The Confessions of
Augustine
By George Dunn and Brian
McDonald
Augustine’s Significance
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Most influential Christian writer aside from
the New Testament authors
• A North African who lived through the declining
years of Roman Empire
• Last great thinker of “antiquity” and first of
Medieval thinkers
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His Confessions a new genre
• Takes the form of an autobiography
• Unprecedented in its depth of insight into
human psychology, the dynamics of desire and
the “enslaved will”
• So much so that he has been dubbed “the first
modern man.”
Augustine’s Life as Framework for
The Confessions
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Born of pagan father and Christian Mother
He left and then returned to his mother’s faith
Confessions written soon after conversion (age
32)
• Could also be called “Testimonies” because he not only
confesses sin but testifies to grace of God
• Significant that it is written in the form of an extended
prayer. Why?
 Augustine’s interest in two things: God and the soul
 Prayer focuses the attention on both
 God can only be known through prayer and only
through addressing God in prayer can we truly see
ourselves
 Truly to know God is inseparable from loving him.
Human Life as Based on Love
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Basic truth no. 1: all human beings are lovers
• To be human is to love some object and to be centered
on it
• Human love comprises many objects
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Sex, friendship, food, reputation, entertainment
None give lasting satisfaction because they don’t last
The human will is subject to the love: “Affections
moving the will”
Only Eternal God can satisfy the deepest of our
longings
• So for Augustine, true life is prayer in which we direct
the whole stream of our love to God.
• Confessions is the erratic journey of Augustine “love life”
away from and back to God
Infancy as a Clue to Human Life
and Human Sin
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Begins with infant suckling as emblematic
of the “gift” nature of love (if no sin)
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The desire is a gift
The milk is a gift
The desire to share with infant is a gift
“Original” life is the gifts of God, flowing
through each to each like the flow of milk
Disrupting intrusion of sin
• “Demand” replaces grateful receiving
• “Demand” replaces God with self
• Rest of Confessions: “Demands’s” self-centered
quest for satisfying love
Another “Representative” Story: the
Theft of Pears
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Like “milk” this is another “parable.”
Would also have reminded its Christian audience of another “fruit
theft” story, the Garden of Eden
Structured around question: “What did I love in you O theft”
• Motive was not hunger, but the thrill of stealing itself
• This puzzles Augustine for all acts, even sinful ones, are done
“through the desire of gaining or the fear of losing some . . .
Lower goods” (1010)
• Conclusion is that sin is a desire to “grab” what God has:
 Pride aims at his loftiness
 Cruelty aims at the “fearfulness” of God
 Lust aims at the “caressing” effects of God’s charity.
 So even our sin testifies to God because it is a ‘perverse
imitation” of God: a pretense that we can produce what
only God can.
• So what Divine quality was Augustine trying to “imitate” in
stealing pears? The divine POWER: a pretense that, like God
himself, he was under no law (1012)
Boiling in a “Cauldron of Illicit
Lusts”
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Carthage, the next stage, is a “cauldron”
not just of sexual lusts, but of ambition
and hunger for reputation
His further journeys lead him into the sect
of “Manicheeism” and then to Rome and
Milan where Ambrose becomes his
teacher.
Intellectual surrender to Christianity is not
accompanied by inner “surrender” and the
mystery of the will which won’t submit to
what the intellect accepts his the forucs of
Book 8:
The Conversion
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Augustine’s prayer: “Make me chaste, but not yet…”
Augustine’s conflict:
• His lusts “plucking at my garment of flesh….shall we not be
with you forever?” (1019)
• Compare to quitting smoking or any other deeply rooted habit
Augustine’s deliverance
• His will must be converted from the outside for it lacks the
power to change the “affections” which move it in the old
directions
• Two “outside experiences” come upon him and effect this
deliverance
 A vision of “chastity” or “continence” as a “serene and
joyous maiden” accompanied by young men and women
 A voice heard in a garden crying “Take up and Read”: and
he picks up a copy of Paul’s letters and takes as a divine
sign the words his eyes alight on: “Not in chambering
[promiscuity] and impurities, not in contention and envy,
but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision
for the flesh. . “ (1020)
 He takes this as a direct message from God and is
empowered to surrender his life to God
A Comparison of Augustine and
Socrates
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Continuity and contrast with Greek sensibilities,
especially as represented by Socrates
Curiosity and desire to “know” is shared by both. In both
certainly en emphasis on “the examined life”
Differences
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In Augustine knowledge is essentially a revelation from God
and not an achievement of human reason
Goal of life is “righteousness” not virtue, and this too is a gift of
grace
Redemption and not the “golden mean” (Aristotle) is the goal of
life and again is a Divine gift rather than human
accomplishment.
The will cannot regulate itself so must be remolded by
overpowering action of God
2) Keep remembering phrase “affections moving the
will” and Augistine’s view of sin as “disordered” love.
This will also be helpful as you “look forward” to Dante
when we come to him