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ST. AUGUSTINE'S EPISTEMOLOGY  
AND THE EDUCATION PROCESS 

 

 

 

 

Abstract 
St. Augustine's epistemology can be seen in his doctrine of 

divine illumination, where he distinguishes knowledge got 

through the senses, inferior reason, and superior reason. 

Augustine was interested in education and he was a teacher 

very interested in how learners get the best knowledge from 

the teaching and learning process. He held that love of God, 

expressed through love of neighbour was to be the bedrock 

of the teacher-pupil relationship, but he did not clearly state 

the bridge or connecting link between the teaching and 

learning process. So, through critical analysis. This essay 

intends to explore Augustine's divine illumination theory as 

the missing link between teaching and learning. It employs 

the method of exposition and critical analysis. 

 

Keywords: St. Augustine, Epistemology, Basis, Teaching, 

Learning, Divine Illumination 

 

Introduction 

History has it that Aurelius Augustine, popularly known as Saint 

Augustine or Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, was born in A.D. 354 

at Thagaste, in North Africa. Thagaste was a town forty-five miles 

south of Hippo in the Roman province of Numidia, which is the 

current Algeria. Augustine's father was Patricius (a pagan), and his 

mother was Monica (a Christian). Through his mother's persistence 

in pressuring Augustine to become a Christian, Augustine ended up 

becoming a Christian, and through his writings a rich intellectual 



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foundation of Christianity was established in the West. Augustine 

became enthused about philosophy through his reading of Cicero's 

Hortensius, when he went to Carthage for further studies in his late 

teens. Then he taught rhetoric in Carthage and later in Rome and 

Milan. 

 As a thinker, Augustine was more of a restless seeker than a 

systematic thinker. He restlessly sought to unravel the problem of 

evil, which may be said to have characterized his intellectual and 

moral struggle in life. This restless search brought Augustine to 

romance briefly with the dualistic philosophy of Manichaeanism, 

and then dived headlong into the Neoplatonic philosophy of 

Plotinus. To bring a solution to his struggle with the problem of evil, 

Augustine synthesized the ideas of Neoplatonists with Christianity; 

upholding the teachings of the Bible but equally realizing that broad 

education was needed to maintain these teachings in the intellectual 

and political climate of his time.1  

 For Augustine, the ultimate purpose for education is turning 

towards God, because in his analysis for the presence of evil, 

Augustine notes that evil is not a being but human exercise of the 

free will in rejecting God Who is the Ultimate Good.2 Augustine 

believes that education helps save humans from the self destructive 

path of rejecting God in human's exercise of the free will, and he 

dedicated himself to delivering a good number of teaching and 

learning aid to facilitate the education of humans. This point is 

presented by Raymond Canning thus: 
 

Augustine of Hippo offers a rich resource for 

philosophical, theological and pastoral reflection on 

teaching and learning. Already in December 386, 

four months or more before his baptism, he had 

proposed, in On Order 2,7,24-19,51, a program for 

education in the liberal arts, the object of which was 

the vision of beauty, the vision of God. Shortly 

afterwards, in his Soliloquies, he had explored the 

epistemological foundations of such a program, 

focusing on the highest of the liberal arts, i.e., 

philosophy, the subject matter of which for him was 

God and the soul. Then, in the late 380s, in the 



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dialogue with his son, Adeodatus, called The 

Teacher, he developed an accompanying theory of 

language and interpretation, a theory that would be 

further worked out and applied in his classic 

treatment of the interpretation of Scripture in On 

Christian Doctrine dating from the mid to late 390s. 

