When faced with the seemingly intractable predicaments of the Age of Limits, we like to think that more knowledge and education will save us. But what if the real problem isn’t what we don’t know, but what we want? Augustine of Hippo called it the iron will.
Living in a time when the western Roman Empire was crumbling, Augustine wrestled with a problem that resonates today: knowing the good, yet failing to do it. His insight ties into one of the themes of the book Faith in a Changing Climate, that the book does not end with a ‘happy chapter’ because all proposed solutions seem to fail. Why?
Augustine famously said, “I was bound, not by another’s irons, but by my own iron will” (Confessions, Book VIII, ch. 5). In other words, the chains that hold us are not ignorance or lack of skill — they are the desires of our own hearts.
Augustine inherited a Neo-Platonic vision of reality, in which all creation participates in the Good; hence Evil is a privation, a distortion of that Good. But he realized that knowing the Good is not enough. Humanity is born into a condition that he called original sin: our wills are disordered, and our self-love (amor sui) often turns us away from God and creation. Education can polish the intellect, but it cannot heal the heart. Only grace, God’s unmerited gift, can restore the power to choose rightly.
This has profound implications for our current Age of Limits. We do not lack information about climate change or ecological fragility. We know what needs to be done. And yet, as Augustine would have said, the problem is not ignorance but will. We struggle not because we cannot see the solution, but because our hearts resist the restraint and sacrifice that is required.
If Augustine is right, then education alone will not save us. Knowledge without grace can deepen pride, giving us the illusion that cleverness alone is enough. What we need is a form of grace that transforms desire, cultivates humility, and teaches us to live within bounds — a grace that reorients our hearts toward care for creation and for one another.
Augustine knew that education still matters, but its aim must shift. It should form character, not just convey facts; cultivate humility, not just skill; shape the will, not just the intellect. Augustine might call this an education in reverence — the recognition that life, and the world that sustains it, is gift.
In an age dominated by data, algorithms, and technical solutions, Augustine reminds us that moral and spiritual transformation is not optional. It is the foundation of any meaningful action. Grace may yet become the defining word of our Age of Limits: the power that allows us to live wisely, humbly, and sustainably within the world we have been given.
