Study of Augustine’s Confessions, part I
Who reads books by Max Lucado, or Charles Stanley, or the book the Prayer of Jabez? Who has read the Purpose-Driven Life or completed the Experiencing God study? These are contemporary works that are written to contemporary Christians to encourage them in their faith and to urge us to strive towards the deeper things of God.
If these books are helpful, and good for us to read, why is it that we do not ever read anything older than 2 or 3 decades? Augustine was such an author as the above, only he lived 1600 years ago. And his words of encouragement and personal journey have much to say to us today as well.
Who is Augustine?
St. Augustine was born in 354 A.D. in North Africa, and died in 430 A.D. He was one of the, if not the biggest, influences on Christianity outside of the Apostle Paul in the last 2,000 years. He wrote dozens of books, and hundreds of letters and sermons explaining his interpretation of what Christianity is and should be.
What are the Confessions?
Augustine’s Confessions is basically an autobiography of his life from birth through conversion to Christianity.
Why do I need to know anything about the Confessions?
The Confessions is possibly the most influential piece of Christian literature ever written. Many of the people that you read today have been influenced in a positive way by Augustine.
From a personal perspective, one of Augustine’s points in writing the Confessions is to demonstrate to himself and his readers that God was sovereign throughout all of the events of his life. God had a plan for Augustine’s life, although during most of his course he had no idea there was a divine hand on him. Augustine wants us to understand that God is moving in our lives as well, even though we usually don’t see it, and don’t understand why things happen the way they do.
What was Augustine’s purpose in writing the Confessions?
“My Confessions, in thirteen books, praise the righteous and good God as they speak either of my evil or good, and they are meant to excite men’s minds and affections toward him. At least as far as I am concerned, this is what they did for me when they were being written and they still do this when read.”
Chapter 1
Augustine begins the Confessions by devoting a chapter to praising God. One of the reasons this book is so widely read concerns Augustine’s use of language – here is an example:
What, therefore, is my God? What, I ask, but the Lord God? “For who is Lord but the Lord himself, or who is God besides our God?”[1] Most high, most excellent, most potent, most omnipotent; most merciful and most just; most secret and most truly present; most beautiful and most strong; stable, yet not supported; unchangeable, yet changing all things; never new, never old; making all things new, yet bringing old age upon the proud, and they know it not; always working, ever at rest; gathering, yet needing nothing; sustaining, pervading, and protecting; creating, nourishing, and developing; seeking, and yet possessing all things. Thou dost love, but without passion; art jealous, yet free from care; dost repent without remorse; art angry, yet remainest serene. Thou changest thy ways, leaving thy plans unchanged; thou recoverest what thou hast never really lost. Thou art never in need but still thou dost rejoice at thy gains; art never greedy, yet demandest dividends. Men pay more than is required so that thou dost become a debtor; yet who can possess anything at all which is not already thine? Thou owest men nothing, yet payest out to them as if in debt to thy creature, and when thou dost cancel debts thou losest nothing thereby. Yet, O my God, my life, my holy Joy, what is this that I have said? What can any man say when he speaks of thee? But woe to them that keep silence--since even those who say most are dumb. – Book I, Chapter IV
Augustine employed the second book to discuss the year after his 16th birthday, which he describes as a time of youthful idleness, lust, and mischief. He reflected on one incident, in which some friends joined him in stealing pears from a pear tree:
There was a pear tree close to our own vineyard, heavily laden with fruit, which was not tempting either for its color or for its flavor. Late one night--having prolonged our games in the streets until then, as our bad habit was--a group of young scoundrels, and I among them, went to shake and rob this tree. We carried off a huge load of pears, not to eat ourselves, but to dump out to the hogs, after barely tasting some of them ourselves. Doing this pleased us all the more because it was forbidden. Such was my heart, O God, such was my heart--which thou didst pity even in that bottomless pit. Behold, now let my heart confess to thee what it was seeking there, when I was being gratuitously wanton, having no inducement to evil but the evil itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved my own undoing. I loved my error--not that for which I erred but the error itself. A depraved soul, falling away from security in thee to destruction in itself, seeking nothing from the shameful deed but shame itself. – Book II, Chapter IV
Augustine spent almost an entire chapter about this story, going into detailed thought about the nature of sin. Here are a couple of points that he made that I would like to highlight:
1) The pleasure was not in obtaining the pears. Instead, it was the act of committing the crime that gave Augustine a thrill.
2) Peer pressure was part of the thrill. He would not have stolen the pears on his own, but only because of his companionship.
James 1:13
In Augustine’s own words, at age 19 he began a search for Truth. What he found was a cult – Manicheasm. This despite the fact that his own mother was a catholic Christian, and prayed for Augustine daily. Augustine was counted among the Manicheans for 9 years. Here is what he had to say about this time in his life:
O
Truth, Truth, how inwardly even then did the marrow of my soul sigh for thee
when, frequently and in manifold ways, in numerous and vast books, [the
Manicheans] sounded out thy name though it was only a sound! And in these dishes--while I
starved for thee--they served up to me, in thy stead, the sun and moon thy
beauteous works--but still only thy works and not thyself; indeed, not even thy
first work. For thy spiritual works came before these material creations,
celestial and shining though they are. But I was hungering and
thirsting, not even after those first works of thine, but after thyself the
Truth, “with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”[2] Yet they still served me
glowing fantasies in those dishes. And, truly, it would have been better to
have loved this very sun--which at least is true to our sight--than those
illusions of theirs which deceive the mind through the eye. And yet because I
supposed the illusions to be from thee I fed on them--not with avidity, for
thou didst not taste in my mouth as thou art, and thou wast not these empty
fictions. Neither was I nourished by them, but was instead exhausted. Food in
dreams appears like our food awake; yet the sleepers are not nourished by it,
for they are asleep. But the fantasies of the Manicheans were not in any way
like thee as thou hast spoken to me now. They were simply fantastic and false.
In comparison to them the actual bodies which we see with our fleshly sight,
both celestial and terrestrial, are far more certain. These true bodies even
the beasts and birds perceive as well as we do and they are more certain than
the images we form about them. And again, we do with more certainty form our conceptions
about them than, from them, we go on by means of them to imagine of other
greater and infinite bodies which have no existence. With such empty husks was
I then fed, and yet was not fed. – Book III, Chapter VI
Augustine could not be persuaded by any one person to leave the Manicheans. According to Augustine, there were 2 reasons that he left the cult:
1) his mother’s prayers
2) his own doubts and questions could not be answered by the Manicheans
Augustine chose as a profession to be a professor of rhetoric. He taught rhetoric in north Africa while in his early to mid-20’s. He not only continued as a Manichean during this period, but he attracted others to the cult as well, which he would later regret.
Manicheism:
- founded by Mani in mid-200’s A.D.
- extreme dualism (good vs. evil, both equal in power)
- salvation through special knowledge of spiritual truths
- fusion of all known religious systems of its time, including Zorastroanism, Babylonian folklore, and Buddhism.
Book IV is profitable to read, containing much reflection on physical beauty and the wonder of God’s creation. However, due to time constraints, we will now move on to Book V.
Augustine has wanted to meet an “expert” in Manicheism, and one by the name of Faustus finally pays him a visit. However, this “prophet” cannot adequately answer Augustine’s questions, and Augustine becomes completely disillusioned with the cult. Faustus can speak eloquently, but has no substance to back it up. Remember, Augustine is a professor of rhetoric, and he easily figures this out. Here are his comments:
Already I had learned from thee that because a thing is eloquently expressed it should not be taken to be as necessarily true; nor because it is uttered with stammering lips should it be supposed false. Nor, again, is it necessarily true because rudely uttered, nor untrue because the language is brilliant. Wisdom and folly both are like meats that are wholesome and unwholesome, and courtly or simple words are like town-made or rustic vessels--both kinds of food may be served in either kind of dish. – Book V, Chapter VI
About the same time that Augustine despaired of Manicheism, he was persuaded to move to Rome to teach. He was frustrated with the students in Carthage, because they did not have a love of learning. They were disruptive and rude. He heard that students in Rome were more dignified, and that the fees for teaching were higher. So off to Rome he went.
This displeased his mother considerably. She prayed day and night that Augustine would change his mind. How could Augustine be converted to Christianity if he left his mother? He made this pointed observation about her prayers:
And what was it, O Lord, that she was asking of thee in such a flood of tears but that thou wouldst not allow me to sail? But thou, taking thy own secret counsel and noting the real point to her desire, didst not grant what she was then asking in order to grant to her the thing that she had always been asking. – Book V, Chapter VIII
What Augustine didn’t expect was that in Rome, the students were also smart enough to figure out how to get away without paying professor fees. So Augustine was persuaded to move to Milan, Italy, where he was to meet the bishop Ambrose, a giant among Christians in the 4th century. He was the Adrian Rogers or Charles Stanley of his day – a great preacher well known all over the world. However, keep in mind that when Ambrose met Augustine, Augustine was not a Christian. But Ambrose was very friendly to Augustine, teaching him with humility and gentleness. Augustine appreciated his rhetorical skills more than the content of his message – but eventually the content would persuade him of his sin. By the end of Book V, Augustine decides to become a catechumen of the Church.