It is not surprising, therefore, that in 415-418 as he 

explores different mental analogies in his work, On 

the Trinity, he should draw attention also to the amor 

studentium, i.e., “the sort of love... that the studious 

have, that is people who do not yet know but still 

desire to know some branch of learning.... The 

more... the thing is known without being fully 

known, the more does the intelligence desire to know 

what remains.... The object of our inquiry is what it 

is that [someone] loves in that which he is studious 

to know.”3 

 

Augustine placed education within the realm of the search for love, 

and indicates that education comes through the instrumentality of 

teaching and learning. Through teaching, the phenomenon to be 

known is exposed, while through learning, the exposed phenomenon 

is grasped. But a close consideration of the elements of teaching and 

learning in Augustine's philosophy of education may leave one 

asking: “Are the elements of teaching and learning in Augustine's 

philosophy of education parallel to themselves or do they have a 

point of convergence?” This paper argues that there is a point of 

convergence for the elements: teaching and learning, in Augustine's 

philosophy of education, and that point of convergence lies in 

Augustine's epistemology. But before digging deep into this, let us 

consider two philosophical trends that influenced Augustine. 

 

Platonic and Aristotelian Influence on Augustine 
Augustine is ordinarily considered to be a Platonist, and he even 

made allusion to the strong influence of Neoplatonism on him thus: 

“In the regular course of study I came upon the book of a certain 



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Cicero... that book of his contained an exhortation to philosophy. It 

was called Hortensius. In fact that book changed my mental attitude, 

and changed the character of my prayers to Thyself, O Lord.”4 

Augustine held firmly to Neoplatonism and was pleasantly surprised 

by its unexpected agreement with Christian doctrine:  
 

Therein I read, not, indeed, in these very 

words, but quite the same thing, supported by 

means of many and manifold reasons, that: In 

the beginning was the Word and the Word was 

with God and the Word was God. Furthermore, 

I read that the soul of man, though it gives 

testimony of the light, is not itself the light, but 

the Word, God Himself, is the true light, that 

enlightens every man who comes into the 

world.... Again, I read there that the Word, 

God, was born not of the flesh, nor of blood, 

nor of the will of man, nor of the will of flesh, 

but of God.5 

 

Neoplatonism offered Augustine the soft landing he needed to 

accept the Christian faith, yet retain his pagan literary culture. So 

Augustine belongs to the Platonic school of thought, but Robert C. 

Trundle notes that “Augustine is normally associated with Plato's 

essentialism rather than Aristotle's 'organismic' empiricism. But... 

both Aristotle and Plato presented paradigm metaphysical options. 

And an open-minded reading of Augustine's philosophical theology 

belies some mediation between them.”6 The metaphysics of Plato 

was attractive, especially to a thinker like Augustine, for the fact that 

it made a distinction between two realities together with a soul that 

knew eternal ideas, just as the Scripture made a distinction between 

unchanging spiritual reality and a changing corporeal reality. Yet, 

Plato's metaphysics loses its attractiveness in the face of the claim 

in the New Testament that all things will pass away, and that 

includes knowledge, leaving only Love (agape) that will endure 

forever. Also, the New Testament teaching of the resurrection of the 

body, which is ultimately connected to Love, cannot find a place in 

Platonism which regards the body as a 'dark' receptacle, obscuring 



St. Augustine's epistemology and the education process      |     143 
 

 

the cognitive 'light' of the soul. For these difficulties with Plato's 

metaphysics, an alternative is found in Aristotle's metaphysics, 

based on the fact that: 
 

...it is easier for the later Greeks as well as for 

Augustine to embrace an Aristotelian paradigm in 

which the mind, without recourse to a pre-existing 

soul, distinguished immutable universal ideas 

from mutable objects. For one thing, this was a 

simpler thesis. For another, this thesis would give 

an omniscient God some possible role in 

illuminating such objects. Further, these objects 

qua unities of form and matter implied a unity of 

body and soul. Though the later implied the death 

of soul and body alike, it rendered a personal 

resurrection viable and significant. [But].... the 

significance of the resurrection was tainted by an 

Aristotelian view of a single reality that, while 

involving a cosmological principle of causation, 

proceeded ad infinitium into the past. Besides an 

infinite past conflicting with creatio ex nihilo, it 

further anchored in otherwise transcendent God in 

a single reality.7 

 

Having pin-pointed the attractive and unattractive metaphysical 

options of Platonism and Aristotelianism, Tundle submits that “it is 

reasonable to suppose that Augustine limitedly embraced both. The 

Platonic ontology of two realities explained the transcendence of 

God as well as both an inferiority of corporeal reality and sin-laden 

human condition;”8 which reveals the inherent fault in human 

knowledge and self deception in wanting to use just only human 

knowledge to solve moral and political problems, while doing away 

with God. The Aristotelian epistemology explained the merciful 

immanence of God, despite its fruitless pursuits of godless utopias. 

