Saint Augustine’s Confessions
A Book Review
By Iñigo Isla Cañedo
The history of humanity has been blessed with great minds. Throughout generations there has flourished the literary and creative work of great thinkers and inventors like Aristotle, Plato, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Mozart. Museums are witnesses to the beauty and finery of the magnificent works of art of artists like Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Caravaggio, and many others. However, not even all of these together could compare to the luminosity and splendor that radiates in the chapters of human history through the life and examples of the Saints. The numerous and powerful conversion stories of human hearts who, after seeking for love in all the wrong places, found Christ and recognized him as their Lord and Savior, illumines human history and brings the refreshing and liberating air of goodness and truth.
Among those stories, there is one of a man who was both, a great mind and a great Saint. The story of Saint Augustine of Hippo’s stunning conversion is contained in his autobiographical book entitled Confessiones,Latin for Confessions. This paper will briefly examine Augustine’s literary work in the Confessions, looking at it not only as the classical keystone that it is, but also as a beautiful and compelling testimony of man’s restless desire for God.
About the Author
Before entering into the book, let’s look at the author who is at the same time one of the main characters of the Confessions; the other one being God himself. Saint Augustine of Hippo, one of the 35 Doctors of the Church, is rightly considered by many scholars as the greatest of the early Church Fathers and “the brightest ‘philosophers’ of the early Church.”[1]He is also known as the Doctor of Grace. Saint Augustine’s teachings have greatly influenced the teachings and doctrines of the Church as well as the history of western theology and philosophy. Saint Antoninus of Florence—the saintly Italian Dominican friar who also ruled as Archbishop of Florence during the first half of the 15thcentury—described him with these words: “What the sun is to the sky, St. Augustine is to the Doctors and Fathers of the Church.” He exclaimed that St. Augustine, “shines like a jewel. His words are like music. The light of his mind penetrated the deepest problems.”[2]
Saint Augustine was born in Tagaste, modern day Algeria, on November 13th, 354. He was the son of Patricius, a pagan who served as one of the “curiales” of the city and who later converted to Christianity on his deathbed. His mother Monica, on the other hand, was a very devout and faithful Catholic. Monica made sure that Augustine received a Christian education and had him signed with the Cross so as to be enrolled among the catechumens. However, as he entered into his teenage years, Augustine began to yield to the dreadful habits of his times and the desires of the flesh. Growing in Roman territory, Augustine knew Latin and was exposed to both Roman and Greek literature and philosophy. At the age of 17, he was sent to Carthage to study rhetoric. There he read the work of the Roman philosopher, Cicero, who made a lasting impression on him. Influenced by pagan philosophies, Augustine abandoned the Christian faith and began to follow the Manichean religion.
At Carthage, Augustine began to live a very hedonistic life, allowing himself to be ruled and guided by mere pleasure. During this time, he uttered a prayer asking God to “Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.” At the age of 19, he entered into an affair with a young woman who gave birth to his son Adeodatus. This relationship lasted for more than fifteen years, but ended when Augustine accepted to marry a ten-year old heiress. However, this arranged marriage never took place because by the time the young girl had reached the legal age for marriage, that is twelve years old, Augustine had decided to become a celibate priest. All these experiences he lived up to the point of his conversion and what he struggles he continued to face after that are what make up the book of his Confessions.
As Peter Brown, the leading English-language authority on Saint Augustine, explains, “The kind of life which Augustine had set himself to live in his prime would not last him into old age. He must base his future on a different view of himself: and how could he gain this view, except by reinterpreting just that part of his past, that had culminated in the conversion.”[3]Furthermore, he clarifies that, “The Confessions, therefore, is not a book of reminiscences. They are an anxious turning to the past. The note of urgency is unmistakable: ‘Allow me, I beseech You, grant me to wind round and round in my present memory the spirals of my errors…’” By God’s grace, Augustine was called to come to terms with the truth about himself. Writing his Confessions, as other scholars suggest, was an act of therapy for him[4].
Structure of the Book
The book of the Confessionswas written in a very refined Latin. It is divided into 13 chapters or books as Saint Augustine refers to them. The first nine are autobiographical. Augustine recounts events of his life from his birth to his conversion to Christianity, and after. Yet, he does not necessarily include all the details and events of his life, but choosing those of greater importance and relevance to his purpose in writing the Confessions.Augustine is not too preoccupied in given an accurate chronological record of all that took place in his life, but rather he brings to light those experiences that manifest God’s mercy and grace calling him to Himself. In the last four books, Augustine stops his autobiography and dedicates himself to examine various theological and philosophical issues. In book ten, he writes about the issue of human memory and how it functions. In book eleven, he analysis the concepts of time and eternity. Books eleven and twelve are dedicated to an interpretation of the Book of Genesis.
