In this essay, the fourth of five essays, I briefly outline and discuss Saint Augustine's book, Confessions. What may be his most widely-read book, Confessions is a marvel to read, being both autobiographical and didactically self-examining. Take up. Read. Confess, and be forgiven. This is the way.
One may most simply begin his look into the work of Augustine’s Confessions by asking what a confession is. In response, Martin Luther states that confession is a double-pronged act: “The one is that we confess our sins; the other, that we receive absolution or forgiveness from the pastor as from God Himself, not doubting but firmly believing that our sins are thus forgiven before God in heaven” (Luther, 1984, p. 282)(emphasis added). These two elements may be summarized as humility before God, and receiving His gifts of grace. As Christians, are we called to confession? Luther says, yes. “We confess our sins because God in His Word urges us to do this. We confess our sins because we know and believe there is forgiveness for our sins” (p. 283). This urging to confession is also found in Joshua 7:19, Ezra 10:11, James 5:15-16, and 1 John 1:9, among many other passages.
No greater example of intimate confession can be found from the late, ancient world than Saint Augustine’s Confessions. Saint Augustine begins this work by stating that a part of being a human creature is “hauling in a circle the evidence of his sin, and the evidence that you stand against the arrogant”(Ruden, 2018, p. 3). And yet, as Augustine reminds us, this state of creatureliness is not without hope or purpose because our Lord and Creator has made us for Himself and in such a way as to be directed to Him: “In yourself you rouse us, giving us delight in glorifying you, because you made us with yourself as our goal, and our heart is restless until it rests in you” (p. 3). The rest of this seminal work follows this same theme: confession of his own creaturely shortcomings and needs, and then the acknowledgement of God’s overwhelming grace and providence in the life of His people. A good example for us all.
Confessions was written shortly after Saint Augustine had become a bishop in Hippo, likely around 397. At this time, Augustine was middle-aged and was writing to a human audience that had come to expect this sort of work from middle-aged men of influence (Brown, 2000, p. 154-155). But instead of writing an autobiography focused on the magnitude of his exploits or thoughts, Saint Augustine focused on the divine sovereignty of God, and how God works through the various shortcomings and sinfulness of his life in order to prepare him for the work that He had in store for the newly appointed bishop. The overarching argument of this whole work is that “each and every moment of one’s life, and one’s life as a whole, has its true meaning in relation to the eternal living God” (Levering, 2013, p. 110). In other words: “The earth and everything in it, the world and its inhabitants, belong to the Lord; for he laid its foundation on the seas and established it on the rivers” (Psalm 24:1, CSB).
Confessions is structured in thirteen books. In the first two books, Augustine discusses his infancy through young-adulthood. Here, he discusses his coming to sexual maturity and a now-famous event in which he and some friends steal pears for no other reason than the joy of doing something unlawful (Ruden, 2018, pp. 42-47). It is in these early sins that Augustine begins to recognize the work of God in his life, though he admits (confesses, even) that he had no recognition of God working at the time. Though Augustine knows that He did not know God in his youth, he does recognize the constant correction from his parents, especially his mother Monica. These corrections, he later recognizes, were God’s warnings (p. 40).
Books three through six chronicle Augustine’s early adulthood, his education, his learning to love the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom, his becoming a teacher of rhetoric and Manichaeism, and his ultimate disappointment with the Manichaeian religion which then leads him to look more seriously into Christianity. These books introduce the reader to an Augustine who “wasn’t in love yet, but […] was in love with the prospect of being in love” and in this desire for love, and the attempts at fulfilling that desire that came as a consequence, found only emptiness (Ruden, 2018, p. 51). Of this, Augustine says that “I swooped recklessly into love, only panting to be its prisoner” (p. 52). Along with fulfilling his physical need for love, Augustine began pursuing his mental love of learning which eventually lead him to Manichaeism. This system of belief seemed to offer the options to the difficult questions of pain and suffering in the world. But even here, Augustine would eventually come to realize that this too was emptiness, because it made nothing of God.
I knew my soul needed to be lifted up to you and thus relieved, but I had neither the wish nor the push in me; and even less so in that you weren’t any kind of solid or steady resource when I contemplated you; you weren’t you, but an empty apparition, and my god was my mistake. (p.87)
Saint Augustine came to discover that, though his desire for knowledge lead him to some wisdom, it could not fulfill all of his needs or desires. “It’s a happy one […] who knows you, even if he doesn’t know any natural philosophy”(p.111).
Books seven through nine examine the rest of Augustine’s life, leading up to the time of his writing Confessions. During this time, Augustine’s mother Monica dies. She is later canonized as a martyr, and it is clear why she has become such a significant part of the Church. It is through Saint Monica’s tireless pursuit of God and her tearful pursuit of her son’s salvation that Augustine credits for his eventual conversion. Book seven is especially helpful for the modern reader because in it, Saint Augustine delves into the problem of evil and how a supposedly good God could tolerate a world with evil in it. He asks: “Where does evil come from, then, if a good God made all these good things”(Ruden, 2018, p. 175)? Working his way out of Manichaeism and into a new form of Platonism, Augustine learns that neither of these systems offer adequate solutions. After discovering the answer to his questions in the God of all wisdom, Augustine proclaims:
Nothing of this [hope in Jesus Christ] is in those philosophical writing. Those pages don’t have the face of this reverence, the tears of confession, your sacrifice, the crushed and broken spirit, the heart worn down to the dust, the rescue of your people, the city to be married to you, the earnest money of the Holy Spirit, the cup of our ransom. (pp. 201-202)
In Christ, Saint Augustine found “a hard-fought epiphany that emerged after trying everything else, after a long time on the road, at the end of his rope”(Smith, 2019, p. xii).
