St.

Augustine: O n His Search for God |1

St. Augustine: On His Search for God

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I.

Introduction

For many centuries, from the Medieval Ages up to the present, Augustine has remained the most prominent and most widely studied author in the western Christianity, second only to the biblical writer such as St. Paul. The etymon of this extraordinary phenomenon goes back to Augustines own lifetime, and are part due to the fact that he did not produce the most immense literary corpus of all western Christianity, not for the academic purposes, but as bringing true happiness, true beatitude.

Augustine grew maturely into a powerful, self-conscious writer who united naturally Godgiven intelligence, sharp analytic capability and superb comprehension and ingenious thinking with practical personality formed by many deeply felt and contemplation of his own experiences leading him to a profound knowledge of the heart and a surpassed understanding of the timeless principles of this world rooted in God. In this paper, the researcher seeks to verify Augustines interiority in searching God.

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II.

Body

Man feels his insufficiency, he is created with an immediate tendency toward God and thus man is capable of reaching out to an object greater than him, an object which can bring peace and happiness, and the knowledge of that object is an essential condition of its attainment; but he sees knowledge of an end, beatitude. The search for true happiness for God himself creates a tremendous drive in Augustine as he was growing in manhood, though at that time, he himself, like so many young people today, may not have recognized this desire for happiness.

In this ethics, love would primary revolved: it proposes an end of human conduct, namely, happiness. But this happiness is to be found only in God. Augustine would seek for the truth because he felt a need for it, and looking back on his achievement in the light of attainment, he interpreted this as search for Christ and Christian wisdom. His attraction with the divine beauty, he was able to universalize his own experience, however, it does not mean that his ideas were purely subjective: his psychological introspection made him realized the dynamism of the human soul (Copleston 1985). This dynamism of the soul which is the dynamism of love, though the attainment of the beatitude, participation in the immutable good, it is not possible for man unless he be aided by grace, unless he receives the gratuitous mercy of the Creator (Ibid. 82). Augustine failed to grasp the very meaning of his existence, that is, the depth of the beauty which, deep within was his as a result of the love of God at work in him through Christ. Although he failed, he did not stop to look closely enough at himself, to try to understand himself better, to know who really was. But he was able to discern, the goal is simply self-knowledge, a knowledge that requires that people must place us in truth before God, as he was continuously searching for the

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basic answers in the mystery of life. In his own way, he was truly searching for God. But he could not find Him, Augustine would tell us:

Oh God ever the same, let me know myself, let me know you!

The art of discernment in search for God according to St. Augustine is a disposition of the spirit to separate, to judge, and in particular to distinguish between what is true and false. For St. Paul, if discernment is a charism that some posses to some degree of (cf. Co. 12:10), every Christian has it to some degree and should exercise it (Co. 14:29). Think before you do anything, hold onto what is good and avoid every form of evil (1 Th. 5:21). It is not only a question of being able to discern right from wrong, but also to interpret the will of God (Rm. 12:2), his passing in the life of his people, and concerning this, Scripture deplores most often the lack of discernment, he nevertheless practiced it by implementing all of his psychological subtlety.

The avowed wish of Augustine is to get to know oneself just as God knows that self. Therefore, there is an intimate connection that he immediately establishes between selfknowledge and knowledge of God. The two parts explain one another: one cannot know God without reference to oneself and no one cannot know oneself without reference to God. Such is the goal that he assigns to himself in his search in the Confessions, a truly spiritual exercise in which one can see how he has exercised this demand as far as he is concerned.

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Let us consider more closely this pole of interiority. It is in the course of his own seeking for truth; in particular under the influence of the books of Plato, that Augustine discovers that truth is not outside, but inside the most intimate part of the soul. Following the thought of Plotinus, the second century pagan Roman philosopher, Augustine in his On True Religion urged his readers Do not go outward; return within yourself. In the inward person dwells truth.