24. Conf. 5.13.23–6.5.7 (CCL 27:70–78); trans. Bourke FOTC 21:124–37.
Confessions 17 tofore made them seem absurd, when I used to charge Your holy people with thinking in a certain way, though they did not actually hold such opinions. And I listened with joy to Ambrose, saying often in his sermons to the people, as though he were most carefully commending it as a rule: "The letter kills but the Spirit gives life" (2 Cor 3:6). When, having lifted the mystic veil (2 Cor 3:14), he laid bare the spiritual meaning of those things which seemed to teach error when taken literally, he said nothing that offended me, though I still did not know whether his statements were true. I was keeping my heart from all assent, fearing a sudden fall, yet by this suspension [of an assent to faith] I was, instead, being killed. . . .
(5.7) Still, as a result of this, I now preferred the Catholic teaching, feeling that it was more moderate and less open to error in the fact that it ordered belief in what was not demonstrated . . . rather than to make a mockery of belief by a rash promise of scientific knowledge, and then to command [as the Manichees did] that so many fabulous and absurd things be believed because they could not be demonstrated.24
Augustine's Concubine
One common but inaccurate view of Augustine was that, as a young man, he was highly promiscuous. That is hardly the case. In Confessions 4.2.2, he mentions having a live-in girlfriend ("concubine" is the technical term). The woman was likely of a much lower social status, and marriage between them may have been legally impossible. They had a child, a son named Adeodatus (the name means "gift from God"), and Augustine says that he was faithful to her during the nearly 14 years they lived together. In Roman law, concubinage did have certain legal protections but was not recognized as genuine marriage. As he pursued his career in Milan, his mother set about playing matchmaker, trying to arrange a socially acceptable marriage partner appropriate to her son's rising career status. The fiancée came from a wealthy family in Milan but was two years under the marriage age. This meant Augustine had to wait and had to break off his years-long relationship. That upper-class men had concubines was commonplace, that they abandoned them for a socially respectable marriage was also presumed, but that Augustine actually talked about it and let his genuine feelings for his concubine become public is striking. From Confessions, Book 6:
(13.23) I was unceasingly urged to take a wife. I had already proposed marriage and was now engaged, chiefly through the efforts of my mother, for, once married, the saving waters of baptism might cleanse me. . . . A girl
24. Conf. 5.13.23–6.5.7 (CCL 27:70–78); trans. Bourke FOTC 21:124–37.