La persona humana, relación religada en san Agustín

Abstract

Augustine of Hippo, endowed with a great sensitivity and love for studies was born in North Africa. Passionate with rhetoric at his younger days, he investigated it so boldly to excel in such way that at the end of it, won the chair of Rhetoric at the Imperial court of Milan. His conversion to Christianity transformed his life and the divine Grace made his effort a beacon of wisdom; with his priesthood and acceptance of the bishophood, becomes a polemist and a tireless apologist; through his faith in Christ and in the Church, a great interpreter of the Bible, a courageous theologian and a fearless searcher of God. All this happens in the context of the collapse of the Roman Empire. It is not causal that in his voice there seen exposed an inspiring antecedent of the modern attitude with which the self understands itself and values its mission in the world.

Notwithstanding, in the same way Augustine takes up and reinterprets previous sources, much later, others would drink from and reinterpret his thoughts. Thus, after Kant, idealistic philosophy tried to familiar us to think that the contact with reality, the decisive facts of history and the construction of personal destiny depend alone or primarily on an ‘Ego’ (‘subject’ or ‘subjectivity’) that explores, dreams, chooses, programs, resolves and interprets, by itself the meaning of the world. Likewise, philosophers like Descartes or Hegel, would try to reinterpret the Christian and Augustinian experience.

With the above background and given the validity of Saint Augustine, it is convenient to reread his writings in order to hear directly from his words the fundaments of his experience, the reason for his choices and the articulation of his hermeneutics. For example, it is interesting to see how he read Plato and Aristotle, how he glossed their concepts and, what else Augustine found which was not in the Greek ‘logos’. In this study, we focus on the concept of «substance» and «person» in Saint Augustine, within the framework of his reflection on the Trinitarian mystery of the Christian God, highlighting the influence that he would undergo in the construction of an anthropology which aspires to overcome Greek metaphysics. His position will mark a unique relationship with the philosophy and will open up enriching and demanding pathways to theology. From here, some matters that Saint Augustine would raise both to
scholastic theology and to the modern philosophy of X. Zubiri are dealt with and vindicated.