Divine Illumination E-Book

Lydia Schumacher

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 526

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

DIVINE ILLUMINATION "An important and ground-breaking study which links growing interest in Augustine and medieval philosophy with cutting-edge questions in contemporary philosophy of religion, particularly concerning epistemology and the 'rationality' of religion." Janet Soskice, University of Cambridge "In this lucidly argued and solidly documented study, Schumacher uncovers the roots of problems notoriously besetting modern theories of knowledge in conflicting medieval interpretations of Augustine's assumptions about knowledge as divine illumination: an intriguing thesis, which she handles with delicacy and flair." Fergus Kerr, O.P. University of Edinburgh "Challenges the traditional history of theories of knowledge. A bold and provocative reading." Olivier Boulnois, École Pratique des Hautes Études (University of Paris, Sorbonne) Divine Illumination offers an original interpretation of Augustine's theory of knowledge, tracing its development in the work of medieval thinkers such as Anselm, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, and John Duns Scotus. Although Scotus is often deemed responsible for finally pronouncing Augustine's longstanding illumination account untenable, Schumacher shows that he only rejected a version that was the byproduct of a shift in the understanding of illumination and knowledge more generally within the thirteenth-century Franciscan school of thought. To reckon with the challenges in contemporary thought on knowledge that were partly made possible by this shift, Schumacher recommends relearning a way of thinking about knowledge that was familiar to Augustine and those who worked in continuity with him. Her book thus anticipates a new approach to dealing with debates in contemporary epistemology, philosophy of religion, and theology, even while correcting some longstanding assumptions about Augustine and his most significant medieval readers.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Table of Contents

Half title page

Challenges in Contemporary Theology

Title page

Copyright page

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Editions

Abbreviations

Introduction

1 Augustine (AD 354–430)

Introduction

The Doctrine of God

Creation in the Image of God

The Fall and Redemption

Conforming to the Image of God

Divine Illumination

2 Anselm (AD 1033–1109)

Introduction

The Image of God

Conforming to the Image of God

Divine Illumination

Anselm the Augustinian

3 Divine Illumination in Transition (AD 1109–1257)

Introduction

New Schools

New Translations

New Religious Challenges

New Religious Orders

New Intellectual Traditions

4 Bonaventure (AD 1221–74)

Introduction

The Doctrine of God

Creation in the Image of God

The Fall and Redemption

Conforming to the Image of God

Divine Illumination

Bonaventure the Augustinian?

5 Aquinas (AD 1225–74)

Introduction

The Image of God

Conforming to the Image of God

Divine Illumination

Aquinas the Augustinian

6 Divine Illumination in Decline (AD 1274–c.1300)

Introduction

Peter John Olivi (1248–98)

Henry of Ghent (1217–93)

John Duns Scotus (1265/6–1308)

Augustinian and Franciscan Thought

Franciscan and Modern Thought

7 The Future of Augustine’s Theory of Knowledge

Introduction to a Theological Theory of Knowledge

Reason in a Theological Theory of Knowledge

Faith in a Theological Theory of Knowledge

Conclusion

Index

DIVINE ILLUMINATION

Challenges in Contemporary Theology

Series Editors: Gareth Jones and Lewis Ayres

Canterbury Christ Church University College, UK and Durham University, UK

Challenges in Contemporary Theology is a series aimed at producing clear orientations in, and research on, areas of “challenge” in contemporary theology. These carefully co-ordinated books engage traditional theological concerns with mainstreams in modern thought and culture that challenge those concerns. The “challenges” implied are to be understood in two senses: those presented by society to contemporary theology, and those posed by theology to society.

Published

These Three are One: The Practice of Trinitarian Theology

David S. Cunningham

After Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy

Catherine Pickstock

Mystical Theology: The Integrity of Spirituality and Theology

Mark A. McIntosh

Engaging Scripture: A Model for Theological Interpretation

Stephen E. Fowl

Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ

William T. Cavanaugh

Sexuality and the Christian Body: Their Way into the Triune God

Eugene F. Rogers, Jr

On Christian Theology

Rowan Williams

The Promised End: Eschatology in Theology and Literature

Paul S. Fiddes

Powers and Submissions: Spirituality, Philosophy, and Gender

Sarah Coakley

A Theology of Engagement

Ian S. Markham

Alien Sex: The Body and Desire in Cinema and Theology

Gerard Loughlin

Scripture and Metaphysics: Aquinas and the Renewal of Trinitarian Theology

Matthew Levering

Faith and Freedom: An Interfaith Perspective

David Burrell

Keeping God’s Silence

Rachel Muers

Christ and Culture

Graham Ward

Theology in the Public Square: Church, Academy and Nation

Gavin D’Costa

Rewritten Theology: Aquinas After His Readers

Mark D. Jordan

God’s Companions: Reimagining Christian Ethics

Samuel Wells

The Trial of the Witnesses: The Rise and Decline of Postliberal Theology

Paul J. DeHart

Theology and Families

Adrian Thatcher

The Shape of Theology

David F. Ford

The Vietnam War and Theologies of Memory

Jonathan Tran

In Adam’s Fall: A Meditation on the Christian Doctrine of Original Sin

Ian A. McFarland

Divine Illumination: The History and Future of Augustine’s Theory of Knowledge

Lydia Schumacher

This edition first published 2011

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For my parents,

Richard and Pam

Realities … must be learned and sought out not from names, but rather through themselves.

Plato, Cratylus 439B

Realities signified are to be valued more highly than their signs.

Augustine, De magistro 9.25

It would be unreasonable and silly to look at words rather than at the power of the meanings. Anyone seeking to understand divine things should never do this, for this is the procedure followed by those who … do not wish to know what a particular phrase means or how to convey its sense through equivalent but more efficient phrases.

Pseudo-Dionysius, De divinis nominibus 708C

Acknowledgments

I am extremely grateful to those who have commented on aspects or all of this manuscript at different stages in its development, including Nicholas Adams, Lewis Ayres, Olivier Boulnois, David Burrell C.S.C., Mark D. Jordan, Fergus Kerr O.P., John Montag S.J., Isabelle Moulin, Sara Parvis, Oliver O’Donovan, Karla Pollmann, Janet Soskice, and the Archbishop Rowan Williams.

I would like to say a very special thanks to my parents, the Revd Richard and Pamela Schumacher. Together, my parents have been the greatest source of every conceivable kind of help in the years leading up to the completion of this book, which is a testimony to the immense and unwavering power of their love for God, for one another, and for me.

I wish to acknowledge the institutions that helped make it financially feasible for me to undertake this project: the University of Edinburgh New College School of Divinity, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Medieval Academy of America, and the Catholic Foundation of Scotland.

