Introduction
Intrigued by its title, “Confessions,” I found myself wanting to explore this great work of Augustine, but after I have read it, and have listened to in the class discussions regarding the topic, I started to sense how huge this work was and I almost regretted the fact that I so ignorantly have chosen such an enormous work. His work, “Confessions” encompasses numerous avenues of topic matters and issues from his infancy on up to his adulthood. The author’s depth of knowledge and meaning of his contents from a religious, humanitarian, and a philosophical term is truly beyond what a college student like me can grasp in a few weeks. Feeling very much inadequate and inept to approach the work, I decided that I needed to take on a narrower scope; instead of trying to analyze every point he made in the “Confessions,” I decided to focus just a few things of my particular interest which we haven’t already discussed in the class.
Thus, in this report, I will attempt to discuss three major points: First, Who was he? What kind of a man would write such a book? (I wanted to know the kind of man he was as a mature person. Therefore, I omitted much of his childhood, since, it had already been discussed in the class); Secondly, How much of his secular education had contributed or enhanced his spiritual quest of eternal truth? ; Finally, I tried to point out how he had influenced and shaped the Christianity, which still is the legacy of our western culture.
CONFESSIONS
In the middle of the fourth century, a few prominent “fathers of the church,” who were well educated, scripturally and spiritually, but also temporally, explained and defended church teachings. Previously, most of the leading fathers wrote in Greek, but by now, emerged a whole new generation of Latin writers who profoundly influenced the course of Christianity in the West. One such person was St. Augustine, the bishop of Hippo, in North Africa. Augustine was born in the year 354, some forty years after Christianity had become the acknowledged religion of the Roman Empire under Constantine. He attended school at Carthage, where he studied the Latin classics and rhetoric.
Even though his mother, Monica, had always tried to nurture his spirituality, Augustine, felt restless in this regards: “He first rejected the Christian faith of his mother and became a Manichean, an austere religion founded by a third-century Persian named Mani.”(#5/p337) The religion stressed the dualistic existence and the struggles of two opposing powers, the “good” versus “evil.” It also practiced strict celibacy to ensure the rewards and happiness after death. However, it was this doctrine of celibacy that he couldn’t accept fully, so, in Rome, he once again became a skeptic of all religion, doubted even his own existence. After a while he explored the Neoplatonism and was greatly influenced by it.
However, while he was living in Milan, a city with full of elite Christians, Ambrose’s influence ultimately directed him to Christianity. During this time, he was serving as a municipally appointed teacher. Here, he met and associated with many highly educated and cultivated Christians: “Augustine, who in North Africa had associated Christianity with the poor and the lowly (#3/P37),” founded it surprising to see the Christians of Milan so sophisticated and appreciated them. Influenced by such an atmosphere, he started to take Christianity much more seriously than he had been. Surrounded by such an environment, and especially, under the Ambrose’s influence, he began the study of scriptures. Previously, he would have thought “the Bible” to be too elementary and too primitive, but by this time, he made genuine efforts to read the bible not in a literal sense, but in a spiritual sense, noting particularly the writings and teachings of St. Paul. He identified much with him, for St. Paul, as a character in the scriptures, was too, one of the most well educated and cultivated Christian. Years later, Augustine took an opposing stand in regards to the need for formal education, but initially, it was such men like the St. Ambrose and St. Paul and other learned Christians of Milan, who were temporally polished, and yet utilized their talents in serving their God, whom he was most powerfully affected by.
His renewed interest and passion for Christianity turns his life upside down. Planning to marry a rich woman (rather a young girl who wasn’t yet twelve), he had recently sent away his mistress who had been with him for fifteen years and born him a son, Adeodatus, whom he adored. These were his difficult days; he was heartbroken emotionally and psychologically. It was one such gloomy day, while he was meditating in the garden of the house where he lived, he heard “voices”, which led to his famous conversion. Following his conversion, Augustine set out with his mother to return to North Africa, in solemn spirit, and with an intention of dedicating his life to Christianity. It was while they were delayed at the port, Ostia, having no available boats to the sea (for fear of pirates during that time), where Augustine and his mother experienced their spiritual ecstasy. Nine days after this experience, his mother, Monica died in peace with God, feeling grateful that He had already granted her every wish, now that her son had become His servant.
