Pre-Enlightenment Enlightenment

As many of my readers know, I'm always gratified to find evidences that modern Christianity was not a product of the Enlightenment. Reading Pascal and Augustine this year has gone a long way to show me that the modern liberal claim that our values originated in the Enlightment is simply revisionist. Our modern reading of the Bible is no different than that of the writers of past millenia, nor probably than that of its original readers.

The latest from Augustine is echoed in Descartes's cogito ergo sum. From City of God XI,26:

For we are and we know that we are, and we love to be and to know that we are. And in this trinity of being, knowledge, and love there is not a shadow of illusion to disturb us. For, we do not reach these inner realities with our bodily senses as we do external objects, as, for example, color by seeing, sound by hearing, [etc.]... In the case of such sensible things, the best we do is to form very close and immaterial images which help us to turn them over in our minds, to hold them in our memory, and thus to keep our love for them alive. But, without any illusion of image, fancy, or phantasm, I am certain that I am, that I know that I am, and that I love to be and to know.

There is, of course, a material difference between Augustine's "trinity of being, knowledge, and love" and Descartes's "I think therefore I am". For Descartes asserts that his being is premised on his own power of cognition, whereas Augustine and Pascal (as previously discussed) cast the focus on the creator, and are postmodernly self-aware (i.e., aware of their self-awareness) without losing their awe of the Supreme Being who is the reference point for their and indeed all other being.