The Augustinian Alternative: Religious Skepticism and the Search for a Liberal Politics

By Benjamin J. Wood

This book’s central claim is that a close reading of Augustine’s epistemology can help political theologians develop affirmative accounts of political liberalism. This claim is set in a scholarly context that is profoundly hostile to constructive theological readings of liberal culture. As a corrective to such antagonism, this book suggests that, far from being natural opponents, Christian communities can work fruitfully with political liberals based on common principles. A key component in this argument is the theological reevaluation of the ancient skeptical tradition. While the ancient skeptics are habitually treated by scholars as minor characters in the story of Augustine’s theological development, this volume argues that they played a significant role in shaping both Augustine’s theology and the subsequent character of the Augustinian tradition. By placing Augustine’s reading of the skeptics in dialogue with contemporary culture, this book constructs a viable form of liberal Christian politics that is attentive both to his sin-sensitive account of public life and his eschatological vision of the church.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Release date: Jul 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9781506418841

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Index

Acknowledgments

Nothing is more noble, nothing more venerable than fidelity. Faithfulness and truth are the most sacred excellences and endowments of the human mind.

—Marcus Tullius Cicero

The text of this book is closely based on my doctoral thesis undertaken at Leeds from 2009 to 2013. It is therefore fused with fond memories of doctoral student life—the joys and obstacles of bringing this project to fruition. While the genesis of this book has inevitably involved a great deal of solitude, it is a testament to my friends and family that the experience has not been an altogether lonely one.

Firstly, I would like to offer special thanks to my grandparents, without whom the extraordinary years of research behind this book would not have been possible. I continue to be humbled and moved by your generosity and kindness. All that is benevolent, liberal, and tender in this book belongs to you both.

I would also like to express my loving appreciation for my husband. It is not easy living with a theologian. We are rarely tidy, spend hours pacing up and down, and can be highly reclusive, but you never lost faith in me. My gratitude and love also goes out to a loyal circle of friends and colleagues in the orbit of Carlton Hill Quaker Meeting House. My abiding thanks to Rhiannon, Pascal, Anna, Jill, and many others for their company, hospitality, and encouragement.

My thanks also go to Liz Heesom and Lucas de Winter for assistance with both proofing and indexing. Your care and attention was invaluable. Thanks must also go to the team at Fortress Press for their support in helping me see this project through to the very end.

Finally, I would like to thank my doctoral supervisor, Dr. Rachel Muers, for her optimism, energy, and kind-heartedness. Our meetings were genuine voyages of discovery. I couldn’t have wished for a better gatekeeper into the academy.

Introduction

Few subjects have provoked such strong reactions from contemporary public theologians as the relationship between political liberalism and Christian ethics. Since the end of the Cold War and the evident victory of liberal capitalism, there has been a steady increase in theological literature devoted to the meaning and significance of political liberalism as a creed and social practice. What is so remarkable when one surveys this literature is the sheer prevalence of negative or largely critical theological portrayals of liberal politics. While the conclusion of the West’s conflict with the Soviet Union appeared to vindicate the convictions of a whole generation of secular liberals (culminating in the high hopes of the political theorist Francis Fukuyama), such triumphalism has not captured the imagination of academic theology. Indeed, the leading tone of theological discussion has been largely antagonistic not simply to the family of ideologies called liberal but, more generally, to the ethical and social commitments that are said to underlie such modes of politics. Cast as egoistic, consumerist, nihilistic, and Pelagian, liberal politics emerges as a blanket term of theological abuse for all the numerous errors, heresies, and excesses that fill contemporary public life. As the theologian Christopher Insole observes, There seems to be almost consensus in theological circles concerning the nature of the problem with liberalism.[1]

