Augustine Confessions

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AugustineConfessions

• Book II
• Age 16
• Abandoning his studies, indulging in lustful
  pleasures, and committing theft

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Context

• Augustines adolescent years are regrettably
  viewed as
• Decadent useless
• Lurid sinful
• Schooling at Carthage
• Regrettable because the study of rhetoric here
  goes against the purity of one who is close to
  God because to excel in law, praise comes with
  the crafty manipulation of blind men.
• Learned rhetoric (art of eloquent speaking),
  literature (Latin and Greek), and dialectic
  (logical argumentation).
• Book II offers a few brief insights as to how and
  why he committed the sins of fornication and
  theft.

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Family DynamicII.1-3

• What are Augustines parents reactions upon
  learning of their sons sexual maturity?
• His father (Patricius) was happy at the prospect
  of grandchildren.
• His pious mother (Monica) was worried about his
  committing fornication and adultery.
• What does Augustine wish his parents had done in
  regards to providing him with a sexual outlet?
• He wishes that they had arranged a legitimate
  marriage for him.
• Why did they refuse to do this?
• Because at that time, marriage to a country girl
  would have held Augustine back from a brilliant
  career (ideally in law) where he could make a
  more socially advantageous marriage to an
  heiress.
• Augustine speculates about his parents wishes
  for him. Worldly ambition seems to drive both of
  their actions, but Augustine reserves his
  sternest disapproval for Patricius, apparently
  because he shows no awareness that there is any
  success beyond the shallow rewards that the world
  can give.
• Irony everyone praised his father for making so
  many financial sacrifices for Augustines
  education, even though his father cared nothing
  about the vicious character such an education
  would develop. Augustines mother felt that a
  literary education would at least do no harm to
  Augustines spiritual life and she too was
  interested in seeing her son succeed socially.

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Sexual SinII.1-3

• His account, which begins in Book II, is one of
  the most famous features of the Confessions.
• Augustines problematic attitude towards his
  sexual urgeshis reluctance to give up sexends
  up being one of the last, painful obstacles to
  his full conversion.
• Giving some credit toward love
• the single desire that dominated my search for
  delight was simply to love and be loved.
• Problem
• His love had no restraint imposed on it.
• He is unable to distinguish between physical
  love, which satisfies only lust, and the
  spiritual love of friendship and companionship,
  which satisfies the heart and mind.
• Hence, pure love was perverted by its
  misdirection toward worldly things (bodies).

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Christian View of CelibacyII.1-3

• Was the highest goal while marriage was a less
  admirable alternative, suitable only for those
  who could not fully control their sexual impulses
  and, therefore, required a legitimate outlet for
  them.
• Even with marriage, sexual activity was to be
  reserved solely for the conception of children,
  and not enjoyed for its own sake.
• Sex is used only for procreation

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Robbing the Pear TreeII.4-10

• Motivations
• Augustine claims that every crime has a motive.
  Even in the most abstractly driven crimes
  committed, there is an external motivating
  factor.
• Not motivated by
• Self-interest to combat hunger or poverty
• Greed (want) to enjoy the taste of the fruit
• Revenge to get back at any particular individual
  or party
• Was motivated by
• a distaste for good behavior.
• the presence of his companionshe makes quite
  clear that he is certain he would not have
  committed the theft if he were alone.
• He also observes that part of his impulse toward
  promiscuity involved bragging rights with his
  friends, who took just as much pleasure in
  telling stories (exaggerating the exploits) as in
  the acts themselves.

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Clarifying the Motivation to Sin

• The mature Augustine was not so much concerned
  with the mere act of stealing pears. His real
  concern was with what was happening inwardly.
• Augustines actions simply represent a perversion
  of his God-given goodness.
• Each thing he sought to gain from stealing the
  pears (and everything humans desire in sinning)
  turns out to be a twisted version of one of Gods
  attributes.
• Rhetorical feat
• Augustine matches each sinful desire with a
  desire to be like God.
• Trapped in misdirected love of earthly goods, the
  soul separates itself from God and tries to
  demonstrate its power over God by breaking Gods
  laws.

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Specific Implications

• This sin is a kind of rebellion against Gods
  omnipotence, a perverse attempt to demonstrate
  the souls imagined self-sufficiency.
• Even by attempting to deny Gods omnipotence, the
  sinner imitates it, thereby proving that nothing
  is outside Gods fullness and dominion.
• Any motivation one may have to sin would be more
  truly realized/actualized through the Lord.