Finally, I would like to thank the editors and publishers who have granted me permission to reproduce material from the following articles here:

Chapter1: “The Theo-Logic of St. Augustine’s Theory of Knowledge by Divine Illumination” (Augustinian Studies)

Chapter2: “The Lost Legacy of Anselm’s Argument: Rethinking the Purpose of Proofs for the Existence of God” (Modern Theology)

Chapter7: “The Logic of Faith: Prolegomena to a Theological Theory of Knowledge” (New Blackfriars)

Editions

In preparing this work, I used the following editions of the primary texts:

Anselm. Sancti Anselmi cantuariensis archiepiscopi Opera omnia, 6 vols. Edited by F.S. Schmitt. Edinburgh: T. Nelson and Sons, 1946–61.

Augustine. Confessiones. Edited by Lucas Verheijen in Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina vol. 27. Turnhout: Brepols, 1981.

Augustine. Contra academicos, De ordine, De beata vita, De magistro, De libero arbitrio. Edited by W.M. Green in Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina vol. 29. Turnhout: Brepols, 1970.

Augustine. De civitate Dei. Edited by B. Dombart and A. Kalb in Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina vols 47–8. Turnhout: Brepols, 1955.

Augustine. De doctrina Christiana. Edited by Joseph Martin in Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina vol. 27. Turnhout: Brepols, 1962.

Augustine. De Genesi ad litteram. Edited by P. Agaesse and A. Solignac in Oeuvres de St. Augustin vols 48–9. Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1970.

Augustine. De Trinitate. Edited by W.J. Mountain and Fr Glorie in Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina vols 50–50A. Turnhout: Brepols, 1968.

Augustine. De fide rerum quae non videntur, De utilitate credendi, Enchiridion in Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina vol. 46. Turnhout: Brepols, 1969.

Augustine. Retractationes. Edited by Almut Mutzenbecher in Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina vol. 46. Turnhout: Brepols, 1984.

Bonaventure. Doctoris Seraphici S. Bonaventurae opera omnia, 10 vols. Florence: Quaracchi, 1882–1902.

t. 1, Comm. In I Libr. Sent. (1882).

t. 2, Comm. In II Libr. Sent. (1885).

t. 3, Comm. In III Libr. Sent. (1887).

t. 4, Comm. In IV Libr. Sent. (1889).

Bonaventure. Collationes in Hexaëmeron et Bonaventuriana quaedam selecta. Florence: Quaracchi, 1938.

Bonaventure. Tria opuscula Seraphici Doctoris S. Bonaventurae. Breviloquium, Itinerarium mentis in Deum, et De reductione artium ad theologiam. Florence: Quaracchi, 1938.

Henrici de Gandavo. Opera Omnia, 38 vols. Edited by G.A. Wilson et al. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1978–2008.

Olivi, Peter John. Quaestiones in secundum librum Sententiarum, 3 vols. Edited by Bernard Jansen S.J. Florence: Quaracchi, 1922–26.

Scotus, John Duns. Opera omnia. Vatican: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1950.

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 60 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Abbreviations

CCL

Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina

The works of Augustine are abbreviated as follows:

beata v.

De beata vita

civ.

De civitate Dei

conf.

Confessiones

c. mend.

Contra mendacium

div. qu.

De diversis quaestionibus octoginta tribus

doct. chr.

De doctrina christiana

ench.

Enchiridion

ep.

Epistula

Gn. litt.

De Genesi ad litteram

lib. arb.

De libero arbitrio

mag.

De magistro

mend.

De mendacio

ord.

De ordine

retr.

Retractiones

trin.

De Trinitate

sol.

Soliloquia

util. cred.

De utilitate credendi

The works of Anselm are abbreviated as follows:

CDH

Cur Deus Homo

DC

De concordia

DV

De veritate

M

Monologion

P

Proslogion

The works of Bonaventure are abbreviated as follows:

brev.

Breviloquium

C. Mag.

Christus unus omnium Magister

coll.

Collationes in Hexaemeron

ev. qu.

Quaestiones disputatae de perfectione evangelica

itin.

Itinerarium mentis in Deum

LM

Legenda major

red. art.

De reductione artium ad theologiam

s. C. qu.

Quaestiones disputatae de scientia Christi

trin. qu.

Quaestiones disputatae de mysterio trinitatis

The works of Thomas Aquinas are abbreviated as follows:

ST

Summa Theologiae

Introduction

This is a book about the history and future of the theory of knowledge by divine illumination that St. Augustine appropriated from the Platonic tradition in the fourth century, baptized for Christian purposes, and passed down to subsequent medieval thinkers, who generally regarded his account as intelligible and authoritative, at least until the end of the thirteenth century. At that time, members of the Franciscan order who had previously claimed to be the foremost champions of Augustine’s intellectual tradition pronounced illumination theory untenable.

In inquiring into the history of the illumination account, I have three main goals in mind. The first is to identify what Augustine meant when he spoke of divine illumination as the condition of possibility of all human knowledge and what it would mean to update his views on this topic in a later context. The second is to challenge the common scholarly assumption that thirteenth-century Franciscans, specifically Bonaventure, were Augustine’s chief representatives in the later Middle Ages. This argument is crucial to accomplishing the third goal of my historical inquiry, which is to identify why Franciscans after Bonaventure abandoned illumination, such that a theory of knowledge like Augustine’s is not advocated in the present.

Throughout the historical part of the study, my arguments turn on the contention that any given theory of knowledge by divine illumination derives its meaning from the theological assumptions that underlie it and must therefore be read in its proper theological context.1 By doing this in the case of Augustine, I strive to settle a longstanding scholarly controversy concerning the cognitive function the Bishop of Hippo attributes to the divine light. By employing a theological method of inquiry in my study of Anselm, moreover, I build a case for the claim that updating Augustine’s thought on illumination means adopting the theological assumptions that found his concept of knowledge, while articulating that con­cept in forms of philosophical argumentation that are relevant at a given time – forms which may differ from Augustine’s.

On the grounds that Bonaventure adopted innovative theological views, which generated an altogether novel account of knowledge, I bolster the argument that the Seraphic Doctor is not in fact the last great champion of Augustine, his appeals to Augustine’s authority notwithstanding. Instead of a sign of Bonaventure’s intellectual fidelity to Augustine, I submit that those appeals are indicative of the Franciscan’s skill at the scholastic practice of bolstering personal opinions through efforts to “find” those opinions in authoritative sources. To reinforce my argument that Bonaventure is not the Augustinian of the thirteenth century, I demonstrate that Thomas Aquinas is such a figure, inasmuch as he maintains Augustine’s theological perspective and takes that as the point of departure for his efforts to translate the concept of knowledge that follows from Augustine’s theological doctrines into the philosophical terms that were current at the time: those of Aristotle as well as many others.

