Augustine in His Own Words
Augustine composed Confessions between 397 and 401, beginning it soon after he became bishop of Hippo Regius.2 The backward gaze of the bishop governs everything. It is a book only someone at mid-life might write. He sees God's subtle touches in unexpected places and in chance moments. He is alert to ambiguities and to mysteries. And while he repeatedly confesses wrongdoings and wrong thinkings, he also—often subtly—defends himself. Confessions can also be read as a document of grief, a chance to mourn life's losses: the death of friends like Nebridius, of his mother Monnica, and of his teenage son Adeodatus.
Be alert to Augustine's voice.3 He asks more questions than he answers. He knows how tentative claims to truth are, whether psychological or historical, philosophical or theological. Especially striking is the way he speaks not to us, his readers, but to God. Properly speaking, Confessions is prayer, not autobiography. And so we readers come to the text as over-hearers, standing behind Augustine, listening in as he prays aloud to the God of his heart. Biblical texts swirl and wind their way through every paragraph. The Book of Psalms, the Bible's own prayer book, is the most quoted and provides a repertoire of melodic themes for Augustine's own deeply musical prose.
Confessions may be Augustine's most precisely titled work. It is what it says it is—a confession—and one with many sides, at once a confession of praise, a confession of sin, and a confession of faith. I have singled out a sampling of the most famous scenes and best known passages, unfortunately but necessarily pruned of much of their profound psychological and theological analysis.
The Restless Heart
Augustine opens Confessions with an overture of praise, exploring who God is and who we are. Here appears his best known one-liner: that our hearts are restless until they
2. Pierre-Marie Hombert, Nouvelles recherches de chronologie augustinienne, CEASA 163 (Paris: Institut d'Études Augustiniennes, 2000), 9–23, has challenged this traditional dating in light of newly discovered texts and new perspectives. He argues that books 1–9 were most likely composed between 397 and 400, while books 10–13 were composed later, in 403.
3. Goulven Madec, "Augustin évêque," in Augustin prédicateur (395–411): Actes du Colloque International de Chantilly (5–7 septembre 1996), CEASA 159 (Paris: Institut d'Études Augustiniennes, 1998), 27, has argued that Augustine did not, with pen in hand, write Confessions; rather, "after having profoundly and for a long while meditated on his experience, appropriating biblical language, identifying himself with the biblical person, Augustine dictated Confessions 'ex abundantia cordis' ["with an overflow of heart"], in a virtuosity of word; the work must be read aloud, in full voice. It comes under [the category of] 'oral literature,' as do his sermons" (my trans.). I find this bold assessment quite plausible.