In books ten through thirteen, Saint Augustine discusses the intricacies and mysteries of the memory, the influence of sin on the senses, the nature of time and the Genesis account of creation. In these, we see a man who is not seeking to take for granted what God says of Himself or of His creation. Instead, Augustine understands that if the Word of God is true - if it is the Truth - then it must surely be able to withstand the highest and deepest critiques and investigations. And though this sort of investigation may have been commonplace during his time, Augustine’s conclusions are what set him above his contemporaries, and even those great philosophers that came before him.
In 399 BC, Socrates was sentenced to death for supposedly corrupting the youth of Athens by questioning the authority’s interpretation of goodness and justice. Plato, among the most famous of Socrates’ students, records his final words in his work, Phaedo. There, Socrates is quoted as saying:
I think it is very difficult to acquire clear knowledge about these matters in this life. And yet, he is a weakling who does not test in every way what is said about the afterlife, and persevere until he is worn out by studying it on every side. For he must do one of two things; either he must discover the truth about these matters, or if that is impossible, he must take whatever human doctrine is best and hardest to disprove and, embarking upon it as upon a raft, sail upon it through life in the midst of dangers– unless he can sail upon some stronger vessel, some divine revelation, and make his voyage more safely and securely. (Stier, March 12, 2017)(emphasis added)
Here, we see plainly the desire for a sure foundation of knowledge and truth. Like Socrates, Augustine spent his life searching to discover truth and wisdom. But unlike Socrates, Augustine found them both, because both are found in Jesus Christ.
Augustine will unapologetically suggest that you were made for God - that home is found beyond yourself, that Jesus is the way, that the cross is a raft in the storm-tossed sea we call “the world” […] The Christian gospel, for Augustine, wasn’t just the answer to an intellectual question […]; it was more like a shelter in a storm, a port for a wayward soul, nourishment for a prodigal who was famished, whose own heart had become, he said “a famished land.” It was, he would later testify, like someone had finally shown him his home country, even though he’d never been there before. It was the Father he’d spent a lifetime looking for, saying to him, “Welcome home.” (Smith, 2019, p. xii)
Like Socrates and Augustine, we long for Truth and to answer the yearnings that emanate from our hearts.
Saint Augustine’s work, Confessions is an honest searching of his own heart. It is a quest that seeks to discover the fountain of truth amidst the difficult trials and pains of his own life. In this way, Confessions is a necessary read for all travelers, for all pilgrims, for all who are hungry, and for all who are thirsty. This searching of the heart, though it was his own heart, was done in order to both confess to His Maker, but also to draw others into community with that Maker. Confessions contains appeals to others to join him; those whom he knew were as lost in their searchings as he once was (Brown, 2000, p. 153). It is now our opportunity to follow in his footsteps on the road. True and honest self-examination, like the example that we have in Saint Augustine, will lead the wanderer into the home of our Lord. As another pilgrim and journeyman once said:
No man can survey himself without forthwith turning his thoughts toward the God in whom he lives and moves; because it is perfectly obvious, that the endowments which we possess cannot possibly be from ourselves; no, that our very being is nothing else than subsistence in God alone. […] [T]hose blessings which unceasingly distill to us from heaven, are like streams conducting us to the fountain. Here, again, the infinitude of good which resides in God becomes more apparent from our poverty. In particular, the miserable ruin into which the revolt of the first man has plunged us, compels us to turn our eyes upward; not only that while hungry and famishing we may thence ask what we want, but being aroused by fear may learn humility. (Calvin, 2008, p. 4)
"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. Come now, let us settle the matter,”
says the Lord. 'Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.' (1 John 1:9; Isaiah 1:18)
"Friend, your sins are forgiven" (Luke 5:20).
This is the way.
Art:
Forgiveness, by Mario Sanchez Nevado. 2018.
The Death of Socrates, by Jacques Louis David. 1787.
References:
Augustine. Confessions. (2017)(Ruden S. Translation). Modern Library: New York.
Brown, Peter. Augustine of Hippo: A Biography. (2000). University of California Press:
Berkeley, CA.
Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. (2008)(Henry Beveridge translation).
Hendrickson Publishers Inc: Peabody, MA.
Levering, Matthew. The Theology of Augustine: An Introductory Guide to His Most
Important Works. (2013). Baker Academics: Grand Rapids, MI.
Luther, Martin. Luther’s Catechism. (1984)(David P. Kuske Translation). Northwestern
Publishing House: Milwaukee, WI.
Stier, Leon. (2017, March 12). Socrates, Jesus and Paul. Email Meditations. https://
emailmeditations.wordpress.com/2017/03/12/1431-socrates-jesus-and-paul/