CHAPTER 22

AUGUSTINE
MAN: BODY AND SOUL

Augustine's views concerning the nature of man and of his place in the
universe inevitably underwent profound transformations during his
intellectual journey from Manichaean, through Neoplatonic, to Chris-
tian teaching. The three outlooks differ profoundly in their estimate of
man. In Manichaean doctrine, man is a being torn in two, or two beings,
just as the world itself is divided or thought of as two worlds, a world of
darkness and a world of light. According to its cosmogonic myth, these
are created by different creators, ruled by their own rulers, and are
perpetually at war. Man is an episode in the inter-cosmic warfare: he is
the product of an emission from the kingdom of light into that of dark-
ness. The myth pictures him as the emissary of light devoured by the
darkness, kept imprisoned by it and prevented from returning to his
home. Man is object, stage and agent of this cosmic struggle. The
cosmic forces are mobilized to prevent or to assist his return to his
spiritual home; he is himself a composite of the two worlds which are at
war within as well as around him; and he has some power to co-operate
with the forces of darkness or to resist. In this last capacity man is not
quite a passive spectator of the conflict: he is called to resist the en-
tanglement with evil, to repudiate the body, its main agency. Rejection
of and liberation from the body are therefore a vital part of the Mani-
chaean doctrine of salvation: they belong to a realm essentially evil, and
are foreign to man's inmost nature, serving as the prison of his real self.
Neoplatonic views on the nature of man, which this is not the place
to describe, are far removed from Manichaean teaching in their insis-
tence on the goodness of matter and of the human body.1 The body has
its place in a hierarchically ordered universe, and its purpose is to enable
the work of intellect—rationality, order—to be expressed in the lower
orders of the cosmos. Hence it is not an object of loathing and hatred,
1
[For Neoplatonic views of the nature of man see Part m (Plotinus), ch. 14, pp. 222-35.]

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 Man: body and soul
though it is an obstacle to man's easy progress towards virtue and
wisdom; and, above all, it has no part in man's final salvation. Hence
the deep opposition of Neoplatonists to the Christian teaching con-
cerning the resurrection of the body and the positive value set upon the
body and the world of matter in Christian teaching. Notwithstanding
this opposition, the attitudes of Christians to the material world, and
to the body in particular, could in practice often be very close to
those of Neoplatonist or even of dualistic Gnostic writers.
Augustine's views on man were worked out after his conversion to
Christianity. His break with Manichaean teaching-—despite the alleged
survival of some Manichaean influences in his mind—seems to have
been absolute. His sharp distrust of sensual delight, for example, the
suspicion with which he treats church music,1 far from being Manichaean
in inspiration, contains no hint of revulsion from the world of the body
but shows, on the contrary, a deep sensitiveness to beauty and a con-
cern not to allow it to run away with reason and judgement. This con-
cern is all of a piece with his moral theory on the use to be made of
created things, which will be discussed later. The essentially ethical
background of his practical attitude to the life of the body serves to
bridge, to a large extent, the gulf between Augustine's Christian views
and the Neoplatonic views on the body. The very positive valuation of
the body by Christian teaching could always be tempered by a strong
other-worldliness; and this allied it with the ethical protest, which Neo-
platonism had in common with much of ancient philosophy, against all
manner of worldliness of life, and its recommendation of detachment
from what Aristotle called 'the things men quarrel about'. Long after
his turning to Christianity, Augustine could feel he had much in com-
mon with the 'Platonists'. 2
Augustine's reflection on this subject, beginning with the works
written in the years immediately following his conversion, is permeated
by a concern to stress the unity of man, body and soul. He never
hesitates in his view that both are essential constituents of what we call
man. The conviction appears in one of his earliest letters,^ and is equally
7
Conf. X 33. 49-50 (PL 32. 799-800).
J
A concise statement of his views on Manichaean and Neoplatonic teaching on the body: De
civ. Dei XIV 5 (PL 41. 408-9).
' Ep. 3. 4 (PL 33. 65).

