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A review by ben_smitty
Augustine's Invention of the Inner Self: The Legacy of a Christian Platonist by Phillip Cary
4.0
Though I disagree with Tim Keller on a lot of things, I still remember listening to one of his lectures delivered at Wheaton on the false concept of a fixed identity and having an existential crisis right after. Now I know it's trendy to deconstruct this and that or whatever, but you have to understand that I've always been interested in finding out what the hell is wrong with me as a person (hint: the fall). And yeah, enneagrams are cool and I've shed a few tears after discovering some of the insecurities that I haven't dealt with, but I also tend to agree with Fr. Martin Laird that these self-discovery tools build themselves on the (false?) assumption of a fixed self.
So I was curious as to where this idea came from and went looking and found Cary's detailed analysis of Augustine's concept of the "soul" in Western culture as an empty space where one can introspect one's self to death. He traces the Platonic tradition of the soul, a concept which has existed even before Plato began writing but became ever more complex in its development through Neoplatonism and up to Augustine's own time.
Cary argues that Augustine borrows heavily from Plotinus, who claims that the substance of the soul and God are one. But Augustine couldn't just accept it like a good Neoplatonist because Christian orthodoxy didn't allow it. According to Nicaea, you don't find God in the soul; you find God as manifest in Christ. So Augustine has had to invent a new idea of the "inner self" that isn't God: yes, the soul is fallen and it's not technically God but THROUGH it, (maybe?) you can come to find that it exists in this awkward position as something that's both bodily and divine? And boom: The Confessions was born.
Cary's position is an interesting one as he is an Augustine scholar, but he is also such a big critic of Augustine (siding more with the Lutheran tradition as an Episcopalian). Cary seems to draw a strong binary between internal/external, that relying on Jesus means relying on something outside of the self - contra Augustine. Though his analysis is great, I wish he would've dealt with the issue of the Holy Spirit who resides within us and whether that changes the dynamic of his question.
So I was curious as to where this idea came from and went looking and found Cary's detailed analysis of Augustine's concept of the "soul" in Western culture as an empty space where one can introspect one's self to death. He traces the Platonic tradition of the soul, a concept which has existed even before Plato began writing but became ever more complex in its development through Neoplatonism and up to Augustine's own time.
Cary argues that Augustine borrows heavily from Plotinus, who claims that the substance of the soul and God are one. But Augustine couldn't just accept it like a good Neoplatonist because Christian orthodoxy didn't allow it. According to Nicaea, you don't find God in the soul; you find God as manifest in Christ. So Augustine has had to invent a new idea of the "inner self" that isn't God: yes, the soul is fallen and it's not technically God but THROUGH it, (maybe?) you can come to find that it exists in this awkward position as something that's both bodily and divine? And boom: The Confessions was born.
Cary's position is an interesting one as he is an Augustine scholar, but he is also such a big critic of Augustine (siding more with the Lutheran tradition as an Episcopalian). Cary seems to draw a strong binary between internal/external, that relying on Jesus means relying on something outside of the self - contra Augustine. Though his analysis is great, I wish he would've dealt with the issue of the Holy Spirit who resides within us and whether that changes the dynamic of his question.