Curriculum Overview

Ratio of the Augustine Institute:
Faith, Hope and Charity in the Curriculum

The Augustine Institute, founded in 2005, the 1650th anniversary year of Augustine's birth, provides academic and formational programs which combine the disciplines of theology, history and pedagogy in order to form those who will, in their turn, form others. This interdisciplinary approach to the teaching of teachers is aimed at preparing them for the fullest reception of the virtues of faith, hope and charity and for the task of aiding others in preparing themselves to receive those same gifts.

Sacred Scripture and Theology - Faith

Theology, traditionally referred to as the queen of the sciences, is that body of knowledge which has as its object the content of revelation as received in Sacred Scripture and Tradition. St. Thomas Aquinas cites Augustine's De Trinitate in saying that "wisdom is said to be the knowledge of divine things" in support of his contention that "he who considers absolutely the highest cause of the whole universe, namely God, is most of all called wise." It is this wisdom that the faculty of the Institute aims at, both in its own study and in the programs of study it provides to students. It is the ordering of reality in the Divine Wisdom, Who is incarnated in Christ, that makes creation a possible subject of intellectual inquiry and which gives rise to the work of education. Any education which is worthy of the name - and in whatever field - will seek to impart the meaning, unity and purpose of created things as ordained and revealed by God. It is for this reason that theology gives purpose and direction to our study at the Augustine Institute. The content of theology is taught not merely because that is what most of our graduates will teach, but because it is the discipline which discloses the end toward which any human effort must be ordered. Still more, theology proposes for intellectual consideration the content of the faith (fides quae) which strengthens and deepens our profession of faith (fides qua).

Catholic History and Culture - Hope

History, when approached rightly, is that discipline which discloses the interrelation and significance of created things in time. Revelation in the Bible is disclosed in the form of a historical narrative. Theology, which takes as its object that disclosure of God in history, is a discipline that has been elaborated over time in a series of particular cultural contexts. Liturgy is likewise an enacted history which celebrates and makes mystically present the saving events of the past. To understand St. Paul, St. Augustine, St. Thomas, Martin Luther or John Paul II, one must have some sense of the cultural circumstances that they addressed, otherwise that study can devolve into abstractions. History is, we could say, the context of Christian thought and knowing it protects against the dual threats of dogmatism and a meaningless eclecticism. An awareness of our history situates us in a cultural-historical context that gives shape to our thought and apostolic work.

Still more, as Augustine recognized, history is the very medium of our relationship with God, and since it is there that we meet Him, a proper appropriation of its content perfects the power of memory and leads to praise of God for all that He has done for His creatures in time. History in the curriculum of the Augustine Institute, both as a particular strand in that curriculum and as the medium for disclosing the subject matter in the other parts of the curriculum, is intended to respond to the call issued by the General Directory for Catechesis (107-108) that all catechesis be grounded in the narration of salvation history in its three phases: Old Testament, New Testament and the history of the Church. When viewed in its full integrity, even with all the human faults and failings that so clearly disclose the Church as the corpus permixtum that Augustine both lamented and loved, the study of the history of God's work in time yields that hope which is born of the sense that we have not been abandoned to our weakness, but have been cared for by a loving Father at every point in that complicated history.

Pedagogy and Leadership - Charity

Pedagogy is that practical skill which enables a man or woman of faith and hope to share those gifts with others in the active charity of evangelization and catechesis. At the Augustine Institute this mode of catechetical teaching which we call "narrational" is not just proposed as a professional instrument but is utilized by the professors themselves in the curriculum. This serves both to unite the content and methodology of instruction and to give the students a direct experience of the mode of catechetical formation that they will be asked to employ. This form of instruction "is radically inspired by the pedagogy of God as displayed in Christ and in the Church" (GDC 143) and unites the disclosure of Catholic doctrine with salvation history, liturgy, and Christian experience.

Here again St. Augustine is our guide. In his De Catechizandis Rudibus (On Catechizing of the Uninstructed), he tells the deacon Deogratias, the teacher to whom the work is addressed, that "whatever you narrate, narrate it in such a manner that he to whom you are discoursing on hearing may believe, on believing may hope, on hoping may love." And so it is that we hope that those who hear the pedagogical narration as it is utilized in the disclosure of Sacred Scripture and Tradition in theology and in the study of history at the Augustine Institute will be so moved by faith, hope and love of what they have heard to offer it to others in love. This understanding of pedagogy makes it not merely an instrumental science divorced from the acquisition of other subjects of the curriculum but integrates it with the content of the Christian message and unites those who employ it with the work of the Holy Spirit who is always drawing souls to the Father through the Son.

Personal Formation

Although the study of theology, history and pedagogy is formative in itself, the Augustine Institute differs from some other strictly academic programs in that it also stresses the personal human and spiritual growth that makes of its graduates worthy instruments in the hands of God for the advancement of the catechetical and teaching apostolates. This component of our curriculum includes not just teaching practica but also, for some of our full-time resident students, life in common in households with shared prayer and directed spiritual formation. This is furthered by the shared academic work of the institute and the opportunities provided for shared meals and other forms of fellowship. This emphasis on personal growth is not an optional part of the master's program but integral to it and one of the elements that provides confidence to those who seek to employ our graduates in school, parish and diocesan settings that they will find in our graduates mature men and women able to meet the challenges of today's world.