Volume 19, 2007 - Brown University

Augustine’s Imitatio Dei—
A Rejection of Self Sacrifice
Zohar Atkins
The question of whether Christians have a conception of selfhood, or whether
selfhood, by definition, stands as a function of God’s or Christ’s identity, foolishly
assumes a solipsistic, remote, even God-transcending self, rather than an
integrated, joyous, divinely inspired one. The critics and skeptics who proffer
this seemingly innocent query attack Christianity by cornering it into an
either/or proposition. Either the self stands as the sole entity of individuality:
strong, eternal, independent, and holy in its own right, or it revolves around
God, and is therefore no self at all, but a parasite that draws entirely from the
non-self. The self must be inactive and alone or active but without substance.
These cynics ironically illustrate a selfless self and selfish non-self. This is an
ill-suited algorithm for a full understanding of Christian metaphysics. St.
Augustine argues against this misconception in his Confessions, and defends the
Christian view of the self, or in spiritual terms, the soul, as a malleable, engaged,
reflective, tender, glorious, and unique vessel housing, but not confining, God.
The soul, the essential engine of the self, and the divine spark that manifests
God’s simultaneous plurality and singularity, bears enormous consequence
in the Christian tradition. It is the fighting grounds for the dual tensions that
dominate Augustine’s Confessions: the heavenly and the earthly, the eternal and
the ephemeral, the external and the internal, love and fear, volunteerism and
obligation, and free will and determinism. Augustine resolves these frictions by
synthesizing them into an exemplary incarnation of the ideal good, the physical
realm of the particulars. He fuses the issues of God’s timelessness existing in
time and God’s transcendence involving itself in the material world to construct
a ladder that links the inner-soul, the self, to the cosmic soul, God, and names
this intermediary Christ. Augustine blends the manifold forms with their encompassed
unity to draw attention to the self as a kindling of the two. His self is a
function of God, but it has a life of its own. Augustine refutes the cynical question
by exposing its sinful pride and attempting to put forth a self that walks
humbly before God (Conf. 21). This self merits applause, but more significantly,
mercy and forgiveness.
Augustine opens his Confessions by quoting a psalm from Scripture: “Can
any praise be worthy of the Lord’s majesty” (Conf. 1.1)? He poses a general
question using words that are not his to draw attention to God, rather than to
himself. He emphasizes both the wonder of God and the possibility of accessing
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