The Confessionswere written in the form of a prayer; something that was common to a long tradition of religious philosophy.[5]It was written for the servi Dei, the ‘servants of God’[6]. As Peter Brown explains, the Confessions“is a classical document of the tastes of a group of highly sophisticated men, the spiritales, the ‘men of the spirit.’” In his Confessions, Augustine tells such men exactly what they would want to hear, that it, “the course of a notable conversion; it asked of its readers what they made a habit of asking for themselves—the support of their prayers.”[7]
Main Theme:
Throughout the Confessions, Saint Augustine explores with great amazement the nature of God and the working of His grace upon the human soul. As he later said in his Retractions, he wrote his Confessionsintending to “stir up towards Him [God] the intellect and feelings of men.”[8]The theme of God’s omnipresence and His divine action within the course of life of every human person is crucial to the Confessions. Saint Augustine emphasizes, based on his own experience, the soul’s restless longing for the Creator. He explains that man must seek God within themselves: “You were right before me: but I had moved away from myself. I could not find myself: how much less, then could I find You.”[9] Augustine considers that “it is man’s tragedy that he should be driven to flee ‘outwards,’ to lose touch with himself, to ‘wander far’ from his ‘own heart.’”[10]Men cannot hope to find God, unless they first find themselves, in the truth of who they are. That is because God is “deeper than my inmost being.”[11]However it happens that, “Men go to gaze at mountain peaks, at the boundless tides of the sea, the broad sweep of rivers, the encircling ocean and the motions of the stars: and yet they leave themselves unnoticed; they do not marvel at themselves.”[12]
Although the Confessionswere written more than fifteen centuries ago, their message is still very relevant to modern man. They communicate a truth that never ages, because it is the truth of the condition of “my race, the human race.”[13] Echoing the reality of every human heart in search for God, Saint Augustine states:
I carried about me a cut and bleeding soul, that could not bear to be carried by me, and where I could put it, I could not discover. Not in pleasant groves, not in games and singing, nor in the fragrant corners of a garden. Not in the company of a dinner-table, not in the delights of the bed; not even in my books and poetry. It floundered in a void, and fell back upon me. I remained a haunted spot, which gave me no rest, from which I could not escape. For where could my heart flee from my heart? Where could I escape from myself? Where would I not dog my own footsteps?[14]
Modern man, too, walks through life carrying about himself “a cut and bleeding soul.” Even if man is not fully aware of this truth, he seeks and longs for God in the deepest recesses of the soul. Man thirsts for the authentic love, beauty and freedom that only God can give. The more man is capable of entering into his heart and discovering the cry of his deepest desire for God; the more he will be capable of interiorizing this truth. On the other hand, man will not be able to find the authentic truth about himself until he finds it in God, for as St. John Paul II expressed in his encyclical letter, Redemptor Hominis,God reveals man to himself. This is ultimately the supreme truth that Saint Augustine was able to discover and desired to communicate through his Confessions.
Personal Impression
On a personal level, I have to say that Saint Augustine’s Confessions is one of my favorite books. From the first time I read the Confessions, the book had a great and lasting impression on me. Reading about Saint Augustine’s conversion from his sinful ways, and the great love and desire he then experienced for God, touched me deeply. It inspired in me a greater desire to love God, and to be holy. Since then, I have admired Saint Augustine very much. Not only as the brilliant mind he was, but as the passionate and hungry heart for God and his truth.
[1]Timothy P. Herrman, Ph.D., S.T.L. Notes from class Catholic Masters: Augustine. Institute for Pastoral Theology. Ave Maria University.
[2]Chronicon opus2.8. fol. 27 (Nurnber 1484)
[3]Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo. A Biography(California: University of California Press, 2000), 157.
[4]E.R. Dodds, Augustine’s Confessions; Hibbert Journal, 26. In Brown, Augustine of Hippo. A Biography, 158.
[5]Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo. A Biography, 159.
[6]Confessions, IX, ii, 4
[7]Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo. A Biography, 153.
[8]Retractions II, 32. In Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo. A Biography, 159.
[10]Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo. A Biography, 162.
[11]Confessions, III, vi.
[12]Confessions, X, viii.
[13]Confessions, II, iii.
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