Partly inspired by Derek’s post on first steps with the fathers, and partly out of a desire to get back to basics, I’ve decided to inagurate this blog with a series on Augustine’s Enchiridion, or “handbook on faith, hope, and love.” This very brief text was written as a response to one of Augustine’s correspondents who had asked for a brief summary of the Christian faith. My edition clocks in at about 70 pages and consists of fourteen chapters, each dealing with a major area of the faith.

In Chapter 1, “The Occasion and Purpose of this ‘Manual,’” Augustine sets the agenda for what’s to come. His correspondent, “Laurence” had asked for “a brief summary or short treatise on the proper mode of worshipping God.” Augustine here identifies the worship and service of God with wisdom. This may be a way of establishing this work in the tradition of ancient philosophy which, far from being pure speculation, was understood as a way of life aimed at transforming the self in light of some great good, often involving ascetic and ethical practice in addition to theoretical understanding. It was common for the Fathers to argue that Christianity was the “true philosophy.”

Augustine asks what true wisdom consists in and answers that it consists in piety, or the service of God (theosebeia). And to serve God is the same as to worship God. So wisdom is the worship of God.

But how is God to be worshipped? “In faith, hope, and love” is Augustine’s reply, and his handbook will be a brief explication of “What should be believed, what should be hoped for and what should be loved.” These are “the chief things–indeed the only things–to seek for in religion.”

For Augustine we must begin with faith because we can’t attain certain understanding of “matters that pass beyond the scope of the physical senses” by reason alone. Instead, we must believe the witness of the biblical writers. However, faith, working by love, leads to sight. We may, over the course of our lives, come to “catch glimpses of that ineffable beauty whose full vision is our highest happiness.” This sounds a bit like Anselm’s “I believe so that I may understand”: faith is the initial step down a path that will ultimately result in understanding, even if complete understanding and knowledge of God won’t be ours until the next life. As Augustine writes, “We begin in faith, we are perfected in sight.”