Augustine in His Own Words (continued)
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.
Confessions 3 rest in God. This names one of his deepest convictions: God alone can satisfy the everthirsting human heart. Augustine then invokes God, calling for help as he embarks on this writing project. This leads to a meditation, puzzling at first sight to English speakers. The Latin for "invoke" is invocare, whose root meaning is "to call into" (vocare + in). Playing on this root meaning, Augustine meditates on how an infinite and omnipresent God can be called into somewhere or into some person, as though God were not already present everywhere and within everything. This overture gives a good first taste of the way wordplay and theological meditation combine. Following the example of Augustine's French translators, I have set out the highly poetic prose of this passage in a free-verse format. From Confessions, Book 1:
(1.1) "You are great, Lord, and greatly to be praised" (Ps 47:2, 95:4, 144:3). "Great, Your power, and Your wisdom knows no number" (Ps 146:5).
To praise You is what humanity desires, we, this small portion of Your creation, "carrying our mortality around" (2 Cor 4:10), carrying around the testimony of our sin and the testimony "that You resist the proud" (1 Pt 5:5). And yet to praise You is what humanity desires, we, this small portion of Your creation.
You stir us that we take delight in praising You, for You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless 'til they rest in You.
"Grant me, O Lord, to know and to understand" (Ps 118:34) what to do first: whether to invoke You or to praise You, whether to know You or to invoke You. But who invokes You without knowing You? For the one who does not know You might invoke another in Your stead. Or, rather, are You invoked that You may be known? Indeed, "how are they to invoke Him in whom they have not believed? Or how are they to believe, if no one preaches" (Rom 10:14)? "And they shall praise the Lord who seek Him" (Ps 21:27).
For they who seek Him shall find Him, and they who find Him shall praise Him.
May I seek You, O Lord, by invoking You, and may I invoke You by believing in You, for You have been preached to us. My faith invokes You, O Lord, that faith which You have given me, which You have breathed into me through the humanity of Your Son, through the ministry of your preacher.4
(2.2) How shall I invoke my God, my God and my Lord, since when I invoke Him, I call Him into my very self? What place is in me into which my God may come? Where can God come into me, the God who "made heaven and earth" (Gn 1:1)? Is there anything in me, O Lord my God, which can encompass You? Indeed, can heaven and earth, which You have made and in which You have made me, encompass You? Or since without You nothing that is can be, is it that whatever is contains You? Since, in fact, I am, why do I ask that You should come into me, I who would not be unless You were in me? For I am not now in hell, and yet You are even there. Because "even if I descend into hell You are there" (Ps 138:8). Hence, I would not be, my God, not be at all, unless You were in me. Rather, is it not that I would not be unless I were in You, "from whom, through whom, and in whom are all things" (Rom 11:36)? It is so, O Lord, it is so.
4. "Through the ministry of your preacher": This is ambiguous; it could refer either to Ambrose (conf. 5.13.23–14.24; ep. 147.52) or to St. Paul (conf. 8.12.29). See O'Donnell, 2:17.