It acknowledges the ordered and rationality at play in the world, and 

these tended towards empiricism, yet the medium of articulating 

them cannot solely be limited to bodily senses. This is in close 



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association with Augustine's claim in the On Free Choice of the Will, 

that persons “are forced to admit that the order and truth of numbers 

have nothing to do with the bodily senses;”9 a claim that is not meant 

to mean that the real mathematical ideas are to be found in another 

'real world of ideas' but that mathematical ideas cannot just be 

merely explained out on the base of a materialist account of 

perception. To explain the fact that ideas cannot be limited to strict 

materialist account of perception, Augustine in the City of God 

exhibits an Aristotelian-like understanding of the 'infusion' of the 

material body of human beings with an inner light or intelligence;10 

and with this persons are able to numerically articulate the various 

parts of mutable bodies that are said to constitute a body, no matter 

how small it may be. But then, Augustine will count it as folly when 

human beings confuse the rational inner light, used both in nature 

science and mathematics, with the wisdom of God. This reveals 

Augustine's leaning to Platonic ontology of an unchanging 

(spiritual) realm that is not to be confused with cognitive 

knowledge. Augustine notes this distinction in his On Free Choice 

of the Will, when he identified in Solomon's words in Eccles. 7. 26, 

his futile search for wisdom: “I and my heart have gone round to 

know and to consider and to search out wisdom and number”11  

 To make a claim of having learnt something, would involve 

for Augustine the dual understanding of one learning the rules of 

valid inference as being different from learning the truth of 

propositions. Augustine portrays this difference when he said that 

one “who knows that there is a resurrection of the dead is better than 

another who knows that it follows from the proposition that there is 

no resurrection of the dead that 'then Christ is not risen'”12 Augustine 

acknowledges, from the above, that humans have knowledge claims 

that are based on inferences, yet he is of the opinion that learning a 

proposition's truth is better, especially a truth revealed by God. In 

this regard, Augustine would opine that in secular reason lies an 

inner light which can be said to be a kind of lower wisdom, having 

its link and source in a higher wisdom, which may be supposed to 

be the light of God illuminating the lower wisdom of humans; this 

he expressed thus: 

 



St. Augustine's epistemology and the education process      |     145 
 

 

Just as the objects which men see in the 

sunlight and choose to enjoy are many and 

varied, yet the light in which the sight of each 

man watching sees and holds what he enjoys is 

one; so even if the goods are many and varied 

from which each man may choose what he 

wishes […] nevertheless it is possible that the 

very light of wisdom […] is one wisdom 

common to all wise men.13 
 

Augustine notes that it is the sun that illumines the objects that 

humans see and enjoy; and no matter how many the objects are that 

are illuminated by the sun, it is the same one sun that illuminates 

them all. The illumination of the objects cannot and should not be 

equated to the illuminating act of the sun. Bringing this analogy to 

the human act of cognition, Augustine would reckon it foolishness 

for humans to elevate human cognitive inner light to an absolute 

light of God, and hence start perceiving themselves as gods. From 

the foregoing it can be see that Augustine is principally influenced 

by the thoughts of Plato, yet it cannot be said that he was not in any 

way influenced by Aristotelian thoughts. 

 

Augustine and the Acquisition of Knowledge 
In De Magistro, Augustine dealt with the issue of epistemology and 

the acquisition of knowledge. The style adopted by Augustine in De 

Magistro was to analyze language, its semantics and its semiotics, 

and the reason for adopting this style was for the reason that 

“knowledge acquisition implies learning, learning implies teaching, 

and teaching involves either the telling or the showing of something 

to someone;”14 and for Augustine, the most obvious form of 

teaching would appear to involve telling something to someone. In 

this regard, meaning and concept are important to Augustine, for the 

fact that something bears meaning and it is conveyed through 

concept. 

