He embraced the Manichean dualistic teaching that there are two ultimate princip

les,
one responsible for good and for the human soul, the other for evil and matter,
including the body
"God and the soul, I desire to know. Nothing more?
Nothing whatever."9 Augustine added to the ancient Greek maxim, "Know thyself,"
to make it, "Know God and thyself."
Can pure reason operate on its own or does it need faith to relate man to
God? Can faith without the companionship of reason pursue wisdom?
philosophy is love of wisdom
for the attainment of happiness.11 The soul’s unceasing search for knowledge and l
ove
is, in reality, the journey to beatitude in God. As Augustine put it in his resp
onse to
God, "You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in
you."
Religious belief and understanding are
complementary: "Understand my word in order to believe, but believe God’s word in
order to understand."16 Belief enlightened by understanding becomes a reasoned f
aith.
"Do not go abroad," he wrote, "return within yourself. Truth dwells in the
inward man."22
Sensation and Intellection
In the Platonic tradition, Augustine held that sensation reaches only changing,
temporal, contingent phenomena,31 and yields no more than opinion, whereas
intellection attains unchanging, eternal necessary objects. Dreams and illusions
confirm the limited value of the senses and their powerlessness in distinguishin
g
between reality and its false images. The "judgment of truth" is the work, there
fore,
not of the senses, but rather of the mind
Inferior and Superior Understanding
In view of its different objects, Augustine distinguished between inferior and s
uperior
intellection. Inferior reason is "rational knowledge of temporal things,"33 wher
eas
superior understanding is "rational knowledge of eternal things."34 Lower reason
relies
on the senses in its orientation towards action, while higher reason operates
independently of sensation ln its contemplation of truth. "There is a difference
between the contemplation of eternal things and the action by which we use tempo
ral
things well; the former is called wisdom, the latter science."35 Augustine prefe
rred
contemplating wisdom of divine things to the scientific use of corporeal objects
,
though the latter is necessary for life.
Truth
With these distinctions in mind, Augustine disclosed the certitude of truth in a
direct
and indirect way.
Direct Disclosure
- Psychological Truths. Certitude concerning truth can be directly disclosed in
the
psychological, ethical, cosmological, logical, and mathematical orders. First,
consciousness, independent of sense experience, is immediately aware of two basi
c
psychological realities, thought and existence. Even if one doubts, he is certai
n of his
thinking: If he doubts, he remembers why he doubts; if he doubts he understands
that he doubts; if he doubts, he wishes to be certain; if he doubts, he thinks;
if he doubts, he knows that he does not know. . . . Whoever then doubts about an
ything else ought
never to doubt about all of these; for if they were not, he would be unable to d
oubt
about anything at all.
- Doubting and thinking imply existence. "If you did not exist, you could not be
deceived in anything."37 Briefly, "if I err, I am."38 Though a pyrrhonist were t
o object
that "perhaps you are asleep, dreaming, even insane," nevertheless, one can stil
l
affirm, "I know that I live."39 Three things escape even illusion: "We exist and
we
know we exist, and we love our being and our knowledge of it. . . . Without any
delusive representation, I am absolutely certain that I am, and that I know and
love
this."40 Since the mind, according to Augustine, grasps these truths without the
intervention of the senses, its certitude cannot be invalidated by any illusions
of the
senses.
- Ethical Truths. Further analysis of moral experience immediately reveals ethic
al
truths such as, "Happiness lies in the possession of wisdom and the good," and
"Happiness requires the subordination of the inferior to the superior." With suc
h
clear, directive truths, man can guide his life and live well.

- Theories of Activity. Cognizant of Augustine’s recognition of the need of sense

