From the book "The Confessions of St. Augustine." Extracts selected and translated by Carolinne White. Copyright Frances Lincoln Limited 2001. Text copyright Carolinne White. This edition published by William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge, U. K. http://www.eerdmans.com
Introduction
"The Confessions of Saint Augustine" is a work of great beauty, richness and psychological perceptiveness. Written in the last three years of the fourth century when Augustine was in his mid-forties, its thirteen books are a retrospective account of the author's often troubled journey through childhood, adolescence and early adulthood. Augustine's search for meaning in his life is frankly explored in a manner which is both self-critical and humane, and is of universal relevance. Presented in the form of an address to God, it culminates ultimately in Augustine's dramatic conversion and a decision to commit himself completely to a Christian life. . . . . . . . . the term "Confessions" implies not only a confession of sin but also a confession of praise, and is a powerful expression of Augustine's conviction -- attained only after years of painful spiritual and intellectual struggle -- that true fulfillment in human life must be centered on God.
From Book Two:
Even In Sin We Seek Goodness
Pride, for example, assumes a kind of superiority, but it is false, for you alone are God most high above all things. What does ambition strive for except honor and glory? Yet you alone are to be honored and glorified above all for eternity. The cruelty of powerful people strives to create fear, but who is to be feared except God alone? What can be taken away or stolen from your power? When or where or how or by whom? Sexual caresses are intended to arouse love, but there are no softer caresses than yours and no object of love is more beneficial than your truth, which is more beautiful and radiant than all other things. Curiosity may appear to be a desire for knowledge, but it is you who know completely. Ignorance, too, and stupidity are flattered with the terms 'simplicity' and 'innocence', yet the greatest simplicity and the greatest innocence lies in you; and dishonest men bring about their own misfortune. Laziness poses as a desire for rest, but there can be no rest except in the Lord. Indulgence likes to be called contentment and plenty, but it is you who are contentment and an unfailing abundance of pleasure that is never corrupted. Extravagance disguises itself as generosity, but you are the most generous bestower of all good things. Avarice is greedy to possess, yet you possess everything. Envy incites disputes about who is pre-eminent, but what is there more pre-eminent than you? Fear, attendant to its own security, shudders at anything unexpected or strange that might attack what it loves, but to you there is nothing expected or unknown. Who can separate you from what you love? And where is there reliable security except in you? Regret pines for the loss of things in which desire took pleasure, wishing that nothing be taken away from it, just as nothing can be taken from you.
So the soul fornicates when it turns from you and seeks what is pure and unadulterated elsewhere, yet its search is futile while it is away from you. All those who place great distances between themselves and you and exalt themselves against you are striving to emulate you, although their attempts are misguided. For even as they imitate you in this way, they are acknowledging that you are the creator of all nature, and so concede that there is nowhere we can truly hide from you.
(2:6,13--2:6,14)
From Book Three:
In Love With Love
I came to Carthage and found myself in a cauldron sizzling with illicit passions. As yet I had never been in love and I longed to be; and in my spiritual emptiness I hated the thought of how I might be if the void were filled. Being in love with love, I looked for an object for my love, and I despised the idea of certainty and a life without risks. I refused to satisfy my internal hunger with your spiritual food, my God, and I was unaware of any need. I had no appetite for incorruptible nourishment, not because I had eaten enough but because the emptier I became, the more unappetizing such food seemed to me. My soul was sick and covered in sores, and it rubbed up against material things in a desperate attempt to relieve the itching. But since material things have no soul, they cannot be loved. To love and also be loved in return was what excited me, especially if I could enjoy my lover's body. So I polluted the stream of friendship with the filth of lust and obscured its brightness with foul passions. But despite this shameful and degrading behavior, in my excessive vanity I hoped to be regarded as elegant and civilized. I also fell in love -- in truth, I was longing to become love's prisoner. My God, how merciful you were, how kind, to mix so much bitterness in with that sweetness: my love was returned and secretly I became enslaved by my joy, happy to be bound by chains, with the result that I was flogged with the red-hot metal rods of jealousy, suspicion, fear, anger and division. (3:1,1)
From Book Four:
My Partner
During those years I had just one woman, although she was not joined to me in what is called lawful marriage. I had come across her at a time when I was a victim of restless passion and unable to behave rationally, but she remained my only partner and I was faithful to her. In this
relationship I learned from my own experience the difference between a marriage which is entered into for the sake of having children, and an agreement based on lust in which the birth of a child
is unwelcome -- although if a child is born, its parents cannot help but love it. (4:2,2)
From Book Seven:
The Non-Existence of Evil
For you evil does not exist, and not only for you but for the whole of your creation, because there is nothing outside it that could break in and threaten the order you have imposed on it. In parts of your creation, some things are regarded as evil because they are in conflict with other
elements, yet they are in harmony with others and as such they can be regarded as good, and in themselves they are good. And all these things that war against each other are at one with the lesser part of creation which we call earth. There is no incongruity, for example, between the
earth and the sky with its clouds and wind.
Far be it from me to wish that these things did not exist: if they were all I could see, it is true that I might wish for better, but even taken on their own, I should still praise you for them. For all things born of the earth show us that you deserve praise: sea monsters and the sea depths, fire and hail, snow and frost, the breath of the storm which does as you ask, mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, wild animals and all cattle, reptiles and winged birds; kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the earth, young men and women, old and young together: let them praise you. Let them also praise you from the heavens, let them exalt you, our God, your angels on high, all your powers, sun and moon, all the stars and light, the heaven of heavens and the waters above the heavens: let them praise your name.
I no longer wished for things to be better, because I regarded everything as part of a whole. Admittedly, I still used to judge those things on a higher level as better than those on a lower level but because I now had a healthier view of things, I held the entirety to be better than these superior things taken on their own. (7:13,19)
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