Questioning yet another common scholarly opinion, I contend that when Franciscans after Bonaventure abandoned illumination, they did not do so because they had come to regard Augustine’s views on illumination as outmoded. In point of fact, late medieval Franciscans did not even have his views on illumination in mind when they prepared their critiques of the account. Rather, they reacted against Bonaventure’s version of the account, which they had come to perceive as incompatible with the novel theory of knowledge that Bonaventure himself had delineated. Although they eliminated illumination as their eminent predecessor understood it, Bonaventure’s successors did not reject the account of knowledge he had invoked illumination to illustrate. They only challenged the idea that divine intervention is the condition of possibility of knowledge as Bonaventure basically understood it, in the interest of promulgating what had become the distinctly Franciscan epistemological point of view.

In turning from this discussion to envisage the possible future of Augustine’s theory of knowledge, I have two objectives. The first is to identify the sense in which the late medieval rejection of illumination is and is not connected to the rise of quintessentially modern epistemological assumptions and the seemingly insurmountable problems they generate, including the problem of proving the rationality of faith in God and that of establishing the very possibility of knowing anything objectively at all. The second aim is to raise awareness of the Augustinian alternative to the modern epistemological outlook, which has become foreign to modern minds on account of its late medieval decline; to call attention to the fact that this pre-modern paradigm of knowledge does not generate the problems that preoccupy philosophers in the present; and to argue on those grounds that future efforts to resolve the current problems might include a recovery of Augustine’s theory of knowledge. In making that recovery, I will argue, a highly effective approach would involve following the precedent of Anselm and Aquinas by translating the bishop’s account into forms of philosophical argumentation that are intelligible and relevant in the present context.

Before delving into the discussion of the history and future of Augustine’s illumination account that I have just outlined, there are a few introductory matters I need to cover. In the first place, I must mention the main ways Augustine describes illumination, the major interpretations of his account that have been offered by late medieval and modern thinkers, and the problems that are typically associated with the various interpretations. Subsequently, I will sketch the situation in the scholarship on late medieval thought relating to the reception of Augustine’s illumination account in that period. After describing the opinions past scholars have formed about Augustine’s views on illumination and those of his late medieval readers, I will explain my own way of evaluating these issues, briefly summarizing the conclusions that result from taking this approach, which will be more fully elaborated in the following chapters.

Augustine on Divine Illumination

In his writings, Augustine suggests that the function of illumination in cognition is five-fold. Illumination serves as the source of the cognitive capacity, cognitive content, help with the process of cognition, certitude, and knowledge of God. The quotations below are organized according to these categories. Many of these passages became common citations in medieval scholastic works.

Cognitive Capacity

Truth is found “in the truth itself, the light of the mind.”2

“There is a mind capable of the intellectual light, by which we distinguish between right and wrong.”3

Cognitive Content

“If both of us see that what you say is true and that what I say is true then where I ask do we see this? I do not see it in you, nor you in me, but both of us see it in the immutable truth which is higher than our minds … the light from the Lord our God.”4

“The things which we behold with the mind … we directly perceive as present in that inner light of truth … if one sees what is true … one is being taught … by the realities themselves made manifest by the enlightening action of God from within.”5

“We contemplate the inviolable truth … in the light of the eternal types.”6

“The ideas [forms/formae, species, reasons/rationes] are certain original and principle forms of things, i.e. reasons, fixed and unchangeable … eternal and existing always in the same state, contained in the Divine Intelligence. Though they themselves neither come into being nor pass away, nevertheless everything which can come into being and pass away … is formed in accord with these ideas … it is by participation in these that whatever is exists in whatever manner it does exist. … the rational soul … can contemplate these ideas … by a certain inner and intelligible countenance, indeed an eye of its own … in the measure that [the rational soul] has clung to God … [it is] imbued in some way and illumined by Him with light, intelligible light … and discerns … those reasons … called ideas, or forms, or species.”7

Cognitive process

“The earth is visible and light is visible but the earth cannot be seen unless it is brightened by light. So, likewise for those things, which … everyone understands and acknowledges … to be most true, one must believe they cannot be understood unless they are illumined by something else as by their own sun. Therefore just as in the sun one may remark three certain things, namely that it is, that it shines, and that it illumines, so also in that most hidden God whom you wish to know there are three things, namely, that He is, that He is known, and that He makes other things to be known.”8

“He who teaches us, namely, Christ … is the Wisdom which every rational soul does indeed consult. … If the soul is sometimes mistaken, this does not come about because of any defect on the part of the truth it consulted just as it is not through any defect in the light outside us that our bodily eyes are often deceived.”9

“The nature of the intellectual mind is so formed as to see those things, which according to the disposition of the Creator are subjoined to intelligible things in the natural order, in a sort of incorporeal light of its own kind, as the eye of the flesh sees the things that lie about it in this corporeal light, of which light it is made to be receptive and to which it is adapted.”10

“You have seen many true things and you distinguished them by that light which shone upon you when you saw them; raise your eyes to that light itself and fix them upon it, if you can. … It is impossible, however, to fix your gaze upon this, so as to behold it clearly and distinctly.”11

Cognitive Certitude

“That light revealed to our interior eyes these and other things that are likewise certain.”12

Knowledge of God

“It remains for it to be converted to Him by whom it was made more and more to live by the fount of life to see light in His light (Psalm 35:10) and to become perfect, radiant with light, and in complete happiness.”13

“The Light by which the soul is illumined in order that it may see and truly understand everything … is God Himself … when it tries to behold the Light, it trembles in its weakness and finds itself unable to do so. … When it is carried off and after being withdrawn from the senses of the body is made present to this vision in a more perfect manner, it also sees above itself that Light, in whose illumination it is enabled to see all the objects that it sees and understands in itself.”14

Interpretations of Divine Illumination in Augustine’s Thought

According to the general scholarly consensus, “no other important aspect of Augustine’s philosophy is as difficult to understand and to explain as this notion that God in some way illumines the mind of man.”15 Because of the many alleged ambiguities surrounding illumination theory, some have argued that Augustine never intended to present a coherent and comprehensive account of cognition; either that, or he simply assumed that his meaning would be intelligible to his readers.16 For one or both of these reasons, some scholars have said that the bishop made no effort to compile a doctrine of knowledge in one specific work but remained content to scatter his remarks about the divine light all throughout his writings.17

Although many who hold these viewpoints proclaim it impossible and pointless to try to decipher Augustine’s meaning concerning illumination, others insist there is an account to be found in the pages of his works and strive to uncover it. The interpretations that have been formulated by scholars since the later Middle Ages – when diverse opinions concerning the nature of illumination began to emerge for what seems to be the first time – can be classified into two main categories.18

Thomism

According to the interpretation of illumination that falls within the first category, that of the thirteenth-century theologian Thomas Aquinas, the divine light simply imparts an intrinsic cognitive capacity to form ideas in the way Aristotle described.19 In other words, it is the source of the mind’s competence to form mental images of sense objects and subsequently employ those images in formulating ideas about related realities, which is to engage in abstractive reasoning.

