Letter 118 · Story · Humility
Augustine's Three Answers
Augustine's Letter 118 of 410 answered a student's questions about Cicero with a lesson on pride and praise.
Augustine borrowed his most famous answer from a Greek orator's rule about public speaking.
Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
- Where
- Carthage
- Who
- Augustine of Hippo, Dioscorus
- When
- 410 AD, by the letter's heading in the translation
Summary
Dioscorus, a Greek living in Carthage, sent Augustine a long list of questions on Cicero's dialogues and asked for quick answers before a voyage. Augustine saw the motive behind the request. His letter turned from Cicero to the one way to truth that Christ prepared, and he named its first, second and third part as humility.
- Dioscorus wanted answers so that no one would think him illiterate and stupid.
- Augustine said that pride is to be feared even in right actions, because the wish for praise spoils them.
- He took his threefold answer from an orator who called delivery the first, second and third rule of eloquence.
- He named Christ the teacher of humility, who submitted to humiliation to teach it.
- Calvin quoted the answer in his Institutes with a saying of Chrysostom on humility.
The Answer
Section 22 of the letter gives the answer that made it famous.
In a letter to a student named Dioscorus, Augustine of Hippo gave the church one of its best-known sayings on humility, the lowly mind before God and others that Scripture commands. The story matters to every reader because Dioscorus wanted what many students want, to be thought learned.
The question the story answers is why Augustine set humility at the head of the road to truth. The same letter shows why. The letter runs to thirty-four sections, and humility stands at its centre.
Augustine wrote that "the first part is humility", and that the second and the third are humility as well (section 22, translated by J. G. Cunningham, 1887). He took the pattern from an orator who, asked for the first rule of eloquence, answered "Delivery" three times.
He gave the reason at once. Unless humility goes before, with and after every good action, he wrote, "pride wrests wholly from our hand any good work on which we are congratulating ourselves."
The Letter Step by Step
The letter moves from a request to a rebuke and then to an answer.
Augustine turned a list of questions into a lesson on the motive behind them.
- Section 1Questions on Cicero's dialogues, sent in haste before a voyage
- Sections 3 and 4His motive was the praise of men
- Section 17Christ's humility answers what the Platonists could not teach the many
- Section 22Humility is the whole way, as delivery was the whole of eloquence
- Section 23Christ is the teacher of this humility
- Section 34Augustine answered almost all the other questions in brief notes on the parchments
A sequence of six steps through the letter, each with the section that holds it.
Dioscorus and His Questions
The letter shows a Greek student at Carthage who wanted answers ready for others.
Augustine wrote that Dioscorus had sent "a countless multitude of questions" and asked for them in haste, "on the eve of a journey" (section 1). Dioscorus was a Greek, for Augustine spoke of Greek as his mother tongue, and he lived among "so many learned men in Carthage" (section 10).
Dioscorus had written that people are prone to censure and that anyone who cannot answer questions is thought "illiterate and stupid" (section 3). Augustine told him that this fear pierced his own heart, and he set out to break the tie between the young man's happiness and "the opinions of men".
Knowledge That Puffs Up
Section 23 of the letter and 1 Corinthians 8 meet on one point.
In section 23 Augustine called the "most formidable adversary" of humility "a certain kind of most unenlightened knowledge", in which people congratulate themselves on knowing the views of the old philosophers.
Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.Paul answers the pride of knowledge with love, which builds up.
Earlier in 1 Corinthians, Paul asked the church at Corinth what they had that they did not receive (1 Corinthians 4:7).
Why Humility Comes First
Augustine gave two reasons, the danger of pride in good works and the example of Christ.
The first reason is that pride attacks right actions as well as wrong ones. "All other vices are to be apprehended when we are doing wrong," Augustine wrote, "but pride is to be feared even when we do right actions."
The second is Christ. Augustine wrote that the philosophers lacked "that example of divine humility" which Christ gave, "before which, even in the mind of the most headstrong and arrogant, all pride bends, breaks, and dies" (section 17).
And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross.Paul's words on the Son's humility stand behind the example Augustine named in section 17.
How the Answer Was Carried
The Reformation took up the answer through Calvin.
1509 to 1564 · John Calvin
John Calvin taught that humility is the ground of the Christian life. In the Institutes of the Christian Religion (book 2, chapter 2, section 11, translated by Henry Beveridge, 1845) he set Augustine's answer beside a saying of John Chrysostom.
"I have always been exceedingly delighted with the words of Chrysostom, 'The foundation of our philosophy is humility;'" Calvin wrote, before he gave Augustine's answer. Calvin explained that by humility Augustine meant the state of a man "when he truly feels that he has no refuge but in humility".
Grace to the Humble
James 4:6 says that God gives grace to the humble.
Scripture gives the promise that goes with the road Augustine described.
But He gives us more grace. This is why it says: “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”James gives the promise that answers Augustine's warning about pride.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- Augustine of Hippo, Letter 118, to Dioscorus (A.D. 410), translated by J. G. Cunningham, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series, volume 1 (Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1887)
- John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, book 2, chapter 2, section 11, translated by Henry Beveridge (first published 1845)
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