In North Africa, as a new bishop, he became a servant to those poor and volatile Christians of his home town. He preached daily and when he didn’t, he often had to settle disputes among church members. Above all, he still had to manage and carry the administrative responsibilities of the church. Yet, mentally and spiritually, he managed to be withdrawn from the commotion around him. Despite his great fame and involvements, he somehow found ways to be isolated from the things of tumultuous world. He distanced himself from the temporal matters and ideologies of the world, which he considered to be trivial. Nevertheless, he was harrassed and disturbed by the heresies abound at that time. Just as St. Paul had often written to his followers, so did Augustine; he took his pen, and with great a determination and purpose, he wrote his shocking and soul stirring messages to the men and women of his times, “the Confessions.”
Why did Augustine write the “Confessions” was not a mystery, but in what manner or what style he wrote this book, truly shocked the world. He wrote it in the year 397, only a few years after he was called to be the bishop in Africa. It was considered “the first true autobiography in the modern sense of the term.”(#3/P37) Augustine’s style of writing and the manner in which he stripped his privacy before the audience to view and study – not just a few commemorative accounts, but all accounts of his life: from infancy to adulthood, the honorable and the mortifying aspects of his life – in the context of his “quest for truth”, was marveling and certainly unprecedented. Even Ambrose thought Augustine was a bit peculiar in “his ability to preach in such a creative way within the framework of the Catholic Church.”(#1/Ch.10) (“cannot find the page, sorry”)
In a very personal way, Augustine thought that his conversion was comparable to that of the St. Paul’s. He naturally thought, as did St. Paul, that this conversion happened to him through the divine power of God, and being so selected by Him, he, like the St. Paul, felt obligated to preach unto the whole world; not only to the believers, but as St. Paul had, he also had the urge to preach unto the pagans, especially the philosophers of that time; and in pursuing such a mission, he wanted to be different from the previous fathers of the church, who were often more distant from the public sinners. Zealous, in evangelical spirit, he adopted St. Paul’s audacity, humility and frankness, but with much more style in its individualistic originality, and with much more attention to details and subtleties of sinfulness, he exposed his private journey of “the soul searching”, which many a man before him may have undertaken, but never, in the history of Christianity nor in mankind, had anyone recorded as he did – so shockingly frank, and so movingly sincere. His style of writing was more befitting to the 20th century mentality; its fundamental principles and pattern have been modeled after and have been molded into the western civilization.
In some ways, the audience was already created for his book “Confessions” before it was even written, due to popularized “asceticism” in the Latin world. It was particularly the believers of such an ideology whom Augustine tried to appeal to, attract and persuade, and fully convert them into Christianity through his writing of the “Confessions.” He hoped that this book would play a role in spiritually preparing and educating the minds of the future servants of the God; and such readers, through this book did come to an understanding of what was required of them to be a monk or a bishop in the church since Augustine served as a role model for them by disclosing his private and personal spiritual experiences in writing.
How much of his formal education has enhanced him as an able defender of Christian doctrine is quite significant. Augustine, though he claimed himself to be reborn in the spirit of God, could not immaculately sever his past ties with the secular educational upbringings of his youth. Augustine’s writings itself evidenced distinct aspects of the classical education: “the Roman culture and Latin language which he grew up with and which he made such an eloquent use of; the Oriental learning which he derived from Manichaeism; and Greek thought, which he learned through his study of the Platonist.”(#2/P142) These different strands were combined and synthesized into his work.
Platonic doctrine strongly influenced Augustine’s view of the physical and spiritual world. As a former student of the classics and an admirer of Platonism, he respected the power of thought, but he denied the classical view that “reason” alone could attain wisdom. For him, the ultimate wisdom would not be achieved by rational thought alone. According to Augustine, God was the only reality. And only through him, a man can attain wisdom. He, like the Platonist, believed that the physical things of the world are all passing away and changing. Just like the Plato, he also believed that there was a hierarchy in the realm of ideas that started from plants and animals at the bottom to the highest. But Plato believed that the highest was the “idea of the Good”, and for Augustine, he believed that the “idea of the Good”, was God.