 While not considering in this study Augustine analysis of 

language as a medium for acquiring knowledge, it is to be noted that 

for learning to take place, there are some requirements to be met 



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according to Augustine; and this he explained with the analogy of 

the birdcatcher. Though Augustine used the imagery of the 

birdcatcher in both De Magistro and De Animae Quantitate in 

varying contexts, yet with regard to learning and the requirements 

needed for learning to take place, he used that imagery to show that, 

 Firstly, it is a nostalgic glance back to his youth which 

focuses upon the place of play and enjoyment in the learning 

process, the learner should be filled with wonder ('admirans' DM 

32) and should want to know ('scire cupiebat' DM 32). Secondly, 

and most significantly, there is the contrast, in the de animae 

 quantitate passage, between the studious life of the young 

adult and the outdoor life of the young child. The contrast highlights 

learning through direct experience and learning through study.15  

 Augustine used the imagery of the birdcatcher often in his 

writings, and this for him would interpret to mean that the 

birdcatcher is “...involved in the act of grasping discrete items of 

knowledge (as represented by birds) and is employing his equipment 

so as to gain this knowledge. The equipment is a metaphor for the 

practical tools which one is in possession of to this end, namely, 

reason and the practical tool of argumentation.”16 Also, “the 

birdcatcher is instructing the spectator in the use of the equipment 

so as to capture the bird, or piece of knowledge, and in this sense is 

a teacher.”17  

 When a teacher wants learning to take place, he or she can 

teach through the form of telling or showing; two forms of teaching 

that are expressed in De Magistro. These forms of teaching can serve 

to encourage or remind a listener to look and thereby learn. But if 

telling as a form of teaching is used in the learning process then it 

means that words must be involved, yet, Augustine perceives words 

as empty signals except if they are already known; that is, a word 

taken alone signifies nothing if that thing is not already known. A 

problem that arises from this, is that if knowledge cannot be learned 

through words, then how can the words of a narrative, especially 

historical narrative, give some knowledge of certain occasion? To 

resolve this kind of problem, Augustine considered a section of the 

narrative from the Book of Daniel (Dan. 3), wherein Ananias. 

Azarias, and Misahel were thrown into the furnace by 



St. Augustine's epistemology and the education process      |     147 
 

 

Nebuchadnezzar because of their faith in the God of Israel. It can be 

argued that the words of the narrative were already known, and so 

there meaning is conveyed. But what of the names of the young men 

thrown into the furnace, the words hardly convey the knowledge of 

these names? To respond to this, Charles Connaghan notes that, 
 

The story itself, which primarily demonstrates the 

power of belief, signals the response to the place of 

narrative within Augustine's epistemology. 

Testimony is, in itself, concerned with belief and not 

with knowledge. Everything which one receives in 

historical testimony is most accurately described as 

something we believe (credere) rather than know 

(scire). This fact is observed by the authorities, upon 

whose testimony one must base one's belief (“...ipsi 

quibus credimus...ait enim propheta”), in Scripture. 

For it is stated (Isaiah 7:9), that unless one believes, 

one will not understand, which signals an awareness 

that these two items (belief and understanding) are 

distinct.... What one understands, one also believes, 

but one does not understand all that one believes. 

Also, what one understands, one knows, but one does 

not know all that one believes – quod ergo intellego, 

id etiam credo; at non omne, quod credo, etiam 

intellego, omne autem, quod intellego, scio; non 

omne, quod credo, scio - …. The conclusions 

provided by the above statements are that, although 

understanding entails knowledge and belief, belief 

does not entail understanding or knowledge. Belief 

would then appear to be a prerequisite for knowledge 

and understanding, although not vice versa, and so 

belief is useful as a progression towards knowledge 

and understanding. This is to say, as knowledge and 

understanding require belief and belief does not 

require knowledge and understanding, then belief 

must be a necessary, though not sufficient, condition 

for knowledge and understanding.18  



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What can be seen as established from the foregoing is that by reason, 