The interpretations that fall within the second category define illumination in one way or another as an extrinsic influence, or as a force that is super-added to the cognitive capacity. In this instance, illumination does not provide an intrinsic capacity to form ideas from experience or “from below.” Rather, it bestows the ideas themselves. By some accounts, these ideas that flow from above provide the very content of thought; in others, they regulate thought processes or verify the certitude of the thoughts the mind formulates.

Ontologism

On the ontologist interpretation propounded by Renaissance figures such as Marsilio Ficino, the seventeenth-century philosopher Nicholas Malebranche, and later modern scholars like Vicenzo Gioberti, G. Ubaghs, and Johannes Hessen, the divine light immediately imparts all of the content of knowledge, whether it be about empirical reality or abstract ideas formed upon the basis of experience.20 As a result of illumination’s intellectual impact in these respects, all things are said to be seen “in God,” who gives the mind His own ideas about everything there is.

Innatism

Another interpretation of illumination, perhaps the most popular amongst contemporary scholars, holds that the light is the source of a set of innate ideas for all things from ordinary objects to abstract concepts like goodness, truth, beauty, and justice.21 Following Plato, Augustine apparently held these ideas (ultimately located in the mind of God) to be essential to human knowing, insofar as “everything which the bodily sense touches and which is called sensible is constantly changing … [and] that which does not remain stable cannot be perceived; therefore, truth in any genuine sense is not something to be expected from the bodily senses.”22

In order to eliminate the threat of skepticism that accompanies the affirmation that perceptual experience of changing reality cannot afford any true or certain knowledge, innatist interpreters argue, Augustine demonstrates as Plato does that the mind has access to eternal and unchanging intelligible truths.23 By turning away from the changing senses and into the self where these ideas for things are stored, the mind recovers or is illumined by its deep-seated ideas and thereby gains access to the genuine knowledge of created realities that it cannot actually derive from the experience of created reality itself.

Although Augustine rejects the supposedly Platonic notion that this act of illumination, which Plato described in terms of recollection, involves remembering ideas perceived in a previous life, he maintains that these ideas are in some sense constitutive of the human mind.24 In fact, they are the sign of Christ’s presence in the mind. To make use of them is to come under the influence of His continuous illumination, which saves human knowledge from skepticism.

Franciscanism

In the standard Franciscan interpretation, most famously formulated by Bonaventure, illumination is the source of certain a priori or transcendental concepts. These concepts do not afford the actual content of knowledge as in the ontologist and innatist interpretations. Rather, they regulate the process of cognition so as to ensure that the concepts the mind generates with respect to its experiences correspond to the divine ideas about reality and are therefore absolutely certain. Some of Bonaventure’s Franciscan colleagues, including William of Auvergne, Roger Bacon, and Roger Marston, went so far as to say (after the eleventh-century Arab scholar Avicenna) that the mind that performs the work of the human mind is that of God Himself.25 For his own part, Bonaventure preferred to argue that human knowing is something like a cooperative effort or shared “concursus” on the part of the human and divine minds.

Idealism

The idealist interpretation that has recently been espoused by Bruce Bubacz resembles the Franciscan one in many respects.26 For Bubacz, illumination is the source of a priori concepts, which he calls “principal ideas.” The mind gains access to these ideas when it attends to the “inner man” where the ideas are stored. In Bubacz’ view, the innate nature of the principal ideas does not undermine the empirical sources of human knowledge. On what he calls his “cartographic model,” the principal ideas only provide a blueprint or map for comprehending the “terrain” of created reality and for making sense of the objects that are encountered there. In sum, the principal ideas act as rules of judgment. In the last chapter of his work, Bubacz likens Augustinian illumination construed “cartographically” to idealist epistemologies, and thus recasts the theory in a “non-theistic” manner, which he hopes contemporary philosophers will find plausible.

Formalism

Formalism is the interpretation of illumination that was advocated by the renowned medievalist, Étienne Gilson. According to Gilson, Augustine never gave a full-fledged account of knowledge and illumination. Even so, it is possible to deduce from his writings an account of divine illumination that seems to anticipate the more systematic theory of Bonaventure and other Franciscans, in which the divine light is not only the source of the natural light of the human intellect, but also the means through which certain divine ideas are impressed on the mind. Although those ideas do not produce the content of cognition itself, nor “take the place of the intellect when it thinks the truth,”27 Gilson nonetheless affirms that the innate ideas act as the rules by which the mind validates ideas. In this way, he concludes, illumination plays a “formal” role in human cognition; it “checks” the truth of the ideas the mind forms of its own accord so as to serve as the final guarantor of their certitude.

Problems in Interpretation

Although all these interpretations of illumination assume that the divine light is the source of the natural human capacity to make sense of the world, only the reading of Thomas Aquinas limits the light to that. What human persons passively receive through illumination on his account is the ability to be active knowing agents. From this perspective, the mind is illumined in order to illumine reality as it generates its own ideas. In the “extrinsic” interpretations, by contrast, the mind is simply illumined. It assumes a passive role in its own acts of knowing, to the extent that illumination provides not only a capacity to form ideas but also the ideas themselves, which either offer the very content of thought, sustain the process of cognition, or establish the certitude of human notions.

While many scholars are prepared to recognize the genius of Thomas’ interpretation of illumination, and they often acknowledge that there is nothing intrinsically problematic about identifying illumination with source of the intellectual capacity, they virtually unanimously deny that this reading captures what Augustine meant by illumination.28 Some go so far as to say that Aquinas’ Aristotelian rendering of illumination is “contrary to the [Platonic] spirit of Augustine’s philosophy,”29 according to which God gives ideas to the mind “from above” as opposed to enabling them to be formed by the mind itself, as if “from below.”