perception, Thomas Aquinas understood his doctrine of illumination in terms of
Aristotelian abstraction. According to this interpretation, the Augustinian mind
is an
active power which, under divine influence, illumines the intelligible element i
n the
sensible, or in Aristotelian language, abstracts the rational content from the
perceptible object. This interpretation encounters difficulties within an August
inian
framework. First, Augustine, following the Platonic and Plotinian rather than th
e
Aristotelian view of the world, saw nothing for the mind to work on in the corpo
real
universe. Second, since the less perfect by itself cannot act on the more perfec
t,
something sensible from a corporeal object cannot determine the spiritual soul.
The
soul itself must directly produce sensation and an image. An agent intellect in
the
Aristotelian sense seems superfluous for the Augustinian mind which in its recep
tion
of divine light judges about the empirical world. Within the Augustinian perspec
tive,
the theory of abstraction seems to overemphasize the causality of the human mind
.
- Theory of Activo-Passivity. To respect Augustine’s doctrine of illumination, due
consideration must be given to both the passive and active character of the huma
n
mind. Augustine was impressed by the necessary, immutable, and eternal character
of
judgments of purely intelligible truth. He realized that truth could not be acco
unted
for either by the objects experienced or the mind pondering them. Appeal to inte
rnal
or external experience to account for the content of concepts about the corporea
l
world cannot explain the necessity of the concept. To make judgments of eternal
things, for example, "beauty is one," the mind needs to be immediately regulated
by
the light of eternal and necessary rules of divine wisdom, without adverting to
the
light itself.53 The theory of regulation, which recognizes both the human mind’s
activity in judging and its passivity in being governed by divine norms, seems t
o be
more consonant with Augustine’s teaching as a whole.
Divine Truth54
I. Metaphysical Principles
Certain of truth, Augustine sought to know truth itself, God, according to the
following metaphysical principles. First, reality is ultimately being. Everythin
g is real
insofar as it is what it is, namely, essence, or in Platonic terminology, form.
Second,
everything is essentially what it is inasmuch as it is true; truth is the basis
of its
essence.55 Here, Augustine has in mind truth as it is found originally in God. T
hird,
everything which is essentially true is also one and good. Whatever is evil is w
ithout
unity, truth, and essence.56 In view of this principle, Augustine can refute the
Manichaean reification of an ultimate evil cause. Finally, Augustine, in authent
ic
neoplatonic fashion, reasoned that beauty, like goodness, flows from the order,
harmony and proportion of unity.57
1-
2-
3- .........
: ..
On the basis of these principles, Augustine distinguished a triple hierarchy of
being
according to the degree of mutability and/or immutability.58 The essence of bodi
es,
spatially and temporally mutable, is the lowest level of being. Souls, unchangea
ble as
regard place but mutable in time, are on a higher metaphysical plane. The essenc
e of
God, immutable both in place and time, is the highest nature.59 In this hierarch
y,
truth, unity, goodness, and beauty are in proportion to a being’s immutability.
Within this hierarchy, the more perfect can act on the less perfect but not vice
versa.
II. Knowledge of God
A finite mind cannot comprehend infinite being. God comprehended is not God. Whe
n
one utters "`Unspeakable,’. . . there arises a curious contradiction of words, bec
ause if
the unspeakable is what cannot be spoken of, it is not unspeakable if it can be
called
unspeakable."60 The wisest man is he who best knows his ignorance of God in the
mystery of silence. Yet "if anything worthy of praise is noticed in the nature o
f things,
whether it be judged worthy of slight praise or of great, it must be applied to
the most
excellent and ineffable praise of the Creator."61
- Negative-Positive Predication. Augustine adopted Plotinus’ double theology of
negative and positive predication. Because the infinite transcends all finite ca
tegories
and concepts, it is easier to know what God is not than to know what he is. Thou
gh
"nothing said of God is said with complete conformity,"62 one speaks exactly in
saying
both what God is and what he is not, in affirming God "as good without quality,
great
without quantity, . . . being without passion."63 Names, such as wisdom and love
,
must be profoundly transformed before they can be applied to God. What these
names signify must be purged of every shadow of mutability and temporality in a
negative process and then raised to an eminent degree (perfect wisdom, perfect l
ove)
in an affirmative movement. Though "everything can be said of God, yet nothing i
s
worthy of being said of God."64
III. Existence of God
Augustine sought to understand his belief in the existence of God by looking inw
ardly
and outside of himself for evidence of the divine presence. His arguments are ge
nerally
little more than summary statements reminding those who already believe.
- Gnoseological Proof. His favorite proof is nothing but the epistemological
justification of knowledge of truth now understood as a philosophical verificati
on of
faith in God. How can truths which immanently regulate the mind be adequately
explained? Augustine found more in intellectual knowledge than the human mind ca
n
sufficiently account for. The mutable mind which errs in knowing things other th
an
they are, increases its knowledge, and ceases to know, cannot be the sufficient
reason
of truths which as necessary cannot be otherwise than they are, and as immutable
cannot increase or decrease. Consequently, the truths upon which the mind depend
s
transcend it and find their raison d’ être only in necessary, unchangeable, and eter
nal
Truth itself. God is "the Truth in whom and by whom and through whom those
things are true which are true in every respect."65 A judgment is true, therefor
e,
because Truth or God is.
- Cosmological Proof. In reading the great book of the world, one is moved to "q
uestion
the beautiful earth. . . . the beautiful sea . . . the beautiful air . . . the b
eautiful
heavens, . . . ."66 to "question the living creatures, . . ."67 And they reply,
"We are not
God, but it is God who has made us."68 As works of art point to the artist, so
"everything cries out to you of its author; nay, the very forms of created thing
s are as
it were the voices with which they praise their Creator."69 Listening with the m
ind
and heart, one will hear "the very order, disposition, beauty, change and motion
 of
the world and of all visible things silently proclaim that it could only have be
en made
by God, whose greatness and beauty, are unutterable and invisible."70 What
participates in being, unity, truth, goodness and beauty, is not its own cause b
ut an
effect of unparticipating being. Creatures have truth, because "O Truth, You . .
. truly
are."71