one can affirm that it is useful to believe what is known, even when 

human knowledge is limited, because humans cannot know 

everything. No matter how close or necessary belief may be to 

knowledge, Augustine makes a clear distinction between knowledge 

and belief in a passage from the Retractationes (1.14.3) on the de 

utilitate credendi, because for him knowledge has some additional 

factor which the firm reasoning of the mind adds to true belief. So 

the distinguishing factor between knowledge and belief for 

Augustine is reason, because by this the item in question is 

understood. “Justified true belief cannot, in this sense, be equated 

with knowledge, for such belief does not provide an understanding 

of something. It is only the firm reasoning of the mind, leading to an 

understanding of the item under consideration, which can accurately 

be described as knowledge.”19 

 

Augustine's Philosophy of Education 
Augustine was very interested in education and though self-

education may have been possible during his time, yet, he believed 

that it was better to have an educated work-force of teachers, who 

through their education and combined force can match on equal 

grounds with the 'pagans' of his time who boast of the fact that they 

understand and explain the Scripture without the aid of instructional 

directions from anyone. Augustine would argue to the fact that such 

persons may rejoice in God's great gift in them, yet they must not 

forget that they learnt to read because they were first thought by 

human teachers.20 Though Augustine's philosophy of education 

centered on Christianity, so he advocated that the core of the 

Christian curriculum should be the Bible. Deducing from this, 

Augustine was advocating that if any educational endeavour was to 

be meaningful, then it was to have a core of concentration; and this 

is to be conveyed with sound linguistic method. This idea is largely 

gaining increasing recognition in curriculum development in 

educational systems of the world. 

 In holding the core of the Christian curriculum to be the 

Bible, Augustine was of the opinion that all other branches of 

learning may be used to help in the correct interpretation of the 



St. Augustine's epistemology and the education process      |     149 
 

 

Bible: “Let every good and true Christian understanding that 

wherever truth may be found, it belongs to his Master.”21 Following 

from this, Augustine indicates that discernment must not be played 

down while allowing other branches of learning to be used in 

properly moderating the core of concentration of a curriculum of an 

educational system. To the teacher, especially the Christian 

communicator, Augustine stresses that a teacher must understand 

the principles of language, knowing the meaning borne by ideas that 

are translated from one language into another, and appreciate how 

ideas are communicated to the learner: “Through words we learn 

only words...the knowledge of words is completed only after the 

things they signify are understood.”22 In this regard, there should not 

be a passive spectator in Augustine's philosophy of education, 

because both teacher and learner must be active in the pursuit of 

knowledge and understanding. 

 For Augustine, the possession of virtue by a teacher was a 

principal requisite before a teacher can teach others: “Do not look 

for an evil teacher; if a man is evil, then he is not a teacher; if he is 

a teacher, then he is not evil.”23 Augustine was very particular about 

the teacher possessing virtue before teaching others because the 

teaching of the teacher will be more effective when the teacher 

practices what he or she teaches. 

 

Augustine on Teaching and Learning 
In The Teacher, Augustine gave a more focused consideration on 

teaching and learning, especially in his discussion with his son, 

Adeodatus, when he admonished him “to be discriminating about 

words, to question and test the assumptions underlying assertions, 

and to take delight in contemplating created truth;”24 and then there 

is the call on teachers to “introduce their students to the culture of 

the intellect,”25 because the student's intellect is central to the subject 

of education. This notion can be summarily seen in The Teacher 

thus: 

Do teachers advertise that they verbally transmit 

their own acts of understanding, or the truths of their 

disciplines, for students to receive and retain? What 



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father sends a child to school with the silly aim of 

finding out what the teacher's understanding is? 

