On Christian Asceticism Spiritual Exercises in Saint Augustine's

Studies in Spirituality 25, 21-43. doi: 10.2143/SIS.25.0.3112887 © 2015 by Studies in Spirituality. All rights reserved. JOSEPH GRABAU ON CHRISTIAN ASCETICISM Spiritual Exercises in Saint Augustine’s Confessions* SUMMARY – The present article seeks to address an important point of contact between early Christian ascetic practice and the heritage of Platonism through the end of the fourth century AD. In short, I find marked similarities between Pierre Hadot’s reading of Plato’s Phaedo, for example, and that of St Augustine’s personal prayer book, the Confes- sions. After outlining essential characteristics of Hadot’s take on spiritual exercises and Augustinian anthropology, I subject the text of the Confes- sions to critical examination in order to determine whether an emphasis on ‘spiritual exercises’ is indeed present. I argue that similar spiritual practices may be clearly discerned. First, I discuss the distinct ‘Christian’ and Augustinian character of ‘spiritual exercises’ which incorporate bibli- cal typology of Adam and Christ as paradigmatic for the spiritual life. Next, in terms of concrete practices, I then discern from the first four books of the Confessions a series of exercises through which such a path of spiritual progress (i.e. from ‘Adam’ to ‘Christ’) may occur. Of note, I consider the dialectic praxis of 1) contemplative reading, 2) prayer- writing and 3) prayer itself, or ‘pure’ prayer – distinct from Augustine’s written reflections; 4) the role of lectio divina or meditation on Scrip- ture; and, finally, 5) meditation on death. In addition to developing these individual practices, it is the traditional Augustinian anthropology (rooted as it is in a theology of divine grace) that reveals the essential ‘Christian’ contribution of Augustine’s. Pierre Hadot, the late French philosopher and historian of late antiquity, understood ancient philosophy not simply as an academic discipline but rather as a disciplined way of life.1 As such, philosophy for Hadot consists of specific * With a number of relatively minor revisions, this paper represents the third and final chapter of my 2009 master’s thesis directed by Prof. dr. Matthias Vorwerk in The Catholic University of America’s School of Philosophy, Washington, D.C. 1 Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a way of life: Spiritual exercises from Socrates to Foucault (trans. Michael Chase), Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1995, parts of which were previously published in 1993, now available in the updated edition, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique (rev. ed.), 98401.indb 21 1/12/15 15:01 22 JOSEPH GRABAU practices, which are what the author called ‘spiritual exercises’. Plato’s Phaedo, the Letter to Menoeceus, and the short treatise ‘On Attention’ – each an example of the practical meditations characteristic of Hellenistic philosophy – together serve to demonstrate the value of Hadot’s praxis-hermeneutic. I would like to extend this interpretation the Frenchman had applied to those texts now to consider also the Confessions of Saint Augustine (written 397-403AD). With a view to these ‘spiritual exercises’, I note in particular the dialectic at work between Augustine and others in the late Roman Empire, as well as Augustine’s own indebtedness to the previous philosophical and theological tradition.2 In so doing, we may gain a better understanding of the phenomenon of Christian ‘asceticism’ at its origin. In the fourth chapter of Philosophy as a Way of Life, Hadot explored how these themes of ‘philosophy as a way of life’ and the essential practice of ‘spiritual exercises’ in fact continue beyond the Hellenistic period in the history of philosophy, even to appear in Christian writings.3 Yet Hadot carefully distin- guished the spiritual exercises of ancient Greek philosophy from those of Saint Ignatius, the 16th century founder of the Jesuit order. Augustine stood between these two strands in the history of Western spirituality and philosophy, and one may find continuity between Greek and Christian thought, which Hadot Paris: Michel, 2002. On the point of view of the author in his treatment of philosophy, see Pierre Hadot, ‘There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers’ (trans. J. Aaron Simmons), in: Journal of Speculative Philosophy 19 (2005), 229-237. For critical reception, see also Alven M. Neiman, ‘Self examination, philosophical education and spirituality’, in: Journal of Philosophy of Education 34 (2000), 571-590; Thomas Flynn, ‘Philosophy as a way of life: Foucault and Hadot’, in: Philosophy & Social Criticism 31 (2005), 609-622; François Renaud, ‘Philosophy as a way of life: Spiritual exercises from Socrates to Foucault, and: Qe’est-ce que la philosophie antique? [reviews]’, in: Journal of the History of Philosophy 35 (1997) no.4, 637-640; Pierre Hadot, What is ancient philosophy? (trans. Michael Chase), Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002; and Alexander Nehamas, The art of living: Socratic reflections from Plato to Foucault, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. On the late antique situation of Augustine’s own reflection and use of the spiritual exercises in rhetorical training, see also Paul Kolbet, Augustine and the cure of souls: Revis- ing a classical ideal, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009. 