For many readers, Platonic recollection or Augustinian illumination and Aristotelian abstraction represent mutually exclusive theories of knowledge.30 In spite of the virtues of the Aristotelian interpretation of Augustine, consequently, that interpretation is not generally believed to find support in the writings of Augustine himself.31 According to some readers, Thomas was well aware that he undermined Augustine’s real views when he formulated his own thoughts on the matter.32

The interpretations that construe illumination as some sort of extrinsic intellectual conditioning are normally said to present viable readings of Augustine’s texts on illumination, inasmuch as they emphasize the radical reliance of the human intellect on the ongoing aid of the divine ideas in what is supposed to be a characteristically Augustinian way. Unfortunately, however, these interpretations are accompanied by numerous philosophical problems. Where illumination offers all cognitive content as in the ontologist account, for instance, it appears to provide premature recourse to the thoughts or even the vision of God. In this case and in that of the innatist interpretation, illumination bypasses the indispensable empirical sources of human knowledge, promoting a dualistic perspective according to which the senses are inferior to and unnecessary for the work of the mind.

Moreover, when illumination is said to interfere with the cognitive process, as per the Franciscan interpretation, it seems to overtake the work that is technically proper to the mind. Here, human acts of knowing become a “zero-sum game”33 in which human and divine minds compete to accomplish one and the same task, which is the specifically human task of knowing. In cases where illumination serves to guarantee the truth and certitude of the mind’s ideas, it is hard to say how the mind’s certainty is anything but artificial; and if the mind’s certainty is not generated of its own accord but imposed from the outside, knowledge becomes subject to skepticism: the very end that illumination is introduced to help the intellect evade.34

With the situation in the scholarship on Augustine’s illumination account in view, it becomes fairly plain to see why questions concerning the purpose and plausibility of Augustine’s theory of knowledge have long remained so controversial and unresolved. The impasse in the interpretation of Augustine’s account is attributable to the fact that there seems to be no philosophically viable way to interpret illumination that remains faithful to Augustine’s intentions. The scholar must opt to construe illumination in a manner that undermines the mind’s integrity or to preserve that integrity at the high cost of denying that God interferes in human cognition in the ways Augustine seems to imply that He does.

Interpretations of Divine Illumination in Medieval Thought

In the late nineteenth century, there was a great flourishing of scholarship on the Middle Ages. Around this time, Pope Leo XIII issued his encyclical Aeterni Patris, which called Catholic thinkers to conduct new inquiries into scholastic thought. His summons was motivated by the desire to glean resources from the works of Aquinas for dealing with the challenges to religious faith that were posed by the predominant philosophies of the times. Around and after the time of his call, an immense body of scholarship on high medieval thought was constructed, and the academic assumptions that crystallized during the period – above all in the work of Étienne Gilson – have in many cases been taken for granted by medievalists ever since.35

For the present purposes, the most important of these assumptions have to do with the division of late-medieval thinkers into “Augustinian” or “Aristotelian” schools.36 While thirteenth-century Augustinians supposedly advocated the illumination account, Aristotelians allegedly abandoned it. Amongst medievalists, the accepted view is that members of the Franciscan order, which was founded in the early thirteenth century, were the last great proponents of the Augustinian tradition that went into decline at the end of the century, mainly, if ironically, owing to intellectual maneuvers made by the Franciscans themselves.

This view is based on two further presuppositions. The first is that Augustine never had a clearly defined theory of knowledge in mind when he referred to illumination. The second is that Franciscans were especially conservative scholars who wanted to give systematic expression to Augustine’s account for the very first time.37 Bonaventure is the Franciscan who is believed to have accomplished this most effectively; he is the one who codified the interpretation of Augustine according to which the divine light is an extrinsic influence that supervises acts of knowing in order to ensure the truth and certitude of the mind’s concepts.

When Franciscans established themselves as conservative followers of Augustine’s tradition, they supposedly set themselves up against “progressive” members of the Dominican order, which was also founded early in the thirteenth century. Thomas Aquinas was perhaps the most important scholar of that order. Together with his teacher Albert the Great, Aquinas allegedly made a daring and drastic departure from the longstanding tradition of Augustine in his efforts to accommodate the recently rediscovered works of Aristotle. At the expense of eliminating Augustinian illumination, Aquinas appropriated Aristotle’s idea that the mind maintains an independent capacity to engage in knowing by abstraction.

By invoking Augustine, most medievalists assume, Franciscans made one last attempt to give his understanding of knowledge a chance to compete with Aristotle’s.38 If Franciscans at the end of the thirteenth century rejected illumination and other traditional Augustinian arguments, it is because they finally accepted the fact that Augustine had offered no philosophy of knowledge as feasible as Aristotle’s.39 While Augustine, as Bonaventure interpreted him, posited an intellectually offensive divine interference in human knowledge, Aristotle upheld the autonomous power of the human mind, while explaining the mind’s operations at an unprecedented level of complexity and precision.

Since Aristotle’s ideas were more philosophically plausible than Augustine’s, late thirteenth-century Franciscan thinkers, above all John Duns Scotus, finally determined to abandon the tradition of Augustine, especially his account of knowledge by illumination, as Aquinas had supposedly already done. Scotus’ decision to side with Aristotle over Augustine has led many medievalists to conclude that there is a basic break within the Franciscan intellectual tradition itself.40 This break occurred as a result of a growing preference for Aristotle over Augustine in the thirteenth century.41 While the earlier Franciscan school included genuine champions of Augustine such as Bonaventure, the later school was led by the likes of Scotus, who adopted an Aristotelianism that anticipated the rise of modern philosophical ideologies.

Re-Interpreting the History of Augustine’s Theory of Knowledge

For all their differences, scholarly interpreters of illumination in the thought of Augustine and his medieval readers appear to have one thing in common: they seem to assume that the most effective way to analyze arguments concerning illumination is to turn directly to them, that is, to take medieval writings on illumination at face value, and to take these face-value readings as the basis for efforts to determine what Augustine means when he speaks of the divine light as well as to identify who upholds his views on this topic in the later Middle Ages. From my perspective, this approach to interpreting illumination fails to take into consideration the fact that medieval philosophers from Augustine to the thirteenth century were theologians first and foremost. In other words, they conceived their views on divine illumination in keeping with preconceived theological notions.

It seems reasonable to affirm that most contemporary philosophers do not work from an explicitly theological point of view. In stark contrast to Augustine and his medieval readers, philosophers today exhibit a tendency to analyze questions of ordinary knowledge under one rubric and questions of religious knowledge under another. Because they presuppose these separate categories, which did not exist for Augustine and his pre-modern interpreters, it seems unlikely that they will avoid projecting their categories on to medieval texts – that is, unless they can devise a way to interpret the texts and the theory of divine illumination discussed in them from the theological outlook that the authors of the texts took for granted.

In addition to helping determine what Augustine and others meant by illumination, a mode of inquiry that takes theological context into consideration would make it possible to identify where there is continuity and discontinuity of thought on illumination amongst Augustine and his late medieval readers. The latter commonly employed a method of arguing for their own opinions that involved “finding” those opinions in the writings of authorities who stood for a cause with which they wished to associate themselves – trustworthy tradition, in the case of Augustine, and progressive thinking, in the case of Aristotle.

