Augustine in His Own Words (continued)
Confessions
(6.11) I marveled that other mortals were still alive when he, whom I had loved as if he would never die, was dead. And I marveled all the more that I, who was his other self, should still live when he was dead. . . .
(8.13) Time takes no holiday. It is never idle as it glides through our senses. It works wonders within one's mind. See how it came and went "from day to day" (Ps 60:9), and in coming and going it subtly introduced into me other hopes and other memories. Gradually it restored me to the kinds of pleasures which I formerly enjoyed, and my sorrow gave way to these.17
Ambrose of Milan
By age 30, Augustine had reached the pinnacle of his profession. He won the prestigious post of orator for the city of Milan. At the time, Milan was the emperor's residence, and Augustine knew that he would rub shoulders with the most powerful men in the Roman Empire, that if he played his politics right, he could win some high government post. Milan changed Augustine indelibly. His conversion took place there. The one who prompted his turn to orthodox Christianity was Ambrose, bishop of Milan (d. 397).18 Ambrose had come from a senatorial family, was highly educated, and could do what Augustine could not: read Greek. He was attuned to theological advances in the Greek East and passed these on to his congregation. These included a way of reading the Bible allegorically ("spiritually"). Ambrose drew inspiration especially from the commentaries of Origen (d. 254), the Alexandrian biblical scholar. Ambrose's sermons were a revelation to Augustine, who had been raised with what we today would call a fundamentalist view of the Bible. Ambrose's symbolic readings of Old Testament texts subtly debunked Manichean objections and provoked Augustine's intellectual conversion. From Confessions, Books 5–6:
([Book 5] 13.23) So I came to Milan, to Ambrose the bishop, known throughout the world as among the best of men, reverent in his worship of You. At that time his eloquent words were busy distributing to Your people "the fat of Your wheat" (Ps 80:17, 147:14) and "the gladness of Your oil" (Ps 4:8) and the "sober intoxication" of Your wine.19 Unknowingly I was led by
17. Conf. 4.4.7–8.13 (CCL 27:43–46); trans. Bourke, FOTC 21:78–84. For an analysis, see James Wetzel, "Book Four: The Trappings of Woe and Confession of Grief," in Paffenroth and Kennedy, Reader's Companion to Augustine's Confessions, 53–69.
18. See Boniface Ramsey, Ambrose, Early Church Fathers (New York: Routledge, 1997); Goulven Madec, Saint Ambroise et la philosophie, CEASA 61 (Paris: Institut d'Études Augustiniennes, 1974); J. Patout Burns, "Ambrose Preaching to Augustine: The Shaping of Faith," in Augustine: Second Founder of the Faith, ed. Joseph C. Schnaubelt and Frederick van Fleteren (New York: Peter Lang, 1990), 373–86.
19. "Sober intoxication": The phrase is from Ambrose, Hymn 1.7.23–24 (Splendor paternae gloriae). For a translation, see Carolinne White, Early Christian Latin Poets, Early Church Fathers (New York: Routledge, 2000), 47–48.
You to him so that through him I might knowingly be led to You. This "man of God" (2 Kgs 1:9) received me in a fatherly way and welcomed my visit with episcopal dignity. I began to like him, though not at first as a teacher of the truth, for I had definitely given up hope of finding the truth in Your Church, but rather as a man who was kind to me. I carefully listened to his public discourses not with the intention that I should have had but, as it were, to test out his eloquence, to see whether it was in keeping with his fame, whether he was more or less fluent than rumor had it. Upon his words I hung all my attention, but as for the things he spoke about, I was indifferent and contemptuous. I was delighted by the sweetness of his language, which, though more learned, was less entertaining and charming than that of Faustus20—but as regards content, I mean, the subject matter, there was no comparison between them, for Faustus was carried away by Manichean fallacies, while this man taught the soundest way of salvation. But salvation is far removed from sinners (Ps 118:155) such as I was at that time. Yet I was drawing closer, gradually and without knowing it.
(14.24) Although I was not interested in learning about the things he spoke of but only in listening to the way that he spoke (indeed, that empty interest was all that remained with me now that I was without hope that a way to You lay open for human beings), the meanings that I was not concerned about came into my mind along with the words that I loved hearing. Nor could I keep these distinct. As I opened my heart to catch his eloquence, the truth that he spoke entered in at the same time, though only gradually. What first happened was that I began to see that his teachings were capable of defense. The Catholic faith, which I presumed could not say anything against Manichean attacks, I now began to regard as defensible. This was especially so when I heard one after another of the obscure passages from the Old Testament being explained, passages which I, by taking them literally, had found to kill (2 Cor 3:6). Thus, when many texts from these books had been explained in a spiritual sense, I now came to censure my despair, which had led me to believe that the haters and mockers of the Law and the Prophets were completely incapable of being resisted. I did not yet feel, however, that I should embrace the Catholic way simply because it could have its learned exponents who refuted criticisms fully and without absurd claims. Nor was the view which I then held on to proved wrong just because one side of the defense could hold its own. Just as the Catholic side did not appear to me to
20. "Faustus": Faustus of Milevis (d. ca. 390) was a Manichean bishop. In conf. 5.6.10, Augustine says that local Manichees had promised that Faustus would be capable of answering Augustine's growing list of scientific and philosophic conundrums that challenged Manichean doctrine. Faustus proved disappointing, and that disappointment fueled Augustine's departure from the Manichees. For excerpts from Faustus's writings, see Chapter 6.
have been conquered, so too it did not yet seem to be the conqueror. Thus, adopting the approach of the Academics21 (as they are commonly thought of), I was in doubt about everything and took no definite position, but I decided that the Manichees were to be abandoned. I did not think that I should remain in that sect during this period of doubt, for I now preferred some of the philosophers to it. But I refused to completely commit the care of my sickly soul to those philosophers because they were without the health-giving name of Christ. Therefore, I resolved, for the time being, to be a catechumen in the Catholic Church22 which had been recommended to me by my parents until some light of certainty might appear to which I could direct my course. . . .
