Letter 14 to Nebridius is one of St. Augustine’s earliest letters, written around 386 or 387, from his retreat at Cassiciacum, when he was not yet a priest. He had just abandoned Manichaeism and had not yet developed a mature Christian theology; philosophically, he was a newly Christianized Neoplatonist.
In Cassiciacum, near Milan, Augustine lived in seclusion in a philosophical community with his friend Alypius, his son Adeodatus, his mother Monica, and other friends. Nebridius probably lived around Carthage in North Africa.
When Augustine returned to Africa, Nebridius joined the Augustinian community, but he died young, around the year 391, by which time both were already priests. They had been close friends since their youth. Nebridius was brilliant, demanding, skeptical, a rigorous philosopher, to the point that Augustine always considered him the principal philosophical interlocutor of his life.
Letter 14 responds to a previous discussion, perhaps initiated by Nebridius in an earlier letter now lost. Augustine, newly converted, reformulates his positions, and this motivates this intimate, respectful, yet intellectually demanding and non-definitive dialogue. He uses more Neoplatonic than biblical categories, but he places philosophy at the service of his faith. In this sense, Augustine now thinks “against his past.”
The Augustine who wrote the letter did not yet hold any ecclesiastical or doctrinal responsibilities. His method of dialogue and active listening was flourishing, and Christianity was transforming and reorganizing his ideas, for which he made use of this intellectual friendship with Nebridius, which, incidentally, was rare in this period of the late Roman Empire.
This text has been edited and updated and is not a literal quote from the letter.
I’ve chosen to reply to your last letter now, not because I’m ignoring or disliking your previous ones, but because responding to you is more difficult than you think. You ask me to write longer each time, but I don’t have as much free time as you think, nor as much as I’d like, for reasons that aren’t relevant right now.
You wonder why you and I, being unique, do so many things the same, and you give the example that the sun doesn’t act like the other stars. But if we do the same things, then the sun actually does things similar to the other stars. I walk and you walk: it moves and they move; I am awake and you are too: it shines and they do too; I argue and you argue: it revolves and the other stars revolve.
Two celestial bodies never coincide exactly in the same action. And when we walk together, we don’t quite coincide either: one goes ahead, we constantly adjust our rhythms, without it being noticeable.
You might argue that the obvious differences between the sun and the stars are less so between us and can only be perceived mentally. But our senses also allow us to perceive them. However close together we may be, even if we walk on the same tiles, neither our movements, nor our heartbeats, nor our figures or faces are identical. And even if, instead of you and I, we were identical twins, each of us would still move in our own unique way.
And if you are surprised that no star illuminates the day as the sun does, tell me: has there ever been among men anyone as great as that man whom God assumed, so different from all the saints and sages?
If you compare him to others, any person is farther from him than the stars are from the sun. You ask me if that supreme truth, supreme wisdom, by whom everything was created and whom we call the Son of God, contains a universal idea of the human being, applicable to each one of us. Great question!
I believe that to create humankind, the general idea of what it means to be human was enough; yours or mine weren’t necessary. But throughout history, different forms of human being have emerged. It’s a complicated topic; I can’t find a clear example to explain it unless we resort to the arts we carry within us.
In geometry, for example, there is only one idea of an angle or a square. When I think of angles, I only refer to that idea of an angle, and I couldn’t mention a square without thinking of that idea of four angles.
Every human being was created according to that idea; and if we speak of society, we use a single idea, not that of the unique human being, but that of human beings living together. If you are a part of the universe, and the entire universe is composed of parts, God, Creator of the Universe, could never disregard that idea of the parts of a whole.
Therefore, although the idea of humanity resides in Christ, this does not affect each individual; in Him, in a wonderful way, all things are reduced to unity.
You can think all this over more calmly later. I ask that, for now, you be content with this.