Since those who invoked Augustine were usually more concerned with bolstering their views than his or those of any other authority, it is not entirely safe to assume that the scholars who appealed most often to Augustine were genuinely Augustinian scholars, that is, to identify continuity of thought on the basis of face-value readings of the relevant texts. Incidentally, the same holds true in the case of charges scholastic thinkers sometimes leveled against authorities. Such challenges were not normally directed against the authoritative source itself but against what was deemed to be a questionable contemporary interpretation of that source. When a scholar questioned an opinion attributed to Augustine or Anselm, for example, he was not likely undermining the authority of the authorities themselves but arguing against colleagues who espoused a reading of Augustine or Anselm he found problematic. Later on, I will suggest that this is precisely what Aquinas was doing when he criticized Augustine: he was criticizing the Franciscan Augustine.

Because scholastics used the names of authorities as “code names” for supporters and opponents of the views they themselves wanted to establish, the contemporary interpreter of scholastic texts must always bear in mind that the substance of scholastic argument counts more than the authorities invoked in the presentation of the argument. For this reason, it is essential to look not merely to the philosophical terms that medieval thinkers employed but also to the source of the meaning those terms and arguments were being assigned, which in the case of divine illumination is theological.

To this end, I am proposing to adopt a theological method in my inquiry into the history of Augustine’s illumination theory. Where this method is utilized, the investigation of any divine illumination theory begins with a preliminary study of the underlying doctrine of God and the corollary doctrine of creation and above all human minds as images of God. The latter doctrine determines the nature of the cognitive work the mind performs as an image, and has implications for the way the effects of the fall and redemption on the image, as well as the cognitive process involved in re-conforming to the image, are construed.

Since illumination serves to illustrate cognition – or the process of conforming to the image of God – my argument is that these preliminary theological inquiries are the key to determining what the operation of the light involves on any given account. Although undertaking such investigations might seem like a roundabout way to arrive at an interpretation of illumination, and it is admittedly exceptional in the scholarship, I have already indicated my reasons for taking this approach. In a contemporary situation where the theological mindset of Augustine and his medieval interpreters is not automatically assumed, the most direct way to discern what they meant by illumination is in fact the roundabout way through which the modern mind takes on the medieval thinker’s theological point of view.

Augustine

In the first chapter, on Augustine, I will employ the theological method of interpretation outlined above to determine the function of illumination in the bishop’s thought. In order to do this, I will conduct a focused study of his treatise De Trinitate, which will be supplemented by an excursus into De Genesi ad litteram (and occasionally, references to Confessiones). These two theological works of Augustine’s maturity, which complement one another and were composed over roughly the same period of time, are not normally consulted by interpreters of illumination, who tend to turn straight to the most famous references to illumination Augustine makes in early writings such as Soliloquia and De magistro.

In the first half of De Trinitate, Augustine outlines his doctrine of God. For this reason, my study begins there. Next, I turn to De Genesi ad litteram, where the bishop explains what it means to say that the created order and above all the human mind are made in the image of God, and to acknowledge that the image was effaced at the fall. Returning to the second half of De Trinitate, I cover Augustine’s account of the effects Christ’s redemptive work can have on those who lost God’s image at the fall and discuss as he does what the gradual process of re-conforming to that image entails. In this context, I explain the sense in which the seven famous, albeit controversial, “psychological analogies” to the Trinity, which Augustine outlines in the second half of his treatise, are designed to facilitate that process. Inasmuch as illumination illustrates cognition, which is for Augustine the process of re-conforming the mind to God, this study enables me to draw some conclusions as to what Augustine means by illumination, especially in his early works.

This theologically contextualized investigation of illumination theory will reveal that, contrary to popular opinion, Augustine conceived the light as the source of an intrinsic cognitive capacity that the mind gradually recovers as it forms a habit of operating by faith in God – that illumination is not, therefore, some form of extrinsic intellectual conditioning. As the study of De Trinitate throws these things into relief, the theologically contextualized reading of the illumination account underscores the status of De Trinitate as a pedagogical work intended to facilitate the efforts of intellectually-gifted readers to harness their whole minds for the understanding and advancement of Christian faith. In this way, the chapter corroborates recent scholarly work that highlights the pastoral purpose of the text and thereby clears it of some serious accusations that have been leveled against it, accusations which only carry weight when that purpose is overlooked.

Anselm

The second chapter, on Anselm, represents a first attempt to make a statement about what it means to update Augustine’s views on knowledge and illumination. On the grounds that Anselm upheld Augustine’s theological viewpoint, I will bypass some of the preliminary theological inquiries and move straight into a study of the way Anselm envisages the acts of imaging God – or knowing – and re-conforming to His image.

The argument of this chapter turns on the contention that Anselm’s Monologion and Proslogion fulfill much the same pedagogical purpose as the two halves of Augustine’s De Trinitate – as Anselm himself intimates. In the first text, Anselm delineates his obviously Augustinian doctrine of the Trinity and creation in the image of God. In the second, he presents his notorious argument for the existence of God. Far from the sort of a priori proof for God that many modern readers have imagined it to be, I contend that this argument is a “formula” for conforming to the image of God – for becoming “living proof” for His existence – not unlike the psychological analogies Augustine presents in the second half of his treatise on the Trinity.

Anselm claims to have received this conceptual tool for conforming to God in a moment of illumination. Furthermore, he claims to present it in the interest of helping those seeking to undergo an increase in illumination, which is simply to undergo the renewal of the image of God. Although Anselm offers his resource in a form of argument that differs significantly from Augustine’s, for the sake of relevance in his eleventh-century intellectual context, he seems to have the same theologically-motivated goal as Augustine in mind, which is to help his readers learn to see all reality in light of faith in God, as if by second nature. By translating Augustine’s message into what were then more helpful terms, I conclude that Anselm updates Augustine’s pastoral project.

Divine Illumination in Transition

The years intervening between the death of Anselm in 1109 and 1257, when Bonaventure became Minister General of the Franciscan order, were years of tremendous transition in the West. The first step toward showing that Bonaventure developed innovative views on knowledge and illumination involves a discussion of the changes that transpired during this period which made it possible for him to re-define knowledge and illumination, even on the authority of Augustine. In early sections of the chapter, I describe some of the most important intellectual phenomena that occurred during this time, including the founding of the universities, the development of scholastic method, and the translation movement which introduced the writings of Arab and Greek philosophers, espe­cially Avicenna and Aristotle, to Latin thinkers. In this context, I briefly outline Avicenna’s account of knowledge, which exerted a strong influence on early Franciscan thought.