([Book 6] 3.3) In my sighing I had not yet begun to pray for You to come to my assistance. But my mind was intent upon the quest and was anxious for discussion. I regarded Ambrose himself as a man who was fortunate in the view of the world, greatly honored, as he was, by so many men of importance. Only his celibate life seemed a burden to me. As to the hope he bore within him, the struggles he had with temptations associated with his lofty position, his consolation in adversities, the sweet joy with which the hidden mouth of his heart partook of Your bread, I had no inkling or experience. Nor did he know my anxieties, nor the pitfall which threatened me. I was unable to seek what I wanted from him, in the way I wanted, since there were throngs of busy people who cut me off from his ear and mouth, people to whose weaknesses he ministered. And when he was not with them, which was a very small bit of time, he was either refreshing his body with necessary sustenance or his mind with reading. As he read, his eyes scanned the pages and his heart searched out the meaning, but his voice and tongue were silent. Often, when we were present (and he never forbade entry to anyone nor was it the custom for a visitor to be announced), we saw him reading quietly in that way and never in any other. After sitting silently for a long time (for who would dare to impose a burden on one so engrossed?) we would depart, thinking that in the small time that he had to himself to refresh his mind, free from the noise of other people's troubles, he preferred not to be distracted by something else; that perhaps he was afraid lest some listener, follow-
21. "Academics": The skeptical successors of Plato and his Academy. The leading figures were Archesilaus (d. 242 b.c.e.) and Carneades (d. 137 b.c.e.) who came to embrace a wide-ranging skepticism. Cicero, while best known for his oratory, embraced the philosophy of the Academics. Augustine's earliest extant work is a refutation entitled Against the Skeptics (Contra Academicos); see Chapter 2.
22. "A catechumen in the Catholic Church": Augustine was not baptized as a child, but instead made a catechumen (or "hearer") (conf. 1.11.17). Adult baptism was still the norm, and the baptism of children tended to be limited to cases of emergency baptism. Catechumens attended only the Liturgy of the Word and were dismissed prior to the Liturgy of Eucharist, which was secret. See William Harmless, Augustine and the Catechumenate (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1995), esp. 80–82, 150–51; also "Catechumen, Catechumenate," AugEncy, 145–49. Augustine here emphasizes that because of Ambrose's preaching, he left the Manichees and returned to being a catechumen.
ing it with great interest, might ask him about some more obscure passage he was reading, and then it would be necessary to explain it or to lecture on the more difficult problems and, having given time to this task, he would read fewer volumes than he desired. However, it was quite possible that the more likely reason for his silent reading was for the sake of preserving his voice, which, in his case, was easily made hoarse. Anyhow, whatever his purpose was in doing this, this man had a good reason for doing it.
(3.4) But the truth is that no opportunity presented itself for me to ask the questions I desired of Your holy oracle in his breast, except when he would give brief attention to something. My mental anxieties needed considerable free time on his part, so that they could be poured forth to him, but they never found it. I did indeed hear him "rightly preaching the word of truth" (2 Tm 2:15) to the people every Sunday, and I grew more and more certain that all the knots of deceitful calumny, which those deceivers of ours23 had tied around the divine books, could be undone. Indeed, when I learned that the passage about human beings made by You to Your image (Gn 1:26) was not understood by Your spiritual children, whom You had regenerated from Mother Church through grace, as if they believed and thought in terms of a limitation by the shape of a human body (though I had not even a vague and obscure suspicion of how a spiritual substance is constituted), I was glad to blush at the fact that I had barked for so many years, not against the Catholic faith, but against the pure fictions of fleshly thoughts. What had made my actions even more rash and irreverent was that I had spoken out in accusation about things I ought to have been probing into. You, however, who are very exalted and yet near, who are very much hidden and yet most intimately present, who do not have bodily limbs, some greater and some smaller, you who are entirely in every place and yet belong to no place, certainly You are not this corporeal shape, even though You have made the human person to Your image and see how he is fixed in place from his head down to his feet.
(4.5) . . . So I was confounded, I was converted, I was overjoyed, O my God, that the only Church, the Body of Your only Son, in which the name of Christ had been impressed upon me as infant, did not savor infantile trifles, and did not maintain, as a part of its sound doctrine, that through giving You the shape of human limbs it could press You, the Creator of all things, into the space of a definite location, which, however large and vast, was still bounded on all sides.
(4.6) I rejoiced, too, that the ancient writings of the Law and the Prophets were no longer put before me to be read with that vision which had here-
23. "Those deceivers of ours": the Manichees.