The Church Father Who Taught Wittgenstein About Language

What do we make of Augustine? The theologian Bernard McGinn once quipped: "If all philosophy is a footnote to Plato, all theology is a footnote to Augustine." This is a fine place to begin. After all, the doctrine of Original Sin was indelibly shaped by the great saint who struggled mightily with his intense sexual desire and sought to explain it in part through our first parent's sin, passed down to us all. And of course, the western church has called Augustine the Doctor of Grace, because he never tired of reminding his parishioners and readers of our helplessness without the work of the gift of grace in our lives. 

Although McGinn captures something about Augustine's theological influence, one downside to his statement is the suggestion that Augustine only influenced what we now call a separate discipline—theology. But Augustine thought of himself as more of a philosopher—a lover of wisdom—and an orator, rather than a theologian. In his own time, Augustine’s greatest contribution to the ongoing philosophical conversations was on the power of the will. 

An overly simple reading of Plato suggests that people commit evil or bad actions simply because they do not know what is good. But Augustine's exploration of his own psyche in the Confessions displays a much more complex inner life. As the young Augustine trapses through the neighboring field of pears with his friends, he knows full well that it is wrong to steal the pear, but he relishes the feeling of his own ruin in committing the evil act. Thus while Plato is right that sometimes we commit evil because we do not know any better, Augustine recognizes that we often commit evil not because of a failure of knowledge but a failure of will. This failure of will in the face of strong temptation is relatable to us all. We often know the right thing to do, yet we just cannot overcome our will.

Not only does Augustine offer compelling insights about human nature and our warped desires, he was also one of the first to contemplate what later philosophers will call semiotics. Ludwig Wittgenstein called Confessions "the most serious book ever written" and wrestled with Augustine's exploration of how he learned to speak in Book 1 of the Confessions. While Wittgenstein ultimately decides that Augustine has too simple a view of how language works, he needed Augustine to get the conversation started. Wittgenstein advances the notion that we put names to objects as an "ostensive view of language," all to develop his view of "language as use." Augustine was a great philosopher indeed to have first tried to capture what it is like to acquire language. But perhaps Wittgenstein should have read further in Augustine. Later in Confessions, he readily admits of the shortcomings of his more simplistic explanation of how humans learn language. As Rowan Williams wisely noted, "Augustine is most philosophically interesting when he is least trying to be philosophical."

And yet, Augustine continues to be a magnet for trouble and blame. If he's so famous, he must have said the thing we don't like. Nadia Bolz-Weber is eminently quotable in this regard, so long as one is not concerned with the truth. She writes: "Augustine was so consumed with shame of not being able to control his erections that he spent a decade writing a theological treatise… when it came to his ideas around sex and gender, he basically took a dump and the church encased it in amber. But instead of realizing this was one guy's personal shit, we assumed it was straight from God." From the context of this statement in her work, Bolz-Weber is referring to the writing of Confessions. That said, one cannot be sure. But Confessions has a lot more to say about human behavior and struggle than simply expressing frustration about the onset of puberty. To take one example, if you cannot read book 4 of the Confessions without being touched, or (in my case) without weeping alongside Augustine when he describes the pain of losing his best friend, you have clearly lost the plot of one of the great works of the Western world. Yes, sex is a critical part of Augustine's story, but to suggest that this is the entire impetus for the work tells more about the reader’s preoccupations than Augustine’s. 

The Augustinian scholar Henri Marrou reflected on the great master’s significance for the Western tradition: “It is hard to imagine how much the example and teaching of St. Augustine have moulded the Latin tradition: with more justice even than Virgil himself he deserves the title ‘Father of the West.’” These are fighting words. In the schools of ancient Rome, pride of place was afforded to Virgil's Aeneid. Students would memorize, interpret, and imitate Virgil for much of their education. When Marrou postulates that Augustine has had a greater impact on the West than the great Virgil himself, he effectively declares that the student—and Augustine was a great student of Virgil—has become the master. Augustine superseded Virgil's influence. 

But there is more. Marrou’s pronouncement calls us to reconsider what actually constitutes the West. When most of us hear of the West, Western theology or Western civilization, we primarily think of Rome, Greece, Europe, and maybe America. While I certainly think Marrou is correct about the impact of Augustine, the fact of the matter is that if Augustine is as significant as he claims for the Western tradition, accepting Augustine’s influence forces us also to expand our notion of what the West is. Augustine was the son of a Berber/Punic mother, a woman native to Africa. We cannot know for sure, but it seems probable that he was at least bilingual in Punic and Latin. He was also the son of a Roman father called Patricius. But Augustine lived the majority of his life in Africa, where he also served in ministry for nearly forty years. In other words, one of the most significant—if not the most significant (as Marrou claims)—voices in the Western tradition is African. 

In his biography of Augustine, a friend and former mentee, Possidius, wrote: “No one can read what he wrote about divinity without profit. But, I think that those were able to profit still more who could hear him speak in church and see him with their own eyes… Truly, he was indeed one of those of whom it is written, ‘speak this way and act the same way.’” What Possidius means is that Augustine's actions and the example of his life showed more about his character than even his justly famous words. Augustine’s words spoke volumes, but his actions did as well.

Augustine lived what he preached. And so, whatever we may make of his ideas, those who knew him best saw that his character had been indelibly shaped by the humble Word made flesh, whom Augustine sought to imitate all of his life.