Later in the chapter, I cover some of the key changes that took place in society at this time, explaining how the Franciscan and Dominican orders were founded in response to some of the new religious needs. From this point, I proceed to discuss how the new orders of mendicant friars became involved in the life of the young University of Paris. In demonstrating how the Franciscans in particular went about the task of establishing their own intellectual tradition in the academic context, I note that they adopted the new theology of Richard of St. Victor. This theology lent itself to the appropriation of an Avicennian philosophical outlook, which Franciscans articulated in the terms of Augustine for the sake of associating themselves with his longstanding tradition. The mature expression of the theological and philosophical views that early Franciscan scholars developed can be found in the writings of Bonaventure.

Bonaventure

In chapter four, I resume the use of the full-fledged theological method of interpretation I employed in investigating Augustine’s thought on illumination. I start by explaining the description of God’s Triune nature which Bonaventure derives from the work of the twelfth-century mystic, Richard of St. Victor, following the example set by his predecessors in the first generation of Franciscan scholars. From that account, I demonstrate that Bonaventure deduces a novel theory about the natural order and the human being as creations in God’s image.

In order to give philosophical articulation to the innovative philosophical views that follow from his theological perspective, Bonaventure turns to Avicenna, not explicitly, but implicitly, through his efforts to codify and elaborate the metaphysics and theory of knowledge that had been formulated by his Franciscan forebears. In Bonaventure’s theory of knowledge, the re-interpretation of Anselm’s argument along Avicennian lines as an a priori argument for God’s existence – the first of its kind in the West – had an instrumental role to play in giving an account of St. Francis’ intimate cognitive connection with God.

In keeping with the new and distinctly Franciscan understanding of what it means to reflect God’s image or to know, I show that Bonaventure advances an unprecedented account of conformity to God in his landmark treatise, the Itinerarium mentis in Deum, a work that is typically thought to be the last and best medieval expression of the ascent to the knowledge of God which Augustine outlined in works like De Trinitate. There and elsewhere, Bonaventure depicts illumination as an extrinsic divine aid that regulates human thought processes in order to ensure that knowledge as he defines it is readily attainable for those who express love for God in a distinctly Franciscan way.

By expressing such views in the language of Augustine and Anselm, Bonaventure lends authoritative support to his Franciscan ideals. Although his invocation of Augustine and Anselm has led the majority of scholars to conclude that the Franciscan General is the last great medieval champion of the Augustinian tradition, my efforts to identify the connection between Bonaventure’s theological assumptions and philosophical perspectives confirm that he departs from the longstanding Augustinian tradition on the authority of Augustine himself.

Aquinas

The purpose of the fifth chapter, on Aquinas, is to throw the non-Augustinian character of Bonaventure’s thought on illumination into fuller relief by arguing that it is Aquinas rather than Bonaventure who works in continuity with Augustine in the thirteenth century. While advancing this argument, incidentally, I will gesture once again toward what is involved in updating Augustine’s views on knowledge and illumination in a new context. My argument for Aquinas’ Augustinianism runs counter to the majority view, according to which Thomas abandoned traditional Augustinian views on knowledge, including illumination and an a priori proof for God’s existence, in favor of the Aristotelian theory of knowledge by abstraction and a posteriori proofs.

That argument is based on the common knowledge that Aquinas, like Anselm, upheld Augustine’s essential theological positions, even though he rendered them more precise in many respects. On the uncontested grounds that Aquinas is a theological Augustinian, I will bypass some of the preliminary theological inquiries as I did in the chapter on Anselm and turn directly to an investigation of the way Aquinas conceives the nature of knowing or imaging God in his Summa Theologiae.

That work, I contend, falls within a genre of pedagogical works, together with Augustine’s De Trinitate and Anselm’s Monologion and Proslogion, which are designed to carry the reader all the way through the process of conforming to the image of God. Following the example of his Augustinian forebears, Aquinas seeks to facilitate this process by providing contextually relevant conceptual resources for engaging in it, namely, his famous “five ways” of demonstrating God’s existence. Although Aquinas admittedly rejects the Franciscan interpretation of Augustine’s ideas about knowledge and illumination in his Summa, I show that he continues to advocate genuinely Augustinian notions about cognition even while advancing them in a new intellectual situation through the invocation of authorities such as Aristotle.

Divine Illumination in Decline

The purpose of the sixth chapter is to explain why late thirteenth-century Franciscans, above all John Duns Scotus, finally abandoned the account of knowledge by illumination. My study begins with a brief treatment of Peter John Olivi, a controversial Franciscan figure who came under the influence of Bonaventure’s teachings during his studies in Paris, and who was the first to call attention to inconsistencies in the interpretation of illumination as an extrinsic or supervisory influence that his Franciscan master had espoused. Although Bonaventure had welcomed the interference of the divine in human knowing, taking it as a sign of the mind’s intimate relationship with God, successors such as Olivi regarded that intervention as intellectually offensive and philosophically problematic.

In the wake of Olivi’s critique, Henry of Ghent, a member of the clergy and a great Franciscan sympathizer, recast the role of illumination in the hope of enabling the account as Bonaventure more or less understood it to evade the problems Olivi had justly associated with it. John Duns Scotus rejected all forms of illumination theory derived from Bonaventure once and for all when he pronounced Henry’s attempts to argue for illumination irreparably flawed. Although Scotus and many of his Franciscan contemporaries abandoned illumination, I will note that the version of the account they rejected was not Augustine’s but Bonaventure’s, or the reduced version of Bonaventure’s theory that was formulated by Henry of Ghent. Contrary to common opinion, consequently, Augustine’s account was never pronounced implausible; it was simply obscured.

Though late thirteenth-century Franciscans ceased to invoke illumination, I contend that they continued to proffer the Franciscan definition of knowledge that had been essential to their intellectual tradition from the start. By eradicating what came to be regarded as a philosophical inconsistency in Bonaventure’s definition of knowledge, they only carried his account to its logical conclusion, positioning it to prevail against competing accounts, above all, that of Aquinas.

Toward the end of this chapter, I will highlight how efforts to interpret the philosophical views of key medieval thinkers like Augustine, Anselm, Bonaventure, and Aquinas in their proper theological context tends to reconfigure the picture of the late medieval intellectual landscape that is generally portrayed in the scholarly literature. In fact, those efforts reinforce the reverse of many common opinions about the character of late medieval thought. They confirm, for example, that illumination was not some kind of extrinsic and thus implausible intellectual influence for Augustine, but the source of an intrinsic cognitive capacity that is gradually recovered as the mind regains the ability to work for its originally intended purpose, namely, for the glory of God; that Aquinas rather than Bonaventure upheld a genuinely Augustinian outlook on knowledge; that there is not so great a break between the schools of Bonaventure and Scotus as is normally supposed; in summary, that the standard divisions between “Augustinian” and “Aristotelian” philosophers of the Middle Ages are not entirely tenable and might plausibly be replaced with theological categories.