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Generic Implications

• Theft analogous to The Fall
• Humankinds fundamental disobedience and fall
  from grace involved the improper taking of fruit
  from a tree in the garden.
• Later, Augustines final conversion takes place
  under a fruit tree in a garden, standing in
  contrast to the present episode of sin as well as
  to Adam and Eves.
• Promiscuity extension of sexual sin
• Some scholars have seen the episode as an
  extended metaphor for the sin of promiscuity.
• This also links to the story of Adam and Eve in
  that humanitys Fall was believed to have
  included a fall from sexual innocence. Augustine
  even describes the sin of theft as the souls
  fornication against God.

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Contemporary Application

• Augustine is painfully aware of the influence of
  peer pressure, subtle and unspoken, on his own
  behavior.
• He attempts to determine what it is about human
  beings in groups that makes them so susceptible
  to irrational impulses, impulses they would never
  act upon if they were alone.
• Unsolvable problem people in groups can both
  support each other in good and influence each
  other in evil. Friendship can be a dangerous
  enemy, a seduction of the mind.
• Like love, friendship must be subjected to
  reason if it is to be truly good.
• Interestingly enough, Augustine partly blames the
  theft on peer pressure.

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Possible Criticisms Responses

• A) Augustine is using this episode to stand both
  as a generic example of all the other sins
  committed in his youth and of the common sins of
  humanity.
• This encourages readers to recognize and
  understand their basic sinfulnessthe distance
  they have fallen from God the corrupt state of
  the Will.
• B) Augustines aim stealing is something every
  child indulges in at some point in their
  development, hence the episode has come to take
  on a kind of universality.

• A) Why does Augustine lavish such anguished and
  intense self-scrutiny on what sounds like an
  otherwise minor bit of juvenile delinquency?
• B) Augustines self-criticism has been ridiculed
  as an example of a neurotic soul that was
  burdened by excessive and unnecessary guilt.

Augustines horror at his past sins, which many
Christians would regard as minor, marked him as a
Christian of the highest spiritual standards.
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Summary of Book II

• Augustines main concern in analyzing his theft
  of the pears
• His motivation to sin
• Two types of sin
• Lust as an example of misdirected love, a
  confused attempt to seek satisfaction in
  transitory things that can never truly satisfy.
• Evil for evils sake the love of wrongdoing
  simply for the doing of it. Like the misdirected
  love of others that is at the root of lust,
  misdirected love of self is at the root of
  rebellion.
• Augustine often identifies all human sin with
  lust
• Concupiscence a selfish and excessive desire for
  anything, including the pleasures of the flesh.
• He constantly identifies misdirected desire as
  the root cause of his wanderings from God.
• His attitude toward sex it is a sinful impulse
  that reason cannot control
• The role of reason
• Reason will come to play a very important role in
  Augustines spiritual journey as he learns that
  seeking truth might be more important that
  worldly success.

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AugustinesConfessions

• Book III
• Age 17-19
• The sin of tragedies, Ciceros Hortensius, a
  simple Bible, and the errors of Manichaeism

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The Sin of FictionIII.1-3

• Augustine falls in love with a woman whom many
  assume to be his unnamed concubine and continues
  to be lost in carnal desires.
• Augustine recounts his enjoyment of theatrical
  shows and considers the emotional appeal of
  fiction.
• Problem with theatrical tragedies they
  constitute immersion in fictional suffering
  without a recognition of ones own suffering in
  sin.
• Emotional titillation they create empty
  emotional reactions in their audience. Producing
  sensations with no moral ends.
• Tragedy also encourages a love (enjoyment) of
  suffering that Augustine now finds absurd and
  wrong.

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Ciceros HortensiusBackground

• Cicero
• One of the most studied classical Latin authors.
• Considered to have an almost perfect style of
  rhetoric
• Hortensius
• Has not survived, and much if what scholars know
  about it comes from quotations in Augustines
  works.
• Was a defense of the study of philosophy,
  encouraging readers to devote themselves to the
  pursuit of truth.
• Aimed to rebut the position that philosophy is
  useless and does not lead to happiness.

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Augustine, the Hortensius, the Christian
BibleIII.4-5

• Encounter with the Hortensius is often referred
  to as his first conversion.
• Augustine was moved deeply by the content of the
  workthe claim that to pursue true wisdom is the
  route to a happy lifeas opposed to the locution
  (quality of writing).
• For the first time, he longed for the
  immortality of wisdom with an incredible
  passion in his heart.
• However, feeling that it lacked a reference to
  God (which it did since Cicero was a pagan)
  Augustine felt he needed to look to Catholicism
  (his religion) and the Christian Bible for
  answers.
• Problem
• The early Latin Bible was crudely worded and
  somewhat obscure.
• For a student of rhetoric like Augustine, its
  language was too simple to be satisfying and
  drove him to a strong dislike toward Christian
  scripture.
• Consequences
• Disliking the plain-spoken Bible is a main reason
  for his becoming attracted to the more refined
  and intellectual texts of Manichaeism.