While the precise motivation for such strategies of hostility varies considerably from author to author, one of the major driving forces behind the consolidation of this anti-liberal mood has been the systematic use of the Augustinian tradition in innovative but starkly anti-modern ways. The significance of Augustine for theologians unhappy with political liberalism is hardly surprising. Augustine’s doctrinal and ecclesial preeminence in shaping the direction of church life and thought has been considerable, offering contemporary scholars of diverse backgrounds fertile soil for the development of theological criticism and deconstructions of all kinds. Alongside such a tendency, there is also an increasing awareness among theologians and historians that if we wish to understand the dynamics of the contemporary liberal world, then we need to better understand Augustine. A vivid exponent of this view is Charles Taylor, who cites Augustine as a key originator in the formation of contemporary conceptions of individual subjectivity.[2] If, indeed, key elements of modernity emerge from Augustine and yet modernity itself (including liberalism) is unsatisfactory, then by the same logic, a correct reading of Augustine also contains the potential for a return to the orthodox and premodern ecclesia. Indeed, this is a central claim of the movement known as Radical Orthodoxy.

In an effort to counter such negative readings, this book argues that Augustine’s epistemology offers Christians powerful tools for the defense of liberal politics. Central to the potency of Augustinian epistemology is its formative encounter with ancient skepticism. While the skepticism of antiquity comes down to us as a passive and somewhat disinterested creed, in Augustine’s hands it serves to secure significant theological benefits not merely for his own theory of knowledge but for contemporary theologians seeking viable models of liberal tolerance and pluralism. A key player in this account is Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BCE), whose academic skepticism gives Augustine a philosophical framework in which to pursue his inquiries. Cicero’s key claim is that all our knowledge has the potential to be incomplete or flawed. We cannot speak of certainties, only likelihoods and probabilities. While at first glance such an espousal of vagueness and doubt appears theologically problematic, I will argue that it is the philosophical cornerstone for much of Augustine’s epistemological reflection.

By accepting both the incompleteness and fallibility of our knowledge, Augustine develops an innovative conception of politics. Turning his attention from the pursuit of certain knowledge to a christological conception of truth as constructive practice, he conceives of the Christian intellectual life as one of continual reflection, interpretation, and reasoning within a scriptural community as a means of securing a fruitful existence. Within such a scheme, truth is not a fixed and incontestable object but rather the illusive frame in which Christians both act and believe. It is fundamentally a cumulative process requiring discernment, dialogue, and discussion. Through this posture, Augustine concedes a central insight of the skeptical philosophers: in the absence of epistemic certainty, one must turn to tangible relationships to ground one’s daily life. By turning from what we know to how we live, Augustine offers an appealing vision of peaceful coexistence. Key to its political significance is Augustine’s keen sense that knowledge is not something to be imposed upon groups or individuals from above but rather a quest in which the whole community participates. As I suggest throughout the book, such a trajectory has the potential to both validate and rule out certain sociopolitical forms. In particular, I suggest that Augustine’s notion of an actively engaged intellectual life can offer modes of resistance to forms of political power, whether concrete or ideological.

By undertaking this task, I cannot hope to do justice to the vast Augustinian corpus, much less to the plethora of commentaries, devotional writings, and theological treatises that comprise the ongoing Augustinian tradition, to which this book hopes to contribute. By necessity, therefore, I focus on a narrow yet significant range of texts that serve to illuminate and support the objectives of the central argument. In tackling Augustine’s original thought, I shall confine my theological analysis in the main to Augustine’s significant epistemological works Against the Academicians and The Teacher, as well as the didactic work On Christian Teaching. A close reading of all three texts provides the basis of core claims made in chapter 2. This conceptual underpinning is further supplemented by Confessions and City of God, which illustrate the practical results of Augustine’s theological models. Other sources bolster the significant points explored in these central texts. Yet, in exploring Augustine, this book also makes claims about the nature of the Augustinian tradition. For this latter purpose, I focus on the Essays by the Renaissance  Humanist Michel de Montaigne (1533–92). By drawing firm links between Augustine’s engagement with the skeptics and Montaigne’s own commitments, I seek to pinpoint an ongoing tradition of skeptical Christian thought in the search for a liberal politics.