The introduction of theological categories would call for a distinc­tion between Augustinian theologians who put Aristotle and many other thinkers to use in advancing an apologetic agenda, and Victorine theologians who put Avicenna into the service of articulating a certain spirituality. In other words, it would lead contemporary scholars to draw the lines of medieval schools of thought between Dominicans and Franciscans rather than Aristotelians and Augustinians, and thus to study late medieval intellectual phenomena from the perspective of late medieval thinkers, that is, from a perspective that is theological.

In closing this chapter I will note that, in recent years, numerous scholars have called attention to the fact that many of the philosophical views that late medieval Franciscans such as John Duns Scotus promoted bear striking resemblance to those that came to dominate in the modern period, many of which have had problematic repercussions. In light of that, I will evaluate the extent to which a connection between late medieval Franciscan and modern thought can and cannot be made. Here, my main line of argument will be that Franciscan ideals, especially epistemological ones, served and still serve a highly beneficial purpose within the context of Franciscan faith. If they came to cause problems, this can only be because the ideals were removed from their original context and used for purposes that the Franciscans themselves never envisaged or intended.

Divine Illumination: the Future of Augustine’s Theory of Knowledge

Although I resist holding Franciscan thinkers accountable for the later de-contextualization of their views, I will nevertheless acknowledge in the last chapter of this book that the de-contextualization of the Franciscan philosophy of knowledge did apparently occur. Furthermore, I will briefly describe the epistemological consequences of this intellectual phenomenon, above all, the genesis of the problems of proving the rationality of faith and the very possibility of knowledge that plague philosophers today.

As I will have hinted earlier, knowledge as Augustine and his followers understood it does not create such insurmountable problems. In light of that, I will suggest in concluding that contemporary philosophers may wish to go about addressing these problems in a new way in future. This way would not involve relying on or reacting against the epistemological presuppositions that have been handed down as a result of certain late medieval epistemological developments, but recovering Augustine’s account of knowledge by illumination after the manner of Anselm and Aquinas, namely, by translating it into philosophical terms that are intelligible and relevant today.

Notes

1 David Burrell argues that it is important to trace philosophical arguments and controversies to their theological roots, “since theologians of particular doctrinal persuasions will often be drawn to those philosophical approaches which they find consonant with their beliefs.” See “Aquinas and Scotus: Contrary Patterns for Philosophical Theology,” in Faith and Freedom: An Interfaith Perspective (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 91. Similarly, Russell L. Friedman suggests that the doctrine of the Trinity is linked to the philosophy of knowledge in the work of many late medieval scholars; see Medieval Trinitarian Theology from Aquinas to Ockham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). I am grateful to Nicholas Adams for urging me to develop an approach to historical-philosophical inquiry that would make it possible to identify conceptual continuity and discontinuity amongst thinkers, even when they employ different and similar forms of argumentation, respectively. His guidance helped me see the need for a theologically contextualized reading of medieval arguments concerning divine illumination.

2De Trinitate 14.7.9 (CCL 50A, 434), trans. Stephen McKenna in The Fathers of the Church, vol. 45 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1963): sed quas veras esse etiam ipse invenit sive apud se sive ipsa mentis duce veritate.

3De civitate Dei 12.3 (CCL 48, 358), trans. Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin, 2003): De vitiis quippe nunc loquimur eius naturae, cui mens inest capax intellegibilis lucis, qua discernitur justum ab injusto.

4Confessiones 12.25.35 (CCL 27, 235), trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991): Si ambo videmus verum esse quod dicis et ambo videmus verum esse quod dico, ubi, quaeso, id videmus? Nec ego utique in te nec tu in me, sed ambo ipsa quae supra mentes nostras est incommutabili veritate. Cum ergo de ipsa domini dei nostri luce non contendamus.

5De magistro 12.40 (CCL 29, 197–8), trans. Robert P. Russell O.S.A. in The Fathers of the Church, vol. 59 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1968): Cum vero de his agitur, quae mente conspicimus, id est intellectu atque ratione, ea quidem loquimur, quae praesentia contuemur in illa interiore luce veritatis, qua ipse … Ergo ne hunc quidem doceo vera dicens vera intuentem; docetur enim non verbis meis, sed ipsis rebus deo intus pandente manifestis.

6trin. 9.6.9 (CCL 50, 301), trans. McKenna: sed intuemur inviolabilem veritatem ex qua perfecte quantum possumus definiamus non quails sit uniuscuiusque hominis mens, sed quails esse sempiternis rationibus debeat.

7De diversis quaestionibus octoginta tribus 46 (CCL 44A, 70–3), trans. David L. Mosher in The Fathers of the Church, vol. 70 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1982): ideas … vel formas vel species dicere, ut verbum e verbo transferre videamur … Sunt namque ideae principales quaedam formae vel rationes rerum stabiles atque incommutabiles, quae ipsae formatae non sunt ac per hoc aeternae ac semper eodem modo sese habentes, quae divina intellegentia continentur. Et cum ipsae neque oriantur neque intereant, secundum eas tamen formari dicitur omne quod oriri et interire potest et omne quod oritur et interit. Anima vero negatur eas intueri posse nisi rationalis, ea sui parte qua excellit, id est ipsa mente atque ratione, quasi quadam facie vel oculo suo interiore atque intellegibili … Sed anima rationalis inter eas res, quae sunt a deo conditae omnia superat et deo proxima est, quando pura est; eique in quantum caritate cohaeserit, in tantum ab eo lumine illo intellegibili perfusa quodammodo et inlustrata cernit non per corporeos oculos, sed per ipsius sui principale quo excellit, id est per intellegentiam suam, istas rationes, quarum visione fit beatissima. Quas rationes, ut dictum est, sive ideas sive formas sive species sive rationes licet vocare, et mulits conceditur appelare quod libet, sed paucissimis videre quod verum est.

8Soliloquia 1.8.15, trans. Thomas F. Gilligan in The Fathers of the Church, vol. 5 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2008): Nam et terra visibilis et lux; sed terra nisi luce inlustrata videri non potest. Ergo et illa, quae in disciplinis traduntur, quae quisquis intellegit verissima esse nulla dubitatione concedit, credendum est ea non posse intellegi, nisi ab alio quasi suo sole inlustrentur.

9mag. 11.38 (CCL 29, 196), trans. Russell: