Tag: augustine

Truth and the Heart

Phiippe de Champaigne, Saint Augustine, 1650

Alex Sosler writes:

The rays of truth proceed from the sun, through Augustine’s head, to his heart, which he holds in his hand on the right side of the painting. This image is an apt illustration of Augustine’s thought. Truth doesn’t end in the head but makes its way to the control center, which is the heart. He understood the heart as being central to our living. What someone loves is more important than what they can consciously know or express. Truth is foundational but insufficient.

Sosler, A Short Guide to Spiritual Formation: Finding Life in Truth, Goodness, Beauty, and Community, p. 40

I’d nuance this a little differently. I’d say truth is foundational and indispensable, and for it to have full transformational effect, it must move beyond thought to affection. And, while we might read the painting from left to right, and thus understand the process as such, there is also a relationship running in the other direction, from right to left. It is vital, therefore, for both heart and mind to be fixed on truth. If we love the wrong things, our thinking becomes distorted. If we think the wrong things, our hearts become subject to damage and discouragement. But if heart and mind are compelled by what is true, together, the entire person is transformed.

The Google Search for God

What is God? It is only a subject that has inspired some of the finest writing in the history of Western civilization—and yet the first two pages of Google results for the question are comprised almost entirely of Sweet’N Low evangelical proselytizing to the unconverted. (The first link the Google algorithm served me was from the Texas ministry, Life, Hope & Truth.) The Google search for God gets nowhere near Augustine, Maimonides, Spinoza, Luther, Russell, or Dawkins. Billy Graham is the closest that Google can manage to an important theologian or philosopher. For all its power and influence, it seems that Google can’t really be bothered to care about the quality of knowledge it dispenses. It is our primary portal to the world, but has no opinion about what it offers, even when that knowledge it offers is aggressively, offensively vapid.

– Franklin Foer, “The Death of the Public Square”

While it is not necessary for you to know Augustine, Maimonides, Spinoza, Luther, or Russell to make a run at answering the question “What is God?”, engaging with these voices certainly will not hurt. (When it comes to anything ultimately useful, either with regard to theism or atheism, Dawkins might be relevant at the moment, but will eventually prove inconsequential. He is a polemicist and populist, not a careful philosopher.)

I would, however, recommend acquainting yourself with pastors, theologians, and friends who know these voices and can answer this worthwhile, ancient question with the wisdom of years, scholarship, experience, and the knowledge of the Holy Scripture. Foer is right on this front: the workings of web search engines are not to be bothered with the quality of knowledge dispensed. Instead, seek out flesh and blood companions who know the answers human beings have offered to the question “What is God?,” who are kind enough to have the conversation, and who are willing to help you discern truth from error in your thinking.