135 Christian Anthropology and the (W)Holistic Approach 3 truly personal element that emerges from the connection between Augustine’s own conversion and the whole of his theological and anthropological thinking is what caused his view of man to differ fundamentally from ‘the rigidity of Plotinic contemplation’ (Maertens, 1995, p. 226) and, therefore, from all his philosophical predecessors from Eastern, Hellenistic and also patristic thinking. Renewal of the will is renewal of lust and of the directionality of longing towards God and His truth. Maertens (1965) identified humanistic tendencies in Augustine’s view of man, without referring to him, from a modernist perspective, as a humanist. Altogether, isn’t this first humanism: to activate a power beyond the sensory apparatus at man’s disposal, and even beyond his mind, that is capable of realizing his ultimate possibilities? But therefore one has to dare, like Augustine, the experience with God, and thus leave superficiality. (Maertens, 1965, p. 227) Man, according to Augustine, only really becomes man and flourishes in the tension between the knowledge of God and the knowledge of the self. This tension can gradually reduce, but it will never be completely disappear, even not after death. In Plotinus’ philosophy, stated Maertens (1965), the human ego is finally eliminated, but in Augustine’s view, it maintains its existence, becoming its ultimate fulfilment, coram Deo. This ‘I’ is located in On the Trinity (Augustine, ±400/1887) mainly in the soul, as in it Augustine discussed platonic thinking, while in his Confessions (±398/1961), the Church Father used, above all, the Biblical term heart. Hengstmengel (2015) observed that the soul in Augustine’s vocabulary had a more ‘technical-philosophical connotation’ (p. 36), whereas heart had a more religious one. This observation shows that Comenius came chronologically after Augustine and demonstrated his influences. It also shows that, notwithstanding all of the platonic influences, Dooyeweerd’s cosmonomic philosophy remained close to Augustine’s central conceptions. Man really becomes man when he finds rest in God, and this occurs in the undivided and indivisible core of his existence: his heart. He reaches his fulfilment when he is reconnected to the Eternal. His life, then, achieves another direction and his existence becomes subservient in the world. Dupont (2012) described the Augustinian view on the start of this new life as the return to and ascend from the heart, a phrasing that again evokes Comenius’ pilgrimage. Dupont and Walraet (2015) noted that the Latin word for heart (cor) appears no less than 8000 times in Augustine’s work. In their anthropological analysis, they even indicated that the heart, for
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