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 Augustine
characteristic of his later works. It appears in one of the ways in which
he frequently defines m a n : ' man is a rational animal subject to death' 1 —
a definition designed precisely to stress the need to allude to both body
and soul in defining man. Notwithstanding this unwavering convic-
tion, Augustine did have difficulty in embodying this conviction in the
conceptual structure at his disposal. A passage from an early work is
particularly revealing of these difficulties :2
Since it is almost universally agreed that we are made up of soul and body,
and since for the purpose of our present discussion such agreement can be
taken for granted, what we must ask now is what man really is: is he both
these constituents, or is he body only, or soul only? For although soul and
body are two things, and neither of them alone is called 'man' in the absence
of the other (for a body is no man unless it is animated by a soul, nor is a soul
a man without a body which it animates), it nevertheless happens that one or
other of these is alone taken for and referred to as man. What, then, shall we
say man is? Is he soul and body together, as a pair of horses or a composite
beast like a centaur is one thing? Or shall we say that he is a body only,
albeit a body used by a soul which rules it?—just as we call a clay lamp a
' light': we do not say that the clay vessel and the flame together make up a
light; we call the lamp a light, but we do so on account of the flame. Or,
finally, shall we call the soul alone man, and do so on account of the body
which it rules?—just as we call a man a knight, not the man and his horse
together, but we do so on account of the horse he rides. The solution of this
problem is difficult—or, if it be easy to see, it nonetheless requires a lengthy
explanation, and it is not necessary here and now to undertake the labour
and delay.
Augustine prefaces this passage with a disclaimer to the effect that he is
not concerned to give a formal definition of man here. The sequel to the
passage makes it quite clear that what interests him in this discussion is
the question 'what is the good for man?', and that the foregoing puzzle
about the definition of man is subsidiary to this question; indeed, the
answer to it does not really matter very much so long as it is clear that
man's greatest good is not to be identified with the good of the body
alone, but must consist either in the good of body and soul together or
of the soul. It is a tentative passage, and the centre of Augustine's
1
De ord. n n . 31 {PL 32. 1009); also De quant, an. 25. 47 {PL 32. 1062); De Trin. XV 7. 11
{PL 42. 1065); De civ. Dei ix 13. 3; xm 24. 2 {PL 41. 267; 399—400).
2
De mor. eccl. 1 4. 6 {PL 32. 1313); cf. De civ. Dei xix 3 {PL 41. 625-7), where the source of
the discussion appears.
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 Man: body and soul
interests lies elsewhere, in the sphere of ethics; it would be unwise to
attach too much significance to it and to expect from it the decisive clue
to his view of body and soul. Nevertheless, the passage does convey a
suggestion of the kind of difficulties which Augustine found in his way
when trying to give conceptual expression to his conviction of the sub-
stantial unity of man, composed of soul and body. The source of these
difficulties was the framework of the Platonic concepts which he utilized.
When, later in the same work, he returns to this question, he defines
man in a traditional Platonic formula as ' a rational soul using a mortal
and earthly body'. 1 For a reason Augustine does not state, man is now
identified with his soul, though reference is made to the body. And in-
deed this reference to the body is incorporated in the definition of the
soul given in another work dating from about the same time: it is ' a
substance endowed with reason and fitted to rule a body'. 2 The soul by
its nature points towards a body, and is not complete without it.
Augustine is laying as much stress as he can on the unity of body and
soul in man, though his adopted conceptual structure makes it difficult
to speak of the substantial unity of man.
One of the most interesting features of Augustine's attempts to ex-
plain the union of body and soul in man, which the studies of Pere
Fortin and H. D6'rrie3 have brought to light, is that Augustine owed
not only his difficulties but also his manner of solving them to the
philosophical framework he adopted. His conception of the union of
soul and body appears in passages in which he defends against philoso-
phical objections the doctrine of the two natures united in the person of
the Word made flesh. The argument, as it appears most clearly in his cor-
respondence with Volusianus, is that there can be no a priori objections
to this doctrine on philosophical grounds. For it is easier to conceive of
the union of two spiritual substances than of a spiritual and a material
substance; and yet the possibility is admitted of the latter's taking place
in the union of soul and body in man.4 Augustine is clearly alluding to a
philosophical theory of the union of mind and body according to which
1
[Link]. i 27.52 {PL 32. 1332); cf. In Jo. Ev. Tr. xix 15 ( P i 35.1553): 'animarationalis
:
habens corpus'. De quant, an. 13. 22 {PL 32. 1048).
3
E. L. Fortin, Chnstianisme et culturephilosophique au cinquieme siecle (Paris, 1959), H. Dorrie,
Porphynos' ''Symmikta Zetemata'. . . (Miinchen, 1959), and J. Pepin, 'Une nouvelle source de
St Augustin...', R. Et. Anc. 66 (1964), pp. 53-107.
4
Ep. 137. 3. 11 {PL 33. 520).
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 Augustine
these could come together in a 'union without confusion' (unto incon-
fusa, &HIKTOS, d(TuyxuT0S evcocns). The theory was of Neoplatonic origin.
