St. Augustine of Hippo: Father of the Christian Church (continued)
writings were, in a sense, erotica. His writings were a fusion of the original sin story from Genesis and a chronicle of his own sexual exploits, which had begun at age 16 with the woman he refers to as "Una." In fact, one Augustine historian, Peter Brown, has gone so far as to speculate that Augustine most likely "cruised" churches in his youth intending to pick up women. About his life in Carthage, he wrote, "I came to Carthage, where all around me hissed a cauldron of illicit loves. As yet, I had never been in love and I longed to love .. ."3
In about 374, Augustine returned to his hometown of Thagaste, where he taught grammar at a small institute until 376, all the while striving to convert his students to Manichaeism. He then moved back to Carthage, where he worked as a freelance professor of rhetoric for the next several years and cultivating a reputation as a Manichaean activist.
In the year 380, Augustine published his first book, the now lost The Beautiful and the Appropriate. Though he continued to argue in favor of Manichaean cosmology, he also admitted his doubts that his religion's own cosmic myths were informed by the emerging science of the day. Following a disappointing meeting with the Manichean Bishop, Faustus of Mileve, in 382, Augustine became even more disturbed by the disrespectful behavior of the students in Carthage and further disillusioned by his religion's inability to answer his mounting list of questions. That year, at the age of 28, Augustine left Carthage for Rome, where he expected to find a more intellectual selection of students.
Chapter 3: Conversion
In 383, Augustine arrived in Rome with Una, his son Adeodatus, and a staff of servants befitting his growing social status. Though increasingly disillusioned with Manichaeism, and even known to tease fellow sect members over what he considered its "farfetched tenets), Augustine continued to align himself with Manichaeans, mutually benefiting from their relationship; they benefited from his increasing prominence, while he benefited from their farreaching social connections.
After he had come to the Eternal City, Augustine was disappointed to discover that Roman students were no more excited about learning than their Carthaginian counterparts and habitually fled at the end of semesters rather than pay their tuition fee. But just as Augustine was reconsidering his decision to move to Rome, he met Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, a distinguished Roman senator who had just been appointed prefect (governor) of the city of Rome. Symmachus had been charged with finding a professor of rhetoric (court orator) for the Imperial Court at Milan, the residence of the Emperor of the West, Theodosius the Great. After three discouraging experiences as a teacher in Thagaste, Carthage, and Rome, Augustine was about to come into his own in one of the most cultured and influential cities in the world.
3 Augustine. (Trans. Henry Chadwick). Saint Augustine: Confessions. Page 35: An ivory sculpture believed to depict Symmachus
In late 384, 30 year old Augustine accepted the job of court orator and headed north to assume his position, the most visible academic position in all the Roman world, at a time when such posts typically launched lucrative and powerful political careers. As with other men of his status, he was provided a staff of slaves, stenographers to catch his every utterance, and copyists to commit his every thought to paper. Despite their near falling out years earlier, Monica joined
Augustine in Italy, and though Una and Adeodatus may well have been residing there also, his mother followed custom by arranging her son's engagement to a Christian heiress, who was probably just 10 years old at the time, as dictated by custom. Some accounts suggest that Augustine even dismissed Una and sent her back to Africa around the same time, after which Una became celibate, but in his Confessions he expresses remorse over not being able to keep her around and referred to her in his work as "The One".
Though by this time Augustine had abandoned the doctrines of Manichaeism, he continued to retain the materialistic predispositions, leaving him a spiritual skeptic with no satisfying way to resolve the unanswered questions now dominating his mind. For Augustine, the "being of God" and the "nature and origin of evil" remained as unresolved as ever. By fate or happenstance, it would be Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan and thus the most eminent Christian leader of the day, who would lead Augustine to the answers he sought. Though Augustine would claim he was unimpressed by Ambrose's delivery, it was through his sermons that Ambrose introduced Augustine to Neoplatonic mysticism as presented in the works of the Greek philosopher Plotinus (204-270). Plotinus was Neoplatonism's greatest advocate, and the founder of the system of philosophical theory supporting the contention that there are three principles of spiritual existence: the One, the /ntellect, and the Soul.
A mosaic believed to depict St. Ambrose
According to the Neoplatonic perspective, a view contending that reality is one unitary organic whole with no independent parts, the universe exists as a series of emanations from absolute unity. From the transcendent "One" arises the self-conscious "Intellect" (or "Mind"), and from the "Intellect" comes the "Soul" (or "Life"). The "Soul" is the intermediary between the realms of the "Spirit" and of "Sense". Matter is the lowest and last product of this absolute unity, and since the "One" is also the real and the good, the potentiality of evil is identified with unformed matter as the point of maximum departure of the "One." Thus, evil is the least real of all things because it is simply the absence of good.
