Literary festivals introduce us to new writing. They rarely celebrate the old, for nothing is older than an old book. We instinctively assume that our fresh insights will have superseded such wisdom that any old tome might impart.
We judge books partly by their content but even more by their voice. Writers of another age speak oddly. They stop to reflect on what we slip lightly past, acquiesce in what we find outrageous.
Of early Christian writers St Augustine has suffered most from superficial reading. He is articulate and argumentative. But he has a mordant view of human nature and displays attitudes to religious coercion and to women that most people now would protest against.
But just as you have come to this conclusion Augustine surprises you with passages whose voice is sharp and contemporary. A Richard Dawkins among the flock, we might think.
In his Confessions (book 5), Augustine reflects on science and faith. He explains why he joined the Manichees for some nine years. He was attracted to their view of evil as a force in the world for which neither God nor human beings are responsible. To Augustine, a sensitive young man, this theory gave breathing space. Buttressing it was an elaborate astrology that related human destiny to celestial phenomena.
Augustine’s wide reading in science led him to question the Manichees’ account of the world, and so to be sceptical of their religious theories. He set their account against the consensus that he found in the works of mathematics and astronomy that he had read. In contrast with Manichaean theories, scientists offered an explanation of celestial phenomena. He explains:
I saw that their calculations were borne out by mathematics, the regular succession of the seasons and the visible evidence of the stars. I compared these with the teaching of Manes. In his writings I could find no explanations of the solstices and the equinoxes or of eclipses or of similar phenomena such as I had read about in books written by secular scientists.
Augustine concluded that if Manichaean theories of the natural world displayed such ignorance and pretension, their religious views must also be suspect. He went on to reflect more broadly on the relationship between scientific knowledge and Christian faith.
Characteristically, he does not consider it abstractly, but from the perspective of how confusion between the two might affect the Christian believer.
Whenever I hear a brother Christian talk in such a way as to show that he is ignorant of these scientific matters, and confuses one thing with another, I listen with patience to his theories and think it is no harm to him that he does not know the true facts about material things ... The danger lies in thinking that such knowledge is part and parcel of what he must believe to save his soul and in presuming to make obstinate declarations about things of which he knows nothing.
Augustine's intellectual style is characteristically modern in its hard-headedness. When he compares different explanations of natural phenomena he reads the best science available to him. He then asks which of the alternative explanations is best supported by mathematical calculation and best predicts the phenomena it claims to explain.
When he reflects on faith — 'what we must believe to save our soul' — he carefully distinguishes it from scientific knowledge. Christians can afford to be mistaken about scientific explanations. Such error is without cost to their faith. But they run the risk of confusing their scientific theories with faith, and so of incorporating badly understood science into the things that must be believed. This distorts Christian faith and imposes unjustified burdens of belief on other Christians.
Augustine's argument is sharp and clear. His distinction between the businesses of science and faith is particularly unfussy and confident. It may even be ahead of our contemporary game. Augustine certainly cuts through the often confused debate about the origins of the world. His argument suggests that it would be dangerous to support on religious grounds theories of creationism and intelligent design. This would be to confuse the areas of faith and science to the detriment of faith.
But Augustine remains a man of his own century and is the more interesting for doing so. After carefully summarising the conclusions of the non-Christian scientists, he gives them a serve: they might have been right, but they were motivated by pride. In the 21st century we certainly wouldn't bag people we disagree with, would we?
LINK:
Confessions of St Augustine (electronic version)
Andrew Hamilton is the consulting editor for Eureka Street. He also teaches at the United Faculty of Theology in Melbourne.