Theological Context: Epistemology and Liberal Politics

The framework for this project finds itself at the intersection of theology, politics, and philosophy. In seeking to ground a positive epistemological reading of political liberalism, this book seeks to challenge and repair a number of philosophical and theological deficiencies that have led to the overlooking of epistemologically orientated approaches to Augustine and liberal politics. While the notion of defending liberal politics through Augustine is not in itself novel, this work argues that Augustine’s theory of knowledge represents a valuable component in any such project. Despite its centrality to the development and coherence of Augustine’s theological reflection as a whole, his theological epistemology is rarely used by public theologians as a constructive tool for political engagement. Rather, its role tends to be secondary, confined to historical and doctrinal settings. The notion that Augustine’s epistemology might have political implications is hampered by the assumption that it is too arcane and philosophically incomplete (unlike, perhaps, his account of church life[3]) to be of constructive use. Thus, one is more likely to find positive treatments of politics rooted in ethical rather than epistemological accounts of Augustine. This trend is vividly epitomized by the work of Gareth B. Matthews, who suggests that Christians might be moved to support political liberalism through attentiveness to Augustine’s understanding of pride.[4]

Yet, there are signs that academic reception of Augustine’s knowledge theory is improving, to the benefit of theological disciplines and wider Augustinian scholarship. Two studies in particular, Ronald Nash’s The Light of the Mind (2003) and Luigi Gioia’s The Theological Epistemology of Augustine’s De Trinitate (2008), offer nuanced and detailed accounts of the role of epistemology in the structure of Augustinian theology. Instead of treating epistemology as an abstract secondary issue, both scholars recognize that it provides the philosophical axis around which Augustine develops a plethora of other core theological, social, and ethical commitments. This is due to the fact that Augustine links ontology with epistemology,[5] a posture that leads him comfortably to the view that what and how we know determines our moral dispositions and orders how we are to live.[6] Evidence that such epistemological readings are having an effect on the direction of public theology can be found in Charles Mathewes’s book A Theology of Public Life (2007). Pointing to the interlocking nature of Augustine’s political and epistemological claims, Mathewes (himself a conscientious reader of Augustine) suggests that one cannot separate epistemological tasks from social and soteriological tasks. As Mathewes writes:

Augustine’s picture of the human inquirer reveals more general facets of his anthropology, for he understands epistemology to be part of the larger soteriological aim of human existence. Knowing cannot be understood in isolation from the larger human project; we acquire salvific knowledge by participating in a community seeking salvation, and this participation reveals to us what we have really wanted all along.[7]

His central point here is to stress the way in which Augustine is led to adopt particular attitudes and practices because of his epistemology. Far from being an arcane and rather remote set of theoretical postulates, Augustine realizes the social implications of knowledge. By adopting incorrect beliefs or seeking truth in the wrong ways, we could find ourselves living worse lives, both here and in the world to come. If we wish to be conscientious Christians, Augustine is inclined to think we should be effective epistemologists as well. Yet, for Mathewes, the kind of social engagement implied by Augustine’s epistemology is in tension with the objectives of contemporary liberalism. For bound to Augustine’s epistemology is his understanding of what a proper knowing agent looks like. In rejecting notions of individual autonomy, Mathewes understands the Augustinian epistemological task as one carried out under servitude to God—something that confounds our contemporary political sensibilities.[8] Mathewes observes:

As moderns we typically conceive of ourselves as ex nihilo actors and knowers, subjects originally alone and outside of the world and intervening in it, bootstrapping ourselves into knowledge and pulling ourselves into existence by the hair. Augustine does not share this faith and with good reason. His theological anthropology illuminates how we exist fundamentally as part of a larger order—in the world and before God—in ways superior to contemporary alternatives.[9]

Faced with a false model of public life, Mathewes calls for Christians to endure liberal societies—to see them as part of the inescapable facts about our lives, realities which we experience most fundamentally by suffering them.[10]At the crux of this theological proposal is the notion of an ascetic practice by which Christians undergo the indignities of temporal politics (its advertising and consumerism) in order to cultivate a holy longing for God’s kingdom.[11] While this work shares Mathewes’s awareness of the conceptual tensions that might exist between Augustinian epistemology and liberal politics, it suggests that endurance is not the only response. While I do not claim that all is well with liberalism, I do argue for the existence of liberal forms of life that are conscientiously theological and function in ways that uphold Augustine’s essential picture of the human inquirer as engaged in soteriological tasks.

