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RELIGION

Fresh insights in old books

  • 08 May 2008
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 We instinctively assume that our fresh insights will have superseded such wisdom that any old tome might impart.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
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