Rather, when all subjects, even those concerning 

virtue and wisdom, have been expounded by those 

who profess them, then, students, if they are really to 

be called that, investigate within themselves whether 

what they are hearing is true, strenuously putting it 

to test of their own interior truth. That is the point at 

which they learn. And when they reach an inner 

conviction of truth, they praise their teachers, not 

realizing that, even if the teachers knew what they 

were saying, the praise rightly belongs to the taught 

ones not the one who taught. Men make the mistake 

of calling others their teachers when they are no such 

thing, since there is a near-simultaneity between 

what is said and what is understood, and where inner 

assent follows so quickly on outer discussion they 

think the latter caused the former.26 

 

For Augustine, learning takes place within the learner because of 

what is to be learnt and what that which is learnt is to the learner. In 

Augustine's view, the purpose and goal of all learning exercise is to 

learn of God, that is, to learn that there is God and learn about God, 

because it is really the same God that is the learner's very life. This 

may go to explain why the teaching method that may be deduced 

from Augustine's Confessions is not strictly directed towards self-

transformation in any classical sense of the term, but towards the 

total surrender to God alone who can transform, heal, and properly 

channel one's life away from self-destruction: “For what am I to 

myself without Thee, but a guide to mine own downfall?”27 

 

Augustine’s concept of Divine Illumination: The Bridge between 

Teaching and Learning 
The epistemology of Augustine or his theory of knowledge is well 

laid out in his divine illumination theory, wherein he proposes three 

cognitive operations which are the senses, the inferior reason and 

the superior reason, and he noted that each operation has its own 



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unique and peculiar objective to attain. Augustine held that 

knowledge of things like colour, odour, etc., are got through the use 

of the senses. Inferior reason is used to obtain scientific knowledge 

because scientific knowledge occupies itself with the corporeal 

world and seeks to discover universal laws through the process of 

abstraction. And then, having knowledge of eternal truth comes by 

way of the superior reason, through divine illumination and not 

through reminiscence. 

 Espousing his theory of divine illumination in the 

Confessions, Augustine notes that the mind needs external 

enlightenment for it to participate in truth, because it is not itself the 

nature of truth. You will light my lamp, Lord.28 With this view, he 

defines illumination as that which makes eternal truths visible. In 

this regard, ideas like truth, justice, etc., are made more visible, and 

the truth of judgment shown. In his theory of divine illuminations, 

Augustine notes that the senses know only the qualities of the body 

because they are only concerned with the knowledge of this visible 

world. Yet, he notes that the soul, which is part of the body, is not 

passive with regard to sense knowledge because “the soul is 

absolutely superior to the body and that it cannot depend on the body 

in any of its activities, not even sensible activities.”29 The soul may 

be superior to the body that bears it, yet the soul connects to the body 

because sensation is an activity exercised by the soul through the 

body; for the body receives sensation from other bodies, and the soul 

acquires knowledge of corporeal world through gleaning from the 

sensation received by the body. It is for this reason that Augustine 

holds that it is through mediation that bodies are known: “The soul 

gathers the image, not the sense, of all the sensible objects.”30 This 

shows the pride of place that Augustine accords to the soul, placing 

it as the engine room of human daily activities; and so it takes 

precedence over all other human activity. 

 Another way of acquiring knowledge that Augustine spoke 

about in his elaborations of his theory of divine illumination was 

inferior reason (ratio inferior), which was the means of acquiring 

scientific knowledge. Augustine claimed this to be so because of his 

notion that “Scientific knowledge occupies itself with the corporeal 



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world and seeks to discover universal laws through the process of 

abstraction;”31 thereby making it an imperfect way of acquiring 

knowledge, since it is subject to human limitations and not reliable. 

The world is filled with a lot of imperfections, and since scientific 

knowledge preoccupies itself with the corporeal world that is bound 

by imperfections, then the knowledge characterized as scientific 

knowledge cannot but be imperfect and unreliable, and thus is 

obtained through inferior reason and cannot claim to be superior 

knowledge. Augustine is not condemning scientific knowledge 

outright because science has done many positive things to improve 

the world and living conditions, yet because of the fact that scientists 

are human beings, who are imperfect beings, they are subject to 

failures and imperfections. Scientific knowledge is imperfect 

because it is based only on the corporeal world, and denouncing any 

form of metaphysical knowledge. 

 Augustine holds that metaphysical knowledge is 

fundamental and vital for knowledge to be superior and reliable, and 

because this is lacking in scientific knowledge, it cannot claim to 

give reliable or superior knowledge. Eternal truths are superior 

knowledge and they need superior reason to attain them. 