The outlook of Neoplatonism, which for centuries had been undergoing transformation and had come to a new horizon, met its worst enemy, Augustine. What Augustine did was that he preserved the Greek philosophical tradition such as the Neoplatonism, but he performed his very own creative operation by fusing that into a Christian frame work. As a former student of philosophy, Augustine, ingeniously interweaved the two into a more sophisticated and fortified doctrine of Christianity – which greatly offended the Platonists but contributed immensely to Christian theology. Platonists regarded this newly interpreted Christianity in philosophical terms as barbaric, and between the two sects, severe tensions existed.
However, Augustine’s version of Christian philosophy which was abundantly expressed and implied in his book, “Confessions”, appealed more to the general public of medieval minds; and, he uniquely helped shape and strengthen the history of Christianity of Medieval period which was indisputably, one of the most prominent legacy of the Western civilization. “During the late Roman Empire, when classical values were in decay, this new version of Christianity was a dynamic and creative movement.”(#4/P181) In the last centuries of the Roman Empire, people searched for ways to escape their oppressive earthly state: “Stressing the intellect and self-reliance, the Greek philosophy and mentality did not provide for the emotional needs of the common people” who had desired a relationship with the higher world but on a more personal and affectionate level (#4/P182). As a response to the searching souls of disillusioned Greco-Romans, Augustine had sent them his entreaty, the “Confessions.” In essence, in this writing, people found what they were longing for, which the great Roman world state could not offer: an intensely personal relationship with God; an intimate connection with a higher world; and a membership in a faithful community who cared for one another.
The book’s title in itself was significant, for, Augustine, wanting earnestly to be able to connect with the souls of the readers, first, he humbled himself to the lowest position possible as a sinner; and as a sinner, he wrote his confessions to all men and women, so publicly. This gesture, in itself was revolutionary, since imbedded in an “idea of confession” should be a “concept of privacy” respected between the sinners and the bishops.
Furthermore, his “concept of conversion” was unconventional to the Christian of that era. The readers who read “Confessions” realized Augustine’s concept of conversion had a deeper connotations and meaning to it. A true conversion did not take place to those who merely attended church sermons and thereby claimed to be Christians; but, “conversion” took its form with only those who thoroughly searched his/her individual soul and studied it, learned it, and corrected it as Augustine had had with all his might; and thus, afterwards, and only through this method, could the Grace of God be administered to the supplicant to redeem his/her soul. People learned from this book, the importance of introspective meditation of one’s self. Every person, if he would take this journey, would find himself improved and closer to the divinity. Thus, “self-improvement” was not only encouraged but was essential if to have a communion with God. The worldly elements and human emotions needed to be controlled and abandoned for a person to be able to transcend to a celestial level. In another words, conversion meant rebirth of a spirit in a person who had completely crushed his/her past willful ways.
This new level of dedication and seriousness of devotion was alarming to the pagans but was purifying to the believers. What Augustine did by writing the “Confessions” was that he raised the bar higher for the Medieval Christians. The book not only urged higher standards for the Christians, but it was, at the same time, therapeutic to the readers, to the church and to the entire Latin world for it possessed a certain “spirit of a doctor”. The book as a purifying agent for the sinners, contributed in curbing the heresy internally within the church, and by oppressing heresy, brought the believer together unified and solidified in the common faith sharing higher standards of the divine law; and in turn, this higher moral law brought new hopes to the citizens of the stumbling Roman Empire indirectly on a personal and a psychological level.
Augustine, an highly educated man, who once deeply explored Platonism, after being converted to Christianity, attempted to sever his past ties with the secular ideologies and wrote “Confessions” and other books such as “the City of God”, which earned him the world fame and recognition as someone who had profoundly contributed and fortified Christianity by merging the church doctrine with the popular philosophical beliefs of the time into a union of the two, creating theology that was more appealing and acceptable by the believers; which in turn, solidified and strengthen the church by drawing its members to a tighter fellowship and unity that offered hope and affection to the people who were emotionally shaken by the faltering Roman Empire.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- “Augustine of Hippo” by Peter Brown
- “Saint Augustine” by David Greenwood
- “A Third Testament” by Malcolm Muggeridge
- “Western Civilization” by Perry, Chase, Jacob, and Von Laue.
- “The Humanities in western Culture” by Robert C. Lamm
- “History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages” by Etienne Gilson
- “Letter to St. Augustine” by Haniel Long
- “The Christian Philosophy of St. Augustine” by Etienne Gilson.
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