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St. Augustine
The Second Revelation —Part I
by Albert Camus
French thinker Albert Camus (1913-1960) was a major critic of the excesses of modernity in the post World War II era. This excerpt is taken from his book, Christian Metaphysics and Neoplantonism, which has been translated into English by Professor Ronald D. Srigley. Professor Srigley's newest book is Albert Camus' Critique of Modernity (2011). This excerpt appears with the permission of the publisher, the University of Missouri Press.
"[Sartre is] not interesting. He's not to be compared with Albert Camus; HE was a thinker!" —Eric Voegelin "In Search of the Ground" CW Vol 11
The Psychological Experience of St. Augustine
Before demonstrating how the evolution that we have attempted to retrace finds in Augustinianism one of its most admirable formulas, it is necessary for us to consider the Neoplatonism of Saint Augustine.
Let us first state the problem: the new Platonic philosophy has exercised its influence over the great doctor. He cites several texts of the Enneads.1 We can compare a certain number of Augustinian texts and Plotinian thoughts.
The most suggestive in this regard concern the nature of God. On God's ineffability: Sermon 117, 5; De civitate Dei IX, 16 with Enneads VI, 9, 5; De Trinitate, VIII, 2 and XV, 5 with Enneads V, 3, 13; on his eternity: Confessions XI, 13 and Enneads III, 6, 7; on his ubiquity: Sermon 277, 13 and 18 with Enneads VI, 4, 2; on his spirituality: De civitate Dei XIII, 5 and Enneads VI, 8, 11.
From this influence some have been able to draw excessive conclusions.2 However, Saint Augustine's testimony is sufficiently explicit. And the celebrated passage of the Confessions on the "books of the Platonists" gives us a very clear account of the question.
Despite its length, permit us to quote the passage in full. Everything that follows will be instructive for us:
I read . . . that at the Beginning of time the Word already was; and God had the Word abiding with him, and the Word was God . . . [and that] the Word, who is himself God, is the true Light, which enlightens every soul born into the world . . . . But I did not read in them that the Word was made flesh and came to dwell among us . . . [and] they do not say that he dispossessed himself, and took on the nature of a slave, fashioned in the likeness of men, and presenting himself to us in human form; and then he lowered his own dignity, accepted an obedience that brought him to death.3
Opposing Incarnation to Contemplation, Saint Augustine had clarified for the first time the oppositions and similarities between these two forms of thought.
But at least how far does this influence reach? What is striking in Augustinian thought is that it gathers, in a few years,4 the hesitations and reversals of Christian thought. Highly passionate, sensual, the fear of not being able to maintain continence, all these delay Augustine's conversion for a long time.5 But he also has a taste for rational truths. It is this concern for reason that leads him to adhere to Manichaeanism, and even to Carthage, in the midst of an exuberant and voluptuous life.6
