Brian Hamilton

Seeking Wisdom

Despite Ambroses’s great knowledge of the classics and pagan philosophers, says Peter Brown, he used them only (if also frequently) to make a point about the Scriptures. Read alone, the philosophers were dangerous; philosophy itself, no matter how subtle or well developed, was a source of error for the Christian. In this respect Brown places Ambrose within the Christian ‘old guard,’ from which Augustine departs in seeing Christianity and philosophical wisdom as coinciding. Augustine’s conversion to philosophy anticipates and shapes his conversion to Christianity, rather than being interrupted by it. (Indeed, one looks in vain for any decisive sign of his recent conversion among the philosophical treatises composed at Cassiciacum.) Rather than understanding Christianity to be a ready-made set of answers to all his philosophical questions, Augustine sees in Christianity the promise of endless intellectual development which is yet capable of actually attaining to the truth, a lamp that might possibly illumine every last niche of human understanding. Among the very few biblical quotations he uses in his early works, one frequently finds this one: “Seek and you shall find.”

2 January 2008 |
tags: Augustine, Philosophy