The Humble God: Healer, Mediator, and Sacrifice

St. Augustine and Christ's Saving Humility

Sometimes it takes a lot of humiliation to learn a little humility. After the widely publicized clerical sexual abuse scandal of the past year, the Catholic Church has been challenged to learn again what it means to be a humble, pilgrim church. Certainly, whatever vestiges of the Church triumphant presently remain in the American Church, it is clear that church leadership—lay and clerical—cannot be based on self-preserving power and prideful isolation. Only a humble and repentant leadership can regain the trust of the faithful, and such leadership is possible only through a more explicit following of Christ, the humble one.

While many of the early Church Fathers spoke of humility as the Christian virtue,¹ no one was more insistent about its primacy in the Christian life than St. Augustine, whose views bear directly on the needs of the American Church at this time. By relating humility to almost every aspect of his theology, Augustine deeply influenced the understanding of Christian humility in the Western Church.² As one whose writings were sparked in large part by polemics, pastoral concerns, and inquiries from church leaders as well as ordinary believers and unbelievers, Augustine did not treat the topic of humility with scholastic precision. Nonetheless, the term itself pervades his work and is consistently presented as key to understanding Christ and the Christian way of life.³

Augustine understood humility as a distinctly Christian attribute. It was inconceivable to him that humility could be valued apart from a belief in the Incarnation. In reference to the various moral systems of his day, Augustine writes, "Everywhere are to be found excellent precepts concerning morals and discipline, but this humility is not to be found. This way of humility comes from another source; it comes from Christ. . . . What else did he teach but this humility?"⁴ In other words, only through the grace of believing in this divine descent could we appreciate humility as central to human perfection. In the Confessions , Augustine explains that Christian love begins and builds on the "foundation of humility which is Christ Jesus."⁵ All other Christian virtues are built on and sustained by this foundational Christian attribute that grows out of God's self-disclosure in Jesus Christ.⁶ To know Jesus is to know his humility, for he is the archetype and master of humility ( magister humilitatis ).⁷

What is so singular about Augustine's teaching on humility is that he so clearly views Christ's humility as more than a moral example to be imitated; it is the central way that our reconciliation with God occurs. Christ's humility is both salvific and exemplary.⁸ It is the way and the truth. Augustine's distinctive contribution to the topic of humility, then, is his direct linking of humility to soteriology:

On every side the humility of the good master is being assiduously impressed upon us, seeing that our very salvation in Christ consists in the humility of Christ. There would have been no salvation for us, after all, if Christ had not been prepared to humble himself for our sakes.⁹

Christ's humility is a "saving humility."¹⁰ Moveover, the way that God saves us is inseparable from salvation itself: "our very salvation in Christ consists in the humility of Christ."¹¹

To understand better the salvific nature of humility, Augustine directs us to three fundamental aspects of Christ's humility. First, it is confrontational —stressing the contrast between humility and pride: "Because pride has wounded us, humility makes us whole."¹² Just as the source of spiritual blindness and bondage is human pride, so the source of spiritual sight and freedom is divine humility. Second, it is mediatory —bridging the chasm that pride creates between humanity and God. Third, and most important, it is kenotic . Here we see...