Neoplatonic mysticism relies on the principle that the inward is superior to the outward, and to reach the good (which is the rea/), people must return to themselves, for it is the "Spirit" at the heart of man's innermost self that links him to absolute unity. Augustine would have much to say about this philosophy in years to come.
Augustine praised Plotinus in Confessions, but there were stark differences between the two. As one 20th century Jesuit, Richard Clarke S.J., noted in "St. Augustine and Cosmic Redemption": "Towards Neoplatonism there was throughout his life a decidedly ambivalent attitude; one must expect both agreement and sharp dissent, derivation but also repudiation. In the matter which concerns us here, the agreement with Neoplatonism (and with the Platonic tradition in general) centers on two related notions: immutability as primary characteristic of divinity, and likeness to divinity as the primary vocation of the soul. The disagreement chiefly concerned, as we have said, two related and central
Christian dogmas: the Incarnation of the Son of God and the resurrection of the flesh."
As Augustine would later describe in Book VII of Confessions, it was during an act of introspection in 386 that he first found God, the "Changeless Light" at once "both imminent and transcendent", which he immediately recognized as the source of every intuitive truth and goodness. More than just the conclusion of a process of reasoning as he'd expected it to be, his discovery of God proved to be a mystical experience: a vision and sensation that came and went.
Hearing a voice singing "Take up and read" to him, Augustine described what led him to his conversion: "I threw myself down somehow under a certain figtree, and let my tears flow freely.
Rivers streamed from my eyes, a sacrifice acceptable to you and (though not in these words, yet in this sense) I repeatedly said to you: 'How long, O Lord? How long, Lord, will you be angry to the uttermost? Do not be mindful of our old iniquities.' For I felt my past to have a grip on me. It uttered wretched cries: 'How long, how long is it to be?' 'Tomorrow, tomorrow.' 'Why not now? Why not an end to my impure life in this very hour?'
As I was saying this and weeping in the bitter agony of my heart, suddenly I heard a voice from the nearby house chanting as if it might be a boy or a girl (I do not know which), saying and repeating over and over again 'Pick up and read, pick up and read.' At once my countenance changed, and I began to think intently whether there might be some sort of children's game in which such a chant is used. But I could not remember having heard of one. I checked the flood of tears and stood up. I interpreted it solely as a divine command to me to open the book and read the first chapter I might find. For I nad heard how Antony happened to be present at the gospel reading, and took it as an admonition addressed to himself when the words were read: 'Go, sell all you have, give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me'. By such an inspired utterance he was immediately 'converted to you' (Ps. 50.15). So I hurried back to the place where Alypius was sitting. There I had put down the book of the apostle when I got up. I seized it, opened it and in silence read the first passage on which my eyes lit: 'Not in riots and drunken parties, not in eroticism and indecencies, not in strife and rivalry, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh in its lusts'.
I neither wished nor needed to read further. At once, with the last words of this sentence, it was as if a light of relief from all anxiety flooded into my heart. All the shadows of doubt were dispelled."
While the experience of finding God manifested itself in hearing a voice that came and went, it nonetheless spontaneously answered the questions that had long troubled Augustine. And while he believed that the Manichaeans were correct in their belief that God is light and evil is darkness, he was now able to fill in the missing links: the pure changeless light of God is pure spiritual being, while evil is non-entity and merely the "absence of light." To Augustine, this revelation would be life-changing.
Although Augustine's mystical experience, his intuitive awareness of God, was ultimately lifechanging, at the time it was also momentary. He later reasoned that this was due to the fact that he had not yet "made for himself the total identification of supreme value of spirit." Essentially, he was still a "man of the flesh" who harbored sexual lust in his heart and soul. He now understood that like the principles of Manichaeism, Neoplatonism also supported the principle that the way to God must be through escape of the corporal body, and to him, this meant an immediate disconnect from sexual desire.
Though the earliest of Augustine's works, the dialogues on epistemology and ethics written in late summer of 386, reflected little upon the struggles and inner-turmoil he undoubtedly experienced during this period of his life and contained surprisingly few Christian themes, scholars assume that he considered his domination over his sexual nature the final phase of his pursuit of the philosophic life he envisioned for himself since first reading Cicero's Hortensius. And though it is unknown when, precisely, his conversion to Christianity was complete, it is assumed that he was Christian in intention when he received baptism from Bishop Ambrose in the spring of 387. Returning to Milan by the beginning of Lent, an observance lasting for a period of approximately six weeks leading up to Easter, Augustine and the other baptism candidates received instruction in Bible Scripture as presented by Ambrose, a highly disciplined course all Christians of the time were compelled to undergo. All through Lent, candidates refrained from bathing, wore only penitential hairskins, and labored in designated areas of the Church. On Easter Eve, Augustine and the others prayed throughout the night, renounced Satan at dawn, turned towards the sun, and were led to the baptistry (an octagonal pool) at the