 The central point in Augustine’s theory of divine 

illuminations rests on the superior reason, and to this, Augustine 

opines that it can attain eternal truth because of the contingency of 

the known object and the contingency of the knowing subject. 

Augustine was not able to explain the knowledge of eternal truths 

with the doctrine of reminiscence, as Plato did, because he rejected 

the notion of the pre-existence of the soul; rather he explained the 

knowledge of eternal truths with his doctrine of illumination. 

Augustine acknowledges the corporeal world but also believed in 

realities that transcend the corporeal world, which are not attainable 

through scientific knowledge but through divine mediation. So for 

Augustine, the attainment of real knowledge comes only through the 

light of reason grounded in divine illumination. 

 Since in Augustine's consideration divine illumination is the 

need for one to attain real knowledge, and it has been established 

from the foregoing above that love of God through love of neighbour 

is to guide the teacher-pupil relationship, then it can be said that 



St. Augustine's epistemology and the education process      |     153 
 

 

Augustine's divine illumination is the basis for the teaching-learning 

relationship. To teach means that the teacher has some form of 

acquired knowledge to be communicated to the learner. The starting 

point for the teacher will be to have love for acquiring the 'real' 

knowledge to be communicated, and then have the love to 

communicate the knowledge despite the human limitations and 

existential challenges that will befall the teacher. But the teacher, 

according to Augustine, will not be able to acquire the 'real' 

knowledge to teach without divine illumination to enlighten the 

teacher's reasoning. With divine illumination, the teacher transcends 

beyond the knowledge of the corporeal realities which come to him 

or her through the senses or use of inferior reason, and is opened up 

to eternal truths or real knowledge through use of superior reason. 

From the foregoing, a teaching process guided by divine 

illumination is revealed by which the teacher can be said to be 

thought the real knowledge that he or she will communicate to the 

pupil or learner. 

 In like manner, there is a learning process also guided by 

divine illumination that takes place with regard to the learner. In this 

case, the learner, moved by love for knowledge, surrenders him or 

herself in love to a teacher from who the learner reposes confidence 

of being led to the knowledge being sought. But the leaning process 

cannot take place if the learner does not allow or dispose him or 

herself to the guidance of divine illumination that carries the learner 

beyond the corporeal world realities that surround and may aid the 

teaching of the teacher, so as to transcend beyond these and with 

superior reason attain the real knowledge being sought. It therefore 

follows, that both teaching and learning are guided and directed by 

divine illumination, by which attainment of real knowledge is made 

possible in the process of teaching and learning. This can be 

perceived when Augustine said: “Truth, when did you ever fail to 

walk with me, teaching me what to avoid and what to seek.... 

Without you I could discern none of these things;”32 

 

 

 



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for divine illumination guided the teaching of what Augustine was 

to avoid, and the same divine illumination guided the learning of 

what Augustine was to seek. 

 

Evaluation 
Augustine acknowledged that sensations of bodily qualities and the 

sensitive knowledge of colours, odour, etc., are obtainable through 

the use of the senses. The inferior reason can be used to obtain both 

the laws of the physical world and the scientific knowledge, while 

superior reason leads one to the knowledge of eternal truths that are 

obtainable through divine illumination. This in a nutshell presents a 

quick view of the epistemology of Augustine. 

 When Augustine, in his theory of divine illumination, uses 

inferior reason and superior reason, he presents two functions in 

which knowledge takes on two opposing directions. Superior reason 

tends toward the divine, the universal, the eternal and the immutable 

realities, while inferior reason tends towards the world, the 

contingent, the mutable realities. Though both inferior and superior 

reasons are necessary to human beings, yet with respect to their 

hierarchical relations, we are faced with a choice involving the 

entire personality.  

 In the process and act of teaching and learning, it is the whole 

personality of a person that is involved. A teacher cannot be teaching 

just with the mouth and other parts of the body are completely left 

out of it, nor can a learner be leaning with just the brain and other 

parts of the body are completely left out. So it involves making a 

choice to opt for the primacy of contemplation and hence orient all 

activity toward the divine and the eternal, or choose the exclusive 

exercise of science, and orient oneself toward the corporeal world. 