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Manichaeism Background

• Founded by Mani, in the 3rd century CE, who,
  inspired by a vision, believed himself to be a
  Paracletethe last in a line of prophets.
• Gnostic religionfrom gnosis (knowledge)promises
  believers a secret knowledge, hidden from
  non-believers, that will lead to salvation.
• Dualistic
• View the universe as a battleground between the
  opposing forces of good and evil.
• Darkness and the physical world are
  manifestations of evil, while light is a
  manifestation of good.

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Manichaeism Background

• Elaborate cosmology
• Complex mythologies of angels and demons used to
  explain the workings of the universe.
• Light and darkness originally existed separately,
  without knowledge of each other. Good and evil
  are equal powers and both have always existed.
• Believed the physical world is of no value it is
  the temporary, illusory stage for a struggle of
  spiritual powers, and all that matters is the
  release of the divine spirit within us from the
  contamination of the material body and its return
  to its true home.
• Was eventually banned for being seen as
• Heretical by Christians
• A dangerous import from the rival powerPersiaby
  the Roman state.

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Manichaean BelieversTwo Types

• The Hearers
• Auditors
• Devoted to caring for the Elect.
• Incurred the sin of harvesting plants were
  released from sin by the prayers of the Elect who
  ate the food.
• Not celibate, but forbidden to procreate.
• Hoped to be reborn as Elect.
• Augustine was a Hearer

• The Elect Saints
• Orthodox
• Have already reached spiritual perfection
• Are committed to a missionary life of extreme
  asceticism
• Poverty, celibacy, extreme dietary restrictions,
  and are even forbidden from harvesting/preparing
  food.

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Augustine the ManicheesIII.6-10

• Comes across the sect in Carthage during his
  studies and ends up believing strongly in the
  Manichee doctrine for 10 years.
• Manichaeism offered Augustine a way to
  accommodate his conflicts
• He could pursue his career, and retain his
  partner, while purging his sins through his
  service to the Elect.
• He could blame those sins on his lower, alien
  nature, which like the material world had been
  made by the power of evil, but which his true
  self, would eventually shed.
• This led Augustine to believe that Manichaean
  dualism compromised his acceptance of
  responsibility for his sins.
• Manichaeism responded to his need for the name of
  Christ (instilled in him by his mother) while
  allowing him to retain his distaste for the
  Christian scriptures.
• He could regard the Bible as a crude and
  contaminated attempt at truth, whereas the
  Manichaean scriptures offered both the name of
  Christ and what seemed to be a profound
  understanding of the universe and of human life.

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Manichee Challenges to/Criticisms of Christianity

• Manichees
• Viewed Christianity as a flawed and incomplete
  religion.
• Were extremely critical of the moral failings of
  the patriarchs of the Old Testament. Stories
  which described episodes of lust, anger,
  violence, and deceit led them to believe that the
  OT God was really an evil demon, not a God of
  Light.
• Argued that the books of the New Testament had
  been altered to corrupt Christs actual
  teachings.
• Refused to accept the Incarnationthe union of
  God and human in a physical bodyand rejected
  the idea that Christ had been born from a human
  mother into a material body, because they viewed
  the body as evil.
• Believed that this was actually only the
  appearance of physicality and death. It was,
  therefore, also impossible that Christ could have
  suffered a physical death on the cross.

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Augustines Break From ManichaeismIII. 6-10

• Error in picturing God
• Manichee doctrines depended heavily on
  visualization of the concepts of God and evil,
  and this dependence greatly delayed Augustine
  from coming to know God without imagining Him.
• Manichees did not believe God to be omnipotent,
  claimed that He struggled against the opposing
  substance of evil, and that the human soul was of
  the same substance as God.
• Bad meeting with Faustus
• Upon meeting a highly respected Manichee Elect,
  Augustine is disappointed by his excessive
  talking and failure to answer Augustines
  challenges to the Manichee cosmology. This
  meeting pushes Augustine further away from
  Manichee beliefs.
• Perspective in the Confessions
• Christian polemicpresenting the beliefs and
  doctrines as he argues against them
• Rational philosophy and astronomy persuaded him
  that the colorful Manichee cosmology is false and
  lead him to Neoplatonism.

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Summary of Book III

• Ciceros Hortensius introduced Augustine to
  philosophythe love of wisdom.
• What drew Augustine to Manichaeism
• Dissatisfaction with the simple language of the
  Bible.
• Manichaean texts
• Rhetorically embellished
• Elaborate cosmology
• What led to his rejection of Manichaeism
• Fantastical cosmology and cryptic laws became
  suspicious
• It began to conflict with the budding science of
  astronomy
• Augustine was ready to explore more truthful,
  less wordy forms of beliefs after his meeting
  with Faustus.