The Consistency of the Augustinian Tradition with the New Testament
he claim of St.Augustine to learn directly from God the Interior Master is entirely in accord with the Scriptures. The Gospel of St.John states the teaching of Jesus that "The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything". (John 14:26). God the Holy Spirit teaches the faithful about God through intellectual enlightenment. However, the statement goes beyond the understanding that the Holy Spirit teaches knowledge of God to declare that the Spirit teaches all knowledge. The individual can learn nothing except through the teaching of the Holy Spirit.
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Knowledge as the Gift of God
The Augustinian method starts with problems of experience which must be considered and understood. Once the problem is correctly understood the solution appears in the intellect in the form of new ideas. The intellect is unable to create, invent, or otherwise to discover the truth from within itself. It cannot look out over a field of ideas and abstract or otherwise annex the truth. The truth as understanding is placed within the intellect from an external source. This agrees with common experience among problem solvers generally that after a period of thought concerning a problem, its solution simply appears within the intellect. How it has been formed or where it came from are not usually clear to the newly enlightened intellect.
All individuals learn through experience. The Holy Spirit gives the problems of experience and also gives the solutions to those problems in the form of understandings. The combination of problems and solutions is necessary to intellectual development. This is the only way that human beings can learn. They must first understand the problem and then the solution becomes meaningful. Problems without solutions serve only to demonstrate the extent of ignorance. Solutions without the understanding of the problems that they solve cannot be grasped intellectually and are therefore without any real meaning. Reality, which is the creation of the Holy Spirit, is the source of the problems of experience, and the Inner Light or Interior Teacher, which is a function of the Spirit, is the origin of the solutions or understandings. The Inner Light is therefore the Source of all knowledge both of God and the world.
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The Teaching System of the Holy Spirit
The teaching system of the Holy Spirit is set out in diagram FT3.1 This is the basic system of intellectual development, referred to in the religious context as 'soulmaking'.
DIAGRAM FT3.1
The problem solving method ensures that the individual understands the problem as given by the Holy Spirit. In the problem solving process the problems of experience, as understood by the individual, are processed psychologically to achieve understanding and knowledge. This process is the interaction between the individual, as the problem-solver, and the Holy Spirit as the giver of understanding. The solving of the problems of experience results in understanding, or in greater understanding where some understanding already exists. This process accounts for all human understanding, both of spiritual and secular matters.
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The Authority of God the Teacher
God is the Ultimate Authority in all matters of Truth and Knowledge. However, knowledge is the consequence of the Problem and Solution method. Human disagreements follow from trying to solve different problems and wrong problems, defining problems differently, not fully understanding problems, and asking questions which are not fully understood. If the problem solving process is executed correctly the answer of God is consistent. Disagreements may always be traced to mistakes and other inadequacies in applying the method or to ignoring that method.
Karl Popper made the point that the problem to be solved must be real. A real problem stands in the path of a valid knowledge objective. The problem of the number of angels on a pinhead cannot be real. The test is the reason for wanting to know. However, knowledge projects based on invalid assumptions also cannot be real. The objective to understand the human situation in the world is valid. The assumption that the material universe constitutes the whole of reality is false. Whatever follows from it is, in terms of the knowledge objective, also false and any problems based on that assumption are not real. St.Augustine refused to accept that knowledge of the material universe offered any path to the truth.
The world, as the creation of God, is the source of problems. Problems of morality, truth, human nature, and group culture, as well as physical problems, occur in the intellect as the consequence of the observation of the events of experience of the world. If the problem given by experience is fully and correctly understood the solution given by the Holy Spirit will be correct. It is this consistency of truth which enables the building of a corpus of knowledge, spiritual and secular, and permits human progress towards ever-better understandings.
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Transforming the Problem into its Solution
The Next Page describes how the Holy Spirit transforms the problem understanding into the solution understanding.