It appears to go back to Ammonius Saccas, and was certainly held by
Porphyry, with whom Augustine in fact appears to associate it by
implication.1 The Neoplatonic notion of a 'union without confusion'
had been developed precisely to make it possible to maintain the possi-
bility of the union of soul and body, a possibility denied by Stoic
thought. The Stoics had distinguished mere ' juxtaposition' (irapdOecris)
from 'mixing' (Kpaais) as alternative forms of union. The latter implied
alteration in the character of the substances mixed, and their transforma-
tion into a new, third substance. Neither category of union, for obvious
reasons, could accommodate the Neoplatonists' conception of the
union of soul and body. The third mode of union added by them to the
Stoic enumeration provided a suitable category of union for this pur-
pose, and one of which Christian theologians were quick to see the
value in their attempts to defend the union of divine and human natures
in the person of Christ. Augustine, then, availed himself of a current
philosophical theory for the purposes of Christological debate: he
never seems to have doubted its adequacy for formulating the mode of
union of soul and body in man.2 He appears to have had something
like the same notion in mind in another early, anti-Manichaean work
when he drew a parallel between the manner in which water, when
added to soil to make mud, holds it together and compacts it, and the
union of soul and body: 'the soul forms the material of the body which
it animates into a harmonious unity and secures and preserves its
integrity'.3 Augustine, to summarize, stressed the unity of soul and
body in man as strongly as his inherited conceptual equipment allowed
it to be stressed, certainly far more strongly than Plato himself had
done. But he was also well aware that this union fell short of substantial
unity; 'though united in one man, my flesh is another substance than
my soul'.4 The union has well been called 'hypostatic'; indeed, had
Augustine been able to think of it as substantial, it would not have
1
De civ. Dei x 29 (PL 41. 307-9). [For the use made of the theory of the dcouyxuTos Ev
in the Christian East, see the next Part (vi, The Greek Christian Tradition), chs. 31 D and 32E,
pp. 489-9! and pp. 504-5.]
2
In Jo. Ev. Tr. XIX 15 (PL 35. 1553); cf. Ep. 137. 3. 11—12 (PL 33. 520-1); De civ. Dei X 29
(PL 41. 307-9).
3 4
De Gen. c. Man. II 7. 9 (PL 34. 201). De Trin. I 10. 20 (PL 42. 835).
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 Man: body and soul
served him as so useful an analogy for the purposes of Christological
discussion.
We shall encounter some of the difficulties raised by this view when
we come to discuss Augustine's theories of sense-perception. He was
not apparently worried by these; and in any case the whole question
was one of very subordinate importance in his eyes. What mattered far
more to him were questions concerned with man's supreme good, and
the great virtue of his picture of man was that it fitted into a clear scheme
which laid all the stress on the good of the soul. The identification of
man with his soul, even with the rider 'using a mortal body', is, for all
its difficulties, in line with the deepest tendencies of Augustine's mind.
It presents man as a being placed in a hierarchical order, an order which
is repeated in the structure of his own being. The very definition of
man involves reference to two entities, one subordinated to the other
as ruled to ruler. Augustine likes to describe man as a kind of inter-
mediary between the realms of spirit and of matter—a unique status
symbolized by his erect bodily posture.1
Man is related to the hierarchy of the cosmos both above him and
beneath him in multiple ways. He is not, of course, poised between the
world of matter and of spirit as a third thing between them, but rather,
having a share in both worlds, he is situated on their borderline. He is a
being in whom the two worlds overlap. The human soul is the closest
of all things in creation to God.2 Close as it is, however, it is not
divine, or of God's substance.3 This apparently trite insistence of
Augustine's has some importance. Manichaean doctrine had affirmed
the human soul to be a fragment or spark of divine nature inserted into
the inimical world of matter.4 To assert such an identity of nature meant
either to claim immutability for the human soul, or to subject God to
change, both repugnant doctrines. There is a more profound reason,
however, for Augustine's insistence on the mutability of the human
soul, and the distance between it and the divine nature. The character-
1
De Gen. adlitt. VI 12. 22 {PL 34. 348); cf. De civ. Dei IX 13. 3 {PL 41. 267); /n Jo. Ev. Tr
xx 11; xxm 5 {PL 35. 1562; 1584-5).
1
De beata vita 1. 4 {PL 32. 961) (where Augustine refers to Ambrose and Theodoras of
Milan); cf. De Gen. adlitt. x 24. 40 {PL 34. 426—7).
3
De quant, an. 31. 63; 34. 77 {PL 32. 1070; 1077-8); cf. De civ. Dei XI 26 {PL 41. 339);
De Trin. xiv 8. 11 {PL 42. 1044); De Gen. ad iitt. VII, passim.
4
De Gen. c. Man. 11 8. 11 {PL 34. 202).

