Augustine had allowed his tears to flow freely upon the death of his
schoolboy friend. The death of his mother occurred after his conversion.
Now he attempted to control his tears. He found he could not; sobs burst
out uncontrollably. He concludes that, once again, he had been‘guilty of too
much worldly affection’.^29
We all desire happiness, says Augustine. But grief is incompatible with
happiness; happiness requires that we forestall grief. The way to do that is to
detach one’s love and affection from all that is perishable and attach it to what
is immutable and indestructible, namely, God and the soul.‘Blessed are those
who love you, O God...Noonecanlose you... unless he forsake you.’^30
InOf True Religion(De vera religione), written around the same time as the
Confessions, Augustine asks whether it is not inhuman to love just the souls of
one’s fellow human beings and not the whole human being, body and soul. His
answer is decisive:‘Let no one think that it is inhuman.’^31 InThe City of God,
written some thirty years later, Augustine cautiously concludes that he had
been mistaken; it is indeed inhuman to protect oneself against grief by loving
only God and the soul.^32
I have introduced the attitude towards grief that Augustine expresses in the
ConfessionsandOf True Religionso as to contrast it with Calvin’s attitude.
Among Christians, says Calvin, there are some‘new Stoics, who count it
depraved not only to groan and weep but also to be sad and care ridden’.^33
They are wrong about this, says Calvin. Our goal as Christians
is not to be utterly stupefied and to be deprived of all feeling of pain. [Our ideal] is
not [that of what] the Stoics of old foolishly described [as]‘the great-souled man’;
one who, having cast off all human qualities, was affected equally by adversity and
prosperity, by sad times and happy ones—nay, who like a stone was not affected
at all.^34Rather than trying to imitate the Stoics by forestalling grief, we should be open
to grief and feel free to give it voice.
Afflicted by disease, we shall both groan and be uneasy and pant after health;
pressed by poverty, we shall be pricked by the arrows of care and sorrow; we shall
be smitten by the pain of disgrace, contempt, injustice; at the funerals of our dear
ones we shall weep the tears that are owed to our nature.^35(^29) Augustine,ConfessionsIX.13.203. (^30) Augustine,ConfessionsIV.9.79–80.
(^31) Augustine,‘True Religion’,inOn Christian Belief, ed. Boniface Ramsey, trans. Edmund
Hill, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century (Hyde Park, NY: New
City Press, 1990), 46.88, 89.
(^32) I defend my claim that Augustine changed his mind on this point in ch. 8 of myJustice:
Rights and Wrongs(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), and in my essay‘August-
ine’s Rejection of Eudaimonism’, in James Wetzel (ed.),Augustine’s City of God(Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2012), 149–66.
(^33) Calvin,InstitutesIII.viii.9. (^34) Calvin,InstitutesIII.viii.9.
(^35) Calvin,InstitutesIII.vii.10; translation slightly altered.
88 Nicholas Wolterstorff