Founded upon the understanding that the Incarnation illuminates everything, Saint Augustine School educates and forms students to judge and order their thinking and their lives wisely. Our students learn to integrate faith and reason so as to come into ever more joyful contact with the mystery of ordered reality.

Preamble

The life of a Catholic school comes from the rich intellectual Tradition she inherits from the forebears of truth and great Christian minds of the ages, as well as the mission to effectively bring such a gift to young, curious minds. The way of education is to bring students into contact with reality and its end is to discover Truth. Augustine sings of truth and its beauty, once he has finally found it, as “ever ancient and ever new”. To see God and his creation through the eyes of the tradition is to take on a whole, renewed mind. One sees all of reality in the light of its beauty and radiance; “Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God” (Romans 12:2).

Though reality is intelligible and the mind is particularly created to comprehend the truth, understanding it is not automatic. Students need to be given rich material for study and contemplation, and a guide to help them along. “For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world – to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” (John 18:37)

Saint Augustine School offers a way of life and habit of mind that can be exercised daily and then practiced for the whole of life.

I. Intellectual Principles

Below are a list of first principles that summarize the fundamental Christian understanding of reality. These are gathered from the Tradition and guide all educational principles and practices of the school. All subjects and methods, even activities that promote school spirit, find their roots in these truths.

1.  The Incarnation is center of human history

At a specific place and point in history God who created all things visible and invisible entered into His creation as man “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth” John 1:14. Human anticipation before this moment points to its coming and thought and culture thereafter draws its life and meaning from this singular, most powerful event.

In the Incarnation God alters human possibility. Not only does it change man’s destiny for life after death, but in this life so impacts his very intelligibility. Man may now know God Himself and the true reason of His creation.

2.  God created an ordered reality

The created world is not chaos but a cosmos. Reality itself is a gift from God and intelligible to the human mind. It is not set by a disinterested clock-maker, ruled by merely natural material, nor inhabited by willful spirits (deism, naturalism, paganism), but a sacramental reality by which we may know Him by the beauty of his work. “He is before all things and in him all things hold together” Col 1:17.

Furthermore, because of the Word made flesh, the Logos is divine reason revealed to man. We find logos in the branches of knowledge: biology, the logos of living organisms or geology, the logos, the reason, the purpose of solid earth. All things he designs is opened to the human mind for exploration. “He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be” John 1:3.

4. Man is in need of redemption

In relation to an ordered cosmos, God makes man in His own image and likeness: with reason designed to know the truth and a will capable of choosing the good. He is not evil by nature but formed out of the generosity of God for a certain purpose. By means of these special faculties man’s destiny is to act out of freedom and in response to God’s will.

Though man is created good – both as a good creation and designed to be a righteous soul - he now lives in a fallen state. In the Fall woman and man are broken by sin; now they are destined for death, separated from intimacy with God, and punished with labor and pain. In this shattering man’s capacity to know and choose is not altogether obliterated, as Saint Augustine explains. Man lives on in a kind of half-death with a darkened intellect, weak will, and disordered passions.

Unable to rise, man now needs salvation. Soon after this tragedy, God promises His help: the protoevangelium, the first Gospel. Then, it is Christ who makes it possible for Man to rise to his full stature. “What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” John 1: 4-5. He does not leave us simply with the tools to fix the fallen state ourselves (pelagianism), but mysteriously, by Grace, transforms man from within, giving him His very life.

God is an ever-active worker, consistent with his promise, in seeking to call men back to Himself in every age. As seen in Acts, the Holy Spirit works to convert a new people. He works through His Body, the Church to end the conflict within man, in society between men and in nature.

II. Educational Principles

Drawing from Christian principles, here are implications for the school.

1.  The process of education is the contact with reality, its end is the discovery of Truth.

We seek to know reality as the Author gives it. We do not study a social construction or democratic processes as a way of seeking who controls how things come to be. Nor do we teach the professional opinion of a singular teacher either. It is the teacher’s job to bring students into contact with reality. In so doing, wonder at the profundity of the truth and deep inquiry arise.

2.  Knowledge of the truth is an integrated unity.

Knowledge is not the gathering of facts, no matter how many they may stack up. Intelligence is not knowing a game to be won or puzzle to solve, no matter how complex. Because reality is inherently interconnected, one can gain the habit of mind to see all things in relationship to each other.

The school is to engage all of human reasoning. One mind can reason in different ways, collecting various forms of reasoning: the scientific, musical, technical, artistic, and humane. The various branches of knowledge each reveal a unique reflection of the created order, and no one branch of knowledge can be understood alone. Mathematics, for example, has something to do with Metaphysics. The inter-relationality of all subjects is necessary to understand the whole of reality. It teaches both mastery of individual areas and proper integration of all areas in the cosmic order.

3.  Reason and Faith are means of knowledge.

Both Reason and Faith are true sources of knowledge; they are necessarily complementary. Reason is God’s first gift to man and separates him from the animals, furthermore it may be renewed by Christ to become enlightened even in a fallen state. Faith is not emotive, it is God’s divine reason and a transcendent gift. In using both reason and revelation to understand reality, the student comes to a clearer, richer understanding of the subject at hand. Without Faith to shed its light, rationalism reduces the Truth into what is measurable by a given method. Fideism omits aspects of reality that reason can grasp.

4.  Education results in an integrated human person

As reality exists as an ordered unity, the human person has aspects that are designed to be in order. This education integrates intellect, will, emotions, appetites - body and spirit. Due to the fallen state, these faculties must be trained and formed. Augustine emphasizes that Grace enlightens the intellect, strengthens the will, and orders the passions. The aim of a true education includes a training in sharpness of mind, clarity of conscience, a practice in ordering the passions. It is a formation that brings the whole human person into a proper and integrated ordering.

Though it may not be appropriate to directly train the will or the passions of a student as a kind of military school may train by command and habit, training the mind to know the good and creating a culture that loves the good can be enough for integration. Furthermore, pure strength of will in a kind of stoic sense is not necessarily a goal either. A softening or humbling of the will before God and his works may naturally happen amid study and student life.

We seek to produce fully formed students: no brain on a stick, or “men without chests” as CS Lewis has termed it. Though knowledge has categories, the student will not be over-specialized. The over compartmentalization in society and in modern man generally results from a divorce of reason and wisdom; it is a reduced reason that doesn’t have the horizon of the infinite in mind. Students should graduate with a deep sense of the dignity and mystery of the human person and for what he is made.

5.  A Catholic Education is an initiation into a divine mystery.

The transformation of the whole person cannot be completed without prayer and the Sacraments. An education like this is not merely academic nor a technical training for a career to practice later. It includes an initiation into the mystery of life with God. As Christ comes in the flesh, faith is not only thought about, but practiced. Both the visible and invisible worlds are presented to the students and in this the Sacramental quality of our world can be perceived and God’s majesty experienced among the lessons. The Liturgy in the school works here as the source graces necessary to enter such a mystery.

*Saint Augustine is a fitting patron for our times. He lived in an Apostolic age and fought misconceptions of Christianity through his entire religious life. His writings and wisdom should be a central work for the thought and life of the school, especially among the faculty.