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 Augustine
istics of immateriality, intelligence and immortality had been widely
attached to the soul by Neoplatonic and other thinkers. These charac-
ters were thought of as endowing the soul with divinity; and in con-
sequence some Christian thinkers had gone to great lengths to deny the
spirituality of the soul, for to admit this would have been to condone the
blasphemous claim for its divinity. This problem had not ceased to
agitate Christian minds in Augustine's day, and indeed later in the fifth
century. Following St Ambrose, Augustine chose the alternative of
asserting the soul's immateriality and immortality, and qualifying this
assertion by an uncompromising insistence on the mutability of the
soul.l This qualification placed Augustine in a position to underline the
cleavage between the type of view according to which man's real self
was an eternal, intelligent soul, which could neither change nor suffer,
sin or repent, and his own view, according to which the human soul
shares the essential instability of all created being. He appears to take
particular care to dissociate himself from the specifically Plotinian
doctrine of the 'double personality': he states his own distinction
between the 'interior man' and the 'exterior man' in terms such as
would allow no room for mistaking his 'interior man' for the sinless,
unchangeable and eternal ' man within' of Plotinus. This is the reason
for his monotonous insistence that the interior man judges and under-
stands in the light of 'incorporeal and eternal reasons', which, being
unchanging, are above the human soul.2 The soul itself is liable to all
the vicissitudes of change and living, to sin and repentance, and is ever
in need of God's grace. Man only has one self, which is the subject
and the agent of his empirical career; there is not a recondite real self
exempt and remote from the turmoils of life.
Negatively, Augustine defines the soul's relation to God as being
different from him in nature. Positively, he formulates his view by
reference to the teaching of Genesis that man was made by God to his
own image and likeness. Here he departs from the dominant trend of
patristic tradition, according to which man had retained the image of
God at the time of the fall, but had lost his likeness to him. The restora-
tion of this likeness was to be the end-product of the long process of
1
E-g- Ep. 166. 2. 3-4 (PL 33. 721-2).
2
De Trin. xii 1. 1 — 2. 2; xi 1. 1 (PL 42. 997-9; 983-5). [For the divinity of the 'man within'
in Plotinus see Part in (Plotinus), ch. 14, pp. 222-6.]
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 Man: body and soul
man's divinization, wrought in man through Christ's saving work and
by the operation of his grace.1 Augustine's departure from this tradi-
tion appears to have been prompted by purely logical, linguistic con-
siderations, not by disagreement with the theology of sin, grace and
sanctification embodied in this tradition. An image, he thought, neces-
sarily implies the presence of some likeness to its original, whereas a
likeness may exist between two objects one of which is not the image of
another, for instance two eggs. An image is a special kind of likeness,
on his analysis,2 whereas, on the view he rejected, an image could exist
without likeness. Augustine therefore preferred to speak of both image
and likeness of God surviving man's fall, though in a damaged and dis-
torted state and in need of reformation. Augustine is here undertaking
a piece of clarification and analysis, a typical instance of the purely
rational techniques of philosophy being put at the service of the Chris-
tian faith to clarify its meaning.
It would take us too far into the realms of Augustinian theology to
give more than the most summary account of what Augustine thought
man's likeness to God consists in.3 Man, he thought, is the image of
God in respect of the highest part of his soul, the' interior man' or intel-
ligence, that is to say, in respect of what distinguishes man from beast:
rationality, will, capacity to share in the divine life.4 This is essential
to man's nature, not a further gift bestowed on him;5 no matter how
deformed by sin, it always remains in him, its likeness to God being
restored with baptism and perfected by daily renewal in charity.6 His
work On the Trinity is in large part an attempt to trace God's image in
man specifically in his three-in-oneness.
To God, the human soul is related as his image and likeness; to the
realities beneath it in the order of things, it is related principally in its
ability to know them and to act on them and among them. To these
themes we turn next.
1
[On'image* and'likeness' in later Greek Christian thought see Part vi (The Greek Christian
Tradition), ch. 29c, pp. 449-56 and ch. 32E, pp. 503-4.]
2
De div. qu. LXXXIII 74 {PL 40. 85-6); Qu. in Hept. v 4 {PL 34. 749-50). On Augustine's
analysis and its development, cf. my paper '"Imago" and "similitudo" in Augustine', Rev. des
etudes augustiniennes, x (1964), pp. 125—43.
3
De Gen. adlitt. Ill 20. 30; VI 12. 21-2 {PL 34. 292; 348); De Trin. XII 1. 1; XI I. I {PL 42.
4
997-9; 983-5). De Trin. XIV 8. II {PL 42. 1044).
s 6
Ibid, xiv 10. 13 {PL 42. 1047). Ibid, xiv 16. 2 2 - 17. 23 {PL 42. 1053-5).

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