Should there be a reduction of the human person to purely scientific 

dimension, then only self-affirmation will characterize the aim of 

human beings, just as the annulment of contemplation in the name 

of science has led people to use the whole in view of the particular. 

The vocation of pure science ought to tend towards contemplation, 

since through the senses it can have knowledge of the corporeal 

world, which should ordinarily lead it to contemplate beyond the 

corporeal world to get to wisdom, but because of the annulment of 



St. Augustine's epistemology and the education process      |     155 
 

 

contemplation from science, it ends up in egoism, anarchy, 

individualism, etc. It may therefore be for such reason that 

Augustine held that love of God, through love of neighbour, was to 

permeate the teacher-pupil relationship, and divine illumination 

guide the teaching and learning process. 

 

Conclusion 
Though Augustine does not have a systematically treated document 

or writing on epistemology or theory of knowledge, yet it cannot be 

said that Augustine did not have a theory of knowledge. To a great 

deal, Augustine's theory of knowledge can be seen in his treatment 

of divine illumination, wherein he espoused that the use of inferior 

reason leads to the knowledge of the corporeal world, while the use 

of superior reason leads to eternal truths, knowable through divine 

illumination. 

 In the teaching and learning process, characterized by the 

giving and reception of knowledge, the divine illumination cannot 

be discounted because it is by it that there is a basis between teaching 

and learning, for the fact that divine illumination is needed to attain 

the knowledge that will be taught, and the same divine illumination 

is needed by the receiver to understand that what is to be received is 

real knowledge. 

 
ENDNOTES 

1. Cf. Leonard, Timothy. “St. Augustine (354-430) – Augustine and Teaching, 

Influence”,     http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/1778/Augustine-St-354-

430.html [Retrieved 29/09/2018]. 

2. Cf. Ibid. 

3. Canning, Raymond (2004). “Teaching and Learning: An Augustinian 

Perspective”, Australian eJournal of Theology 3(August), http://aejt.com.au-

/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/395647/AEJT_3.4_Canning.pdf [Retrieved 29/09/-

2018]. 

4.  Augustine. Confessions, III, V, 7, p. 54. 

5. Ibid. VII, IX, 13-14, pp. 177-178. 

6. Trundle, Robert C. (1994). “St. Augustine's Epistemology: An Ignored 

Aristotelian Theme and Its Intriguing Anticipations”, Laval Theologique et 

Philosophique, 50, 1 (Fevrier), pp. 187-205. https://www.erudit.org-

/fr/revues/ltp/1994-v50-n1-ltp2148/400823ar.pdf [Retrieved 30/09/2018]. 

                                                 



156     |     Ekpoma Review, Volume. 5 No. 1., 2019   

 

                                                                                                             
7. Ibid., p. 188. [But] added by me. 

8. Ibid. 

9. St. Augustine. On Free Choice of the Will, tr. By A.S. Benjamin and L.H. 

Hackstaff, New York, Macmillan Publishing Co., 1985, p. 36. 

10. Cf. St. Augustine. City of God, tr. by G.G. Walsh, S.J., D.B. Zema, S.J., G. 

Monahann, O.S.U., and D.J. Homan, Garden City (NY), Doubleday & Company 

Inc., 1958, p. 516. 

11. On Free Choice of the Will, p. 57. 

12. St. Augustine. On Christian Doctrine, tr. by D. W. Robertson, Jr., New York: 

Mamillan Publishing Co., 1988, p. 70. 

13. On Free Choice of the Will, p. 59-60. 

14. Connaghan, Charles. Signs, Language, and Knowledge in St. Augustine's De 

Magistro, [PhD Dissertation], http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1445358/1/U592678.pdf 

[Retrieved 07/10/2018]. 

15. Ibid. 

16. Ibid. 

17. Ibid. 

18. Ibid. 

19. Ibid. 

20. Cf. De Doctrina Christiana, Pref., 4. 

24. De Magistro, 36. 

26. St. Augustine. De Libero Arbitrio, i, 3. 