2 See Plato’s Phaedo, trans. G.M.A. Grube in Plato: Complete works (ed. John M. Cooper), Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997; Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus in: Hellenistic philosophy: Introduc- tory readings (2nd ed.; trans. Brad Inwood & L.P. Gerson), Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997, 28-31; and the Discourses of Epictetus in Stoic and Epicurean philosophers: The complete extant writings of Epicurus, Epictetus, Lucretius and Marcus Aurelius (ed. Whitney J. Oates), New York: Random House, 1940. For secondary literature on Hellenistic philosophy beyond the work of Hadot, the place to begin is Martha C. Nussbaum, The therapy of desire: Theory and practice in Hellenistic ethics, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. 3 Pierre Hadot, ‘Ancient spiritual exercises and “Christian philosophy”’, in: Philosophy as a way of life, Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1995, 126-144. 98401.indb 22 1/12/15 15:01 ON CHRISTIAN ASCETICISM 23 demonstrated by citing Clement of Alexandria and the subsequent synthesis of Stoic, Neoplatonic and Judeo-Christian elements in the third, fourth and fifth centuries of the common era. St. Augustine himself received notice in Hadot’s work primarily for the former’s affinity to the Platonic separation of the soul from the body, a feature shared by the bishop of Hippo with early Christian monasticism as well as the ascetic theology of the Cappadocians. Yet rather than dwelling upon a single author, Hadot’s focus in the present context was to sketch how spiritual exercises occur in Christian writings and how these compare to the earlier tradition. For its value both in describing the author’s own conversion and as a pro- treptic designed with intent to bring about the conversion of others, I will focus specifically on Augustine’s Confessions. Not only the general concept but also even individual spiritual exercises, such as attention to the present moment and meditation on death (analyzed elsewhere in the Platonic and Stoic sources above), reappear in Augustine’s thinking. Accordingly, I will provide a brief overview of how Hadot deals with Augustine, and, with this orientation in place, I will apply the model of spiritual exercises given in Hadot’s Philosophy as a Way of Life to a handful of passages in the Confessions, presuming that my reader has some basic knowledge of ancient philosophy. In the end, I hope not only to demonstrate the value of Hadot’s understanding of spiritual exercises for reading the Confessions, but also how this concept can be extended to include distinctly Christian spiritual exercises, to be found particularly in the ascetic theology of the fourth (and fifth) century. In what is arguably just as true of the Cappadocians, Augustine of Hippo writes both as a philosopher and as a Christian, and my proposal is to launch an attempt to reconcile the two modes of authorship.4 In that respect, one must reckon with a central debate in Augustine’s own lifetime, namely the Pelagian controversy and its insistence on the integrity of human action. In opposition to claims of ‘original sin’ from the side of Augustine, Pelagianism would defend the nobility of human nature in line, so it seems, with the legacy of Greek philosophy. That Augustine would adopt any form of spiritual exercise or technique of philosophical and spiritual ascent must, in the end, also come to terms with an apparent discontinuity between the human ‘effort’ entailed in the exercises, and the unearned merit of free 4 On this issue, Peter Brown, ‘Introduction’, in: Augustine, Confessions. 2nd ed. (trans. F.J. Sheed; ed. Michael P. Foley), Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006, xxv writes, ‘Augustine remained to the end of his life an unreconstructed ancient philosopher. He believed that human beings should take their lives in hand, and that no training of the self could hope to succeed if it were not grounded in reality – that is, in as true a view as was possible for humans to attain of the nature of God, of the universe, and of the human person’. 98401.indb 23 1/12/15 15:01 24 JOSEPH GRABAU divine grace. Nevertheless, because Pelagianism became an open issue for Augustine only well after the publication of his Confessions, the criticism that ‘spiritual exercises’ are fundamentally Pelagian is probably insensitive histori- cally, despite the apparent attractiveness of such an interest. Beyond mention of the problem in its general outline, I must unfortunately limit myself to raising possible avenues of response – mainly to acknowledge the central role of grace (or gratia) in the thought of Augustine, most of all in the contexts of human salvation, theological anthropology and any Augustinian spirituality that takes account of the author’s entire corpus.

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