes sich nun darbietet, welche Heiterkeit, welcher Anhauch der Ewigkeit, wie soll ich das sagen? Es haben dies gesagt, soweit sich das eben sagen läßt, jene großen unvergleichlichen Seelen» denen wir zusprechen, daß sie geschaut haben und noch schauen. Wir erreichen einen Punkt, in dem wir erkennen, wie wahr das ist, was uns zu glauben geboten wurde, und wie gut und heilbringend wir bei unserer Mutter, der Kirche, auferzogen worden sind, und welches der Nutzen jener Milch war, die der Apostel Paulus den Kleinen zum Tranke gab ...» (Was aus der andern möglichen Vorstellungsart, der um das Christus-Ereignis bereicherten Mysterien-Erkenntnis sich entwickelt: das zu betrachten liegt außerhalb des Rahmens dieser Schrift. Es findet sich die Darstellung davon in meinem Umriß einer «Geheimwissenschaft».) — Während in vorchristlichen Zeiten derjenige Mensch, welcher die geistigen Gründe des Daseins suchen wollte, auf den Mysterienweg gewiesen werden mußte, konnte Augustinus auch denjenigen Seelen, welche in sich selber keinen solchen Weg gehen konnten, sagen: Kommt so weit, als sich mit euren menschlichen Kräften in der Erkenntnis kommen läßt; von da ab führt euch dann das Vertrauen, der Glaube, in die höheren geistigen Regionen hinauf. — Es war nun nur ein Schritt weiter zu gehen und zu sagen: es liegt in dem Wesen der menschlichen Seele, durch ihre eigenen Kräfte bis zu einer gewissen Stufe der Erkenntnis nur kommen zu können; von da an könne sie nur weiter kommen durch Vertrauen, durch den Glauben an die christliche und mündliche Überlieferung. Dieser Schritt war durch diejenige Geistesströmung getan, welche dem natürlichen Erkennen ein gewisses Gebiet zuwies über welches sich die Seele nicht durch sich selbst erheben kann; welche Strömung aber alles, was über diesem Gebiet lag, zum Gegenstande des Glaubens machte, der sich zu stützen hat auf die schriftliche und mündliche Überlieferung, auf das Vertrauen in ihre Träger. Der größte Kirchenlehrer, Thomas von Aquino (1225–1274), hat diese Lehre in seinen Schriften auf die verschiedenste Art zum Ausdrucke gebracht. Das menschliche Erkennen kann bis zu dem kommen, was dem Augustinus die Selbsterkenntnis gebracht hat, bis zur Gewißheit des Göttlichen. Das Wesen dieses Göttlichen und sein Verhältnis zur Welt liefert ihm dann die menschlichem Eigenerkennen nicht mehr zugängliche, geoffenbarte Theologie, die als Glaubensinhalt über alle Erkenntnis erhaben ist.
[ 4 ] Man kann diesen Gesichtspunkt förmlich in seiner Entstehung beobachten in der Weltanschauung des Johannes Scotus Erigena, der im neunten Jahrhundert am Hofe Karls des Kahlen lebte, und der auf die natürlichste Weise von den ersten Zeiten des Christentums zu den Gesichtspunkten des Thomas von Aquino hinüberleitet. Seine Weltanschauung ist im Sinne des Neuplatonismus gehalten. Die Lehren des Dionysius des Areopagyten hat Scotus in seinem Werke über die «Einteilung der Natur» weiter gebildet. Das war eine Lehre, die von dem über alles Sinnlich-Vergängliche erhabenen Gott ausgeht und von diesem die Welt ableitet. Der Mensch ist eingeschlossen in die Verwandlung aller Wesen zu diesem Gotte hin, der am Ende das erreicht, was er vom Anfange an war. In die durch den Weltprozeß hindurchgegangene und zuletzt vollendete Gottheit fällt alles wieder zurück. Aber der Mensch muß, um dahin zu gelangen, den Weg zu dem Fleisch gewordenen Logos finden. Dieser Gedanke führt bei Erigena schon zu dem andern: Was in den Schriften enthalten ist, die über diesen Logos berichten, das führt als Glaubensinhalt zum Heil. Vernunft und Schriftautorität, Glaube und Erkenntnis stehen nebeneinander. Eines widerspricht nicht dem andern; aber der Glaube muß bringen, wozu das Erkennen sich nie bloß durch sich selbst erheben kann.