In making such a positive claim, this book places itself in sympathy with the work of a fellow Augustinian liberal, Eric Gregory, who has attempted to support liberal trajectories by providing a detailed analysis of Augustine’s anthropology. By paying attention to Augustine’s theory of love,[12] Gregory suggests ways in which Augustinian models can facilitate and strengthen liberalism’s retrieval of notions of civic virtue through an Augustinian portrait of moral psychology. Attentive to what, how, and why we love, Gregory believes that an Augustinian reading of politics challenges us to support public institutions that actively encourage the moral transformation of actual practices and characters of citizens by enhancing their capacity for compassion and care.[13]

Rejecting the suggestion that Augustine’s strong conception of sin makes such a constructive social enterprise theologically hazardous, Gregory argues that rather than being an anomalous departure from a strict antithesis between institutional injustice of the earthly city to the personal charity of the heavenly city, our institutions and our politics are one forum in which love of God and neighbour is carried out.[14] Indeed, Gregory reflects, Augustine’s sensitivity to God’s love and the suffering of Christ made him respond to those who suffer and the practical responsibility this entails.[15] While always alert to the distorting effects of sin, Gregory suggests that Augustinian politics seeks out and keenly encourages love not merely as a private occupation but as a public virtue. This notion of love as virtue is good news for political liberals, because it takes the strain off their ideals for the sole delivery of the social good associated with the liberal polity. As Gregory reflects,

[It] seems to me that the liberal emphasis upon respect, civility and reciprocity for all their value, have their limits when forced to do all the work for an ethics of citizenship. They are not sufficiently rich enough concepts to sustain a liberal order and a political practice.[16]

What is needed for the maintenance of these positive liberal goods is greater attention to the institutional modes of life that shape our lives as individuals and communities—what Gregory refers to as the cultural formation of civic virtues.[17] Taking Gregory’s constructive reading of Augustinian politics and liberalism seriously, this book argues that, far from being enmeshed in pessimism, Augustinianism can work constructively with forms of liberal politics. While Gregory attempts to ground liberal ideas of civility and reciprocity in Augustine’s moral psychology, this project seeks to maintain Mathewes’s significant theological contribution to the debate by insisting on an epistemological account that fuses what we are, what we know, and how we act into a single theological framework. This not only adds something distinctive to the present debate but also gives us a more nuanced assessment of the potentials and pitfalls of applying Augustinian thought to liberal projects. Yet, there are also sound pragmatic reasons for choosing such a mode of intervention in these discussions. As Gregory recognizes, for a positive Augustinian liberalism to succeed, it must have the capacity to move beyond the shadow of Augustine the man and be prepared to take and develop Augustine’s theological and political thought in directions unforeseen by Augustine himself. Thus, while acknowledging the value of certain practical details of Augustine’s political life unearthed by contemporary scholars (his aversion to torture and the death penalty, for instance[18]), Gregory notes: These developments offer suggestive avenues for Augustinian liberalism. They are consistent with my elevation of the moral psychology of love and sin but I do rely on their claims in order to provide a complete Augustinian description of political authority.[19]

Echoing Gregory’s approach, this book uses Augustine’s epistemology as a descriptive tool without an overreliance on the life of its deviser. In doing so, it attempts to avoid the distortion that arises when ancient texts are purposely placed in conversation with contemporaryconditions. One of the recurrent dangers of using Augustine in the formulation of political projects is a tendency to gloss current motivations and frameworks onto a premodern thinker with his own complex motives. Moreover, applying a strictly biographical approach to the problem of Augustine and liberalism is liable to end in disappointment. One can certainly place Augustine in lights that make him useful to particular political projects. Take, for instance, Robert Dodaro’s claim that Augustine practiced episcopal political activism.[20] Such a reading of Augustine is very useful for Christian liberals attempting to develop positive accounts of ecclesial political engagement (a fact that is elaborated in chapter 3).

Yet, alongside such a constructive model, the same Christian liberals necessarily have to confront more uncomfortable aspects of his character. Without too thorough a search, one also comes across a darker man, a thinker to whom respective authors have attached the labels Augustine the heresy hunter,[21] Augustine the misogynist,[22] and Augustine the subtle peddler of anti-Semitism.[23] By working with Augustine’s epistemology rather than focusing extensively on his life, this book hopes to avoid some of the tensions that could divert this project from its central arguments. With a theological rather than a biographical approach in hand, this work endeavors to use Augustine’s epistemology as a theological tool to criticize and refine other areas of his thinking, with the final aim of generating new patterns of ethical potential. This latter approach is used in chapter 2 in discussion of Augustine’s harsh treatment of the Donatists.

An Overview of the Argument

Chapter 1 focuses primarily on the uses of Augustine in contemporary anti-liberal theology. Since the available academic literature is vast, I select two prominent anti-liberals for the task, Stanley Hauerwas and John Milbank. Noting substantive issues raised by their work, I go on to consider the rudimentary basis for a theological and political alternative. Linked to this task will be consideration of what is meant by liberal for the purposes of thiswork. I draw on the work of Robert Song and Christopher Insole to suggest that securing an alternative vision of liberal politics relies foundationally upon Christians developing a more sophisticated account of liberal politics. Key to this process is an acknowledgment of the possibility of liberalism taking multiple ethical, cultural, and economic forms. With a multifaceted conception of liberal politics, I go on to suggest ways in which Augustinian theological commitments can ground practices of tolerance and liberty.

Chapter 2 onward is organized thematically around a central theme of the liberal tradition, focusing on the philosophical grounding of tolerance and pluralism. A significant presence in chapter 2 is Marcus Tullius Cicero. I illustrate Augustine’s continuing debt to Cicero after the former’s conversion to Christianity. In particular, I draw out the close links between the skeptical epistemology and Augustine’s distinctive accounts of sense data, philosophical method, and hermeneutics. Through such a dialogue, I locate significant theological trajectories that can validate notions of liberal models of peaceful coexistence. Chapter 3 examines liberal conceptions of the state and individual liberty. Building on the Ciceronian legacies established in the previous chapter, I examine the ways in which Augustine’s commitment to an epistemologically grounded peace affords him the resources to challenge an imperial ideology. While chapter 2 understands Cicero as the great clarifier of  Augustine’s thought, in chapter 3, Cicero is understood as Augustine’s arch-antagonist. By stressing Augustine’s rejection of a violent and self-centered anthropology implicit in the operation of Ciceronian politics, I  attempt to illuminate  epistemologically innovative approach to Scripture. The core suggestion of this discussion is that Augustine’s epistemological theory not only extends the project of liberalism, per se, but also advocates a very specific kind of politics, one in which the common good rather than competitive self-interest is a central driving force.

Chapter 4 moves from consideration of primary Augustinian sources to an extended discussion of the survival of Augustinian skepticism explored in chapter 2. By examining this ongoing Augustinian-skeptical tradition through the theology of Michel de Montaigne, this chapter considers a key function of the liberal state, the maintenance of a secular public square. In direct  challenge to Radical Orthodoxy’s assertion that liberal secularity is antagonistic to Christianity, I apply skeptical Augustinianism to the task of   reframing the secular as a fruitful opportunity for Christian discipleship. By drawing out Montaigne’s seemingly secular trajectories of privacy, relativism, and anthropological attachment, I  contend that, far from demonstrating a lack of religiosity, these trajectories deeply underscore Augustinian commitments of dependence, humility, and obedience to the church.

Building on this interpretation, chapter 5 seeks to utilize Montaigne as a theological source for more closely exploring the theme of public tolerance. While in the first instance I emphasize Montaigne’s seemingly intolerant, illiberal postures on church and politics, I move to demonstrate the way in which Montaigne’s highly skeptical vision of Augustinianism serves as a theological limit on ecclesial authority as it is expressed, in the lives of both faithful Catholics and also ecclesial outsiders. Through a sophisticated epistemology and a strong doctrine of human creatureliness, Montaigne establishes a rich and effective conception of Christian tolerance that refuses to accept prideful and unreasonable constraints upon a person’s self-expression or conscience. Taking note of Montaigne’s generosity toward ecclesial outsiders, I locate a politics of charity rooted in human fallibility.

In an effort to clarify and contextualize the Augustinian liberal account sketched in chapters 1 through 5, the final chapter reflects closely on the future of a democratic, skeptical, and virtue-based liberalism in a world of increasing globalization and neoliberal hegemony. I suggest that such a theological project could be framed through a closer engagement with the epistemic postures that underlie Augustine’s conception of intellectual development, education, and progress. While these categories possess an undeniable ring of Enlightenment rationality, I suggest that Augustine offers a conspicuously theological account of these areas that can assist Christian liberals in undercutting a narrow neoliberal conception of politics that is hostile to both communal autonomy and democratic agency. I open the chapter with a defense of Augustine’s anti-imperial credentials. I contest the claim that Augustine is too enmeshed in the ideology of Roman oppression to be of use to Christian liberals. In highlighting Augustine’s markedly grace-centered conception of politics, I defend a hopeful vision of public life that includes reform of social, intellectual, and material conditions. Underlying this civic portrait is, I propose, a compelling model of Christian fraternity that encourages virtue through community. I conclude chapter 6 with an appraisal of the potential of Christian notions of social hope. What connects the subjects of these chapters will be the contention that an epistemological approach to Augustine is crucial if public theologians are to develop nuanced accounts of the political and social realities under which we live.

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Christopher J. Insole, The Politics of Human Frailty: A Theological Defence of Political Liberalism (London: SCM, 2004), 1. ↵

Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 133. ↵

See Ronald H. Nash, The Light of the Mind: St Augustine’s Theory of Knowledge (Lima, OH: Academic Renewal Press, 2003), 3. ↵

Gareth B. Matthews, The Augustinian Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 307. ↵

Nash, Light of the Mind, 5. ↵

Luigi Gioia, The Theological Epistemology of Augustine’s De Trinitate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 49–50. ↵

Charles Mathewes, A Theology of Public Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 51. ↵

Ibid., 57. ↵

Ibid., 68. ↵

Ibid., 10. ↵

Ibid., 12. ↵

Eric Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship (London: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 55. ↵

Ibid., 73. ↵

Ibid., 38. ↵

Ibid. ↵

Ibid., 71. ↵

Ibid., 56. ↵

Ibid., 55. ↵

Ibid. ↵

Robert Dodaro, Between the Two Cities: Political Action, in Augustine and Politics, ed. John Doody, Kevin L. Hughes, and Kim Paffenroth (Oxford: Lexington Books, 2005), 110. ↵

See Stuart G. Hall, Doctrine and Practice in the Early Church (London: SPCK, 1991), 206. ↵

David D. Gilmore, Misogyny: The Male Malady (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2009), 177. ↵

André Mineau, The Making of the Holocaust: Ideology and Ethics in the Systems Perspective (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999), 37–38.  ↵

1

Political Liberalism and Its Theological Opponents

Anti-Liberal Uses of Augustine: Hauerwas and Milbank

To better contextualize the core claims of the book, this chapter considers the use of Augustine among anti-liberals. The two key interlocutors of this discussion are the theologians Stanley Hauerwas and John Milbank. While stressing different elements of the historical Christian experience, both offer highly Augustinian critiques of liberal modernity. Hauerwas’s antipathy toward liberal politics is primarily a result of his ecclesiological commitments. As a strong postliberal, Hauerwas identifies the church primarily as the place where a central story of God’s interaction with the world is told, shared, and reenacted across generations.[1] This core Christian narrative concerns not only the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ but also the narrative history of God’s engagement with the people of Israel.[2] Yet, Hauerwas insists that if the story of the church and the Jewish people is to be sustained, it cannot be something that is passively received. Rather, the hearer must respond to the life and tradition of the Christian community. Hauerwas reflects:

The fact that Christian ethics begins and ends with a story requires a corresponding community existing across time. The story of God as told through the experience of Israel and the church cannot be abstracted from those communities engaged in the telling and the hearing. As a story it cannot exist without a historic people for it requires telling and remembering if it is to exist at all.[3]

Yet, being actively engaged in this activity is not haphazard but takes a specific shape for a specific purpose. Its shape is found primarily in the rites of both