[ 5 ] Was im Sinne der Mysterien der Menge vorenthalten werden sollte, die Erkenntnis des Ewigen, das war für diese Vorstellungsart durch die christliche Gesinnung zum Glaubensinhalte geworden, der seiner Natur nach sich auf etwas dem bloßen Erkennen Unerreichbares bezog. Der vorchristliche Myste war der Überzeugung: ihm sei die Erkenntnis des Göttlichen und dem Volke der bildliche Glaube. Das Christentum wurde der Überzeugung: Gott hat durch seine Offenbarung die Weisheit dem Menschen geoffenbart; diesem kommt durch seine Erkenntnis ein Abbild der göttlichen Offenbarung zu. Die Mysterienweisheit ist eine Treibhauspflanze, die einzelnen, Reifen geoffenbart wird; die christliche Weisheit ist ein Mysterium, das als Erkenntnis keinem, als Glaubensinhalt allen geoffenbart wird. Im Christentum lebte der Mysterien-Gesichtspunkt fort. Aber er lebte fort in veränderter Form. Nicht der besondere einzelne, sondern alle sollten der Wahrheit teilhaftig werden. Aber es sollte so geschehen, daß man von einem gewissen Punkte der Erkenntnis deren Unfähigkeit erkannte weiter zu gehen und von da aus zum Glauben aufstieg. Das Christentum holte den Inhalt der Mysterien-Entwicklung aus der Tempeldunkelheit in das helle Tageslicht hervor. Die eine gekennzeichnete Geistesrichtung innerhalb des Christentums führte zu der Vorstellung, daß dieser Inhalt in der Form des Glaubens verbleiben müsse.
Augustine and the Church
[ 1 ] The full force of the struggle that took place in the souls of Christian confessors during the transition from paganism to the new religion can be seen in the personality of Augustine (354-430). The soul struggles of Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Gregory of Nazianzus, Jerome and others can be observed in a mysterious way when one sees how these struggles came to rest in the spirit of Augustine.
[ 2 ] Augustine is a personality in whom the deepest spiritual needs develop out of a passionate nature. He goes through pagan and semi-Christian ideas. He suffers deeply from the most terrible doubts that can befall a person who has tested the powerlessness of many thoughts in the face of spiritual interests, and who has tasted the devastating sensation of: Can man know anything at all?
[ 3 ] In the beginning of his endeavors, Augustine's ideas clung to the sensual and transient. He could only visualize the spiritual in sensual images. He felt liberated when he rose above this level. He describes this in his "Confessions": "The fact that, if I wanted to think of God, I had to imagine masses of bodies, and believed that nothing could exist but such things, was the most important and almost the only reason for the error that I could not avoid." With this he indicates where the person who seeks true life in the spirit must come to. There are thinkers who maintain - and these thinkers are not a few in number - that it is impossible to arrive at a pure conception free from all sensual material. These thinkers confuse what they believe they must say about their own soul life with what is humanly possible. The truth is rather that one can only arrive at a higher knowledge when one has developed into a thinking free from all sensual material; into such a soul life whose ideas no longer cease when visualization through sensual impressions ceases. St. Augustine tells how he ascended to spiritual vision. He asked everywhere where the "divine" was. "I asked the earth and it said: 'It is not I, and what is on it confessed the same. I asked the sea and the abysses, and what of living things they hold, and they answered: We are not your god; search above us. I asked the blowing air, and the whole misty circle and all its inhabitants said: The philosophers who sought the essence of things in us were mistaken: we are not God. I asked the sun, moon and stars, and they said: We are not God whom you seek." And Augustine realized that there was only one thing that could answer his question about the divine: his own soul. She said: "No eye, no ear can tell you what is in me. I can only tell you myself. And I will tell you in an unquestionable way. "Whether the life force lies in the air or in the fire, people could be doubtful about that, but who would doubt that he lives, remembers, understands, wills, thinks, knows and judges? If he doubts, he lives, he remembers, why he doubts, he understands, that he doubts, he wants to make sure, he thinks, he knows, that he knows nothing, he judges, that he should not assume anything prematurely." The external things do not defend themselves when we deny them essence and existence. But the soul defends itself. It could not doubt itself if it were not. Even in its doubt, it confirms its existence. "We are and we recognize our being and love our being and recognition: in these three things no error similar to the true can disturb us, for we do not grasp them like external things with a physical sense." Man learns about the divine by bringing his soul to first recognize itself as spiritual in order to find the way into the spiritual world as a spirit. Augustine had made up his mind to recognize this. It was out of such a mood that the desire to knock at the gates of the Mysteries arose in the pagan people among those seeking knowledge. In the age of Augustine, it was possible to become a Christian with these convictions. The incarnate Logos, Jesus, had shown the path that the soul had to take if it wanted to come to what it had to speak about when it was with itself. In Milan in 385, Augustine received the instruction of Ambrose. All his reservations about the Old and New Testaments disappeared when the teacher interpreted the most important passages for him, not just in the literal sense but "with the lifting of the mystical veil from the spirit". For Augustine, the historical tradition of the Gospels and the community that preserved this tradition embodied what had been preserved in the mysteries. He gradually becomes convinced that "their commandment to believe what they did not prove is moderate and without argument". He comes to the conclusion: "Who would be so deluded as to say that the Church of the Apostles deserves no faith, which is so faithful and supported by so many brethren's agreement that they conscientiously handed down their writings to their descendants, just as it has preserved their chairs down to the present bishops with a strictly assured succession?" Augustine's way of thinking told him that with the Christ event different conditions had arisen for the spirit-seeking soul than had existed before. For him it was certain that in Christ Jesus that was revealed in the external historical world which the Mystic sought through preparation in the Mysteries. One of his significant statements is: "What is now called the Christian religion already existed among the ancients and was not absent in the beginnings of the human race until Christ appeared in the flesh, from which point the true religion, which already existed before, received the name of the Christian religion." Two paths were possible for such a conception. One is that which says that if the human soul develops those powers within itself through which it comes to the knowledge of its true self, it will, if it only goes far enough, also come to the knowledge of Christ and all that is connected with him. This would have been a knowledge of the Mysteries enriched by the Christ-event. - The other path is the one that Augustine really took and through which he became the great example for his followers. It consists in concluding the development of one's own soul powers at a certain point and taking the ideas connected with the Christ event from the written records and oral traditions about it. Augustine rejected the first way as arising from the pride of the soul, the second corresponded for him to true humility. Thus he says to those who want to take the first path: "You could find peace in the truth, but this requires humility, which is so difficult for your strong neck." On the other hand, he felt in unlimited inner bliss the fact that since the "appearance of Christ in the flesh" one could say to oneself: every soul can come to the experience of the spiritual, which goes as far as it can go, searching within itself, and then, in order to come to the highest, can have trust in what the written and oral traditions of the Christian community say about Christ and his revelation. He says: "What bliss and what lasting enjoyment of the highest and truest good now presents itself, what serenity, what breath of eternity, how shall I put it? This has been said, as far as it can be said, by those great incomparable souls" to whom we attribute that they have seen and still see. We reach a point at which we realize how true is what we have been commanded to believe, and how well and salutarily we have been brought up by our mother, the Church, and what was the benefit of that milk which the Apostle Paul gave to the little ones to drink ..." (What develops from the other possible way of thinking, the knowledge of the mysteries enriched by the Christ-event, is beyond the scope of this writing. The description of this can be found in my outline of a "secret science"). - While in pre-Christian times the person who wanted to seek the spiritual reasons for existence had to be directed to the Mystery Path, Augustine was also able to say to those souls who could not follow such a path within themselves: Come as far as your human powers can take you in knowledge; from there trust, faith, will lead you up into the higher spiritual regions. - It was now only necessary to go one step further and say: it is in the nature of the human soul to be able to reach only a certain level of knowledge through its own powers; from there it can only go further through trust, through faith in the Christian and oral tradition. This step was taken by that current of thought which assigned to natural knowledge a certain area beyond which the soul cannot rise by itself; but which current made everything that lay above this area the object of faith, which must be based on the written and oral tradition, on trust in its bearers. The greatest Doctor of the Church, Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), expressed this doctrine in his writings in the most diverse ways. Human cognition can reach what Augustine achieved with self-knowledge, the certainty of the divine. The essence of this divine and its relationship to the world is then provided by revealed theology, which is no longer accessible to human self-knowledge and which, as the content of faith, is elevated above all knowledge.
[ 4 ] This point of view can be formally observed in its development in the world view of Johannes Scotus Erigena, who lived at the court of Charles the Bald in the ninth century, and who leads in the most natural way from the first times of Christianity to the points of view of Thomas Aquinas. His world view is in the spirit of Neoplatonism. Scotus further developed the teachings of Dionysius the Areopagite in his work on the "Classification of Nature". This was a doctrine based on God, who is exalted above all that is sensual and transient, and from whom the world is derived. Man is included in the transformation of all beings towards this God, who achieves in the end what he was from the beginning. Everything falls back into the Godhead that has passed through the world process and is finally completed. But in order to get there, man must find the way to the incarnate Logos. This thought in Erigena already leads to the other: What is contained in the scriptures that tell us about this Logos leads to salvation as the content of faith. Reason and scriptural authority, faith and knowledge stand side by side. One does not contradict the other; but faith must achieve what knowledge can never achieve by itself alone.
[ 5 ] What in the sense of the Mysteries was to be withheld from the multitude, the knowledge of the Eternal, had become for this mode of conception through the Christian attitude the content of faith, which by its nature referred to something unattainable by mere cognition. The pre-Christian Myste was convinced that knowledge of the divine belonged to him and the people to figurative faith. Christianity became the conviction: God has revealed wisdom to man through his revelation; the latter is entitled to an image of divine revelation through his knowledge. Mystery wisdom is a hothouse plant that is revealed to individual, mature individuals; Christian wisdom is a mystery that is revealed as knowledge to none, as the content of faith to all. The mystery point of view lived on in Christianity. But it lived on in a different form. Not the particular individual, but all should become partakers of the truth. But it was to happen in such a way that from a certain point of knowledge one recognized its inability to go further and from there ascended to faith. Christianity brought the content of the development of the Mysteries out of the darkness of the temple into the bright light of day. The one marked school of thought within Christianity led to the idea that this content had to remain in the form of faith.