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The Confessions of St. Augustine

RANDY BOYAGODA

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Latest comment posted at 4:38 PM EST 25/04/08

Still good for the soul ...Read the full article

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  1. edward martin from St. John's, Canada writes: I find it incredibly ironic that in his younger years St. Augustine searched for fame, yet the result of his giving that up and turning to God causes us to know and read about him seventeen hundred years later.
  2. Andrew Slater from Canada writes: When he was in the garden contemplating the sorry state of his self-indulgent life he heard a voice telling him to take up and read the Bible. It was what changed his life. The same voice calls out today and the result can be the same for anyone who hears and heeds the direction. I did over 23 years ago and have found I have never once regretted it.
  3. Jim Cohoon from Canada writes: In the book, St. Augustine details a spiritual and moral evolution or progression in which "I boiled over in my fornications" came spiritually face to face with "I thirsted after the immortality of wisdom." In the process, "certan mists and bubblings of youth fumed up, which clouded and so overcast my heart that I could not discern the beauty of a chaste affection from a fog of impure lustfulness." Such is the human dilemma in general: somehow finding the wisdom and strength to pull one's self (and soul) up from the primitive animal foundations of human nature to seek and grasp the higher spiritual and moral imperatives of the human soul. It can be a tortuous existential struggle and journey, as he describes well. It is a human journey that is often painfully individual, yet can be aided by a culture that respects the journey and those who attempt it. Sadly, it appears our current culture is rapidly losing such respect.
  4. Rain On Your Parade from Toronto, Canada writes: St. Augustine is a liar and a thief.
  5. Leendert Sonnevelt from Canada writes: Amen Andrew!
  6. Jim Kelly from M'Chigeeng, Canada writes: Jean-Francois Lyotard points to it as the emergence of modernism, and others as laying the groudwork for post-modernism, but Augustine's Confessions simply remains an intimate and immediate tale of a life lived. It is apparently quite readable, as witnessed by the number of translations in print on the shelf of major book stores. But how to talk about it. Can an autobiography written in dialogue with God be taken seriously in an age where God-language must be taken in irony or with a wink of the eye? Or is that really the issue? Augustine confesses in Book X: "I cannot grasp the totality of what I am." Ouch! Surely the Globe's contibutors can do better than that. Augustine continues: "Amazement grips me. People are moved to wonder by mountain peaks, by vast waves of the sea, by the broad waterfalls on rivers, by the all-embracing extent of the ocean, by the revolution of the stars. But in themselves they are uninterested." I think the Globe.com's pop-up ads of mountains and seas are much easier to face than the reality of "my-self". I may find them annoying, but what is Augustine's alternative? By the end of the Confessions his self-seeking is as anguished as it was at the beginning. "Noverim te, noverim me." Again the God language that to know You (God) is to know Me. If we can do away with God-language in contemporary discourse, could we not also do away with language about the real me? Yes, Augustine's Confessions, not only a major work, but essential reading if we seek to understand ourselves.
  7. Open Mike from Vancouver, Canada writes: After having all his fun, he got to be bit of a blathering nasty old prude about sex, though, didn't he? Too bad he hadn't had a chance to talk to another great mind, William Blake, about sexual guilt and its evil effects (O Rose, thou art sick etc.); Blake could have set him straight. Acknowledging his sexual guilt is one thing, but using God's authority to project it onto others is just plain repulsive. And his hell-fire blathering on about it wasn't just harmless grundyism: his writings led to a catholicism which to this day denies, abhors and hates the body and its animal nature. And that hasn't just made people guilty about themselves: it's made them crazy, too. Another thing to thank him for: the foulest doctrine one could conceivably impose upon an innocent child: the vile concept of Original Sin. Tell ya what, Augie: next time, keep it to yourself, okay?
  8. david latner from Toronto, Canada writes: As a Jew, looking from the outside, I am fascinated by the continued pull of St. Augustine. Augustine taught salvation by grace alone. His 4th century contemporary, Pelagius, opposed St. Augustine’s ideas. Pelagius denied the doctrine of original sin and favoured a doctrine of free will - and was declared a heretic by the Roman Catholic Church.

    It appears to me that St. Augustine is remembered and revered today by believers for his road to conversion, and by historians and philosophers because of the impact of his ideas on the Church, its adherents, and others under its political sway. This impact lasted many centuries, and - arguably - was ultimately negative. Today, few people – even relatively few Catholics – believe in salvation by grace alone, rather than grace achieved by doing good deeds.
  9. Andrew Slater from Canada writes: David: There are a lot more than a "few", as you put it, who accept that the gospel of salvation is based upon grace alone. There are hundreds of millions. You should read what Paul wrote in his epistle to the Romans.

    "...for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in C h r i s t..."

    Or in his epistle to the Ephesians:

    "... For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a rsult of works, that no one should boast."
  10. William Haworth from Minneapolis, United States writes: Why the need to go to Paul? Salvation by grace for any person was part of Judaism and remains a part of Judaism long after Paul's innovation of Christianity.

    "I have wiped out your transgressions like a thick cloud And your sins like a heavy mist. Return to Me, for I have redeemed you", as Yeshayahu records (44.22).

    An infinite God can forgive infinitely, without need for sacrifice; the difficult matter that is the part of man is the returning to God, which task was motivated (not effected) by sacrifice, prayer, and admonition from friends. Judaism had this applying to all mankind as one can see from Yonah's experience.

    Canadian E.P. Sanders' take on Judaism in Paul and Palestinian Judaism, and G.F. Moore's Judaism should be more widely read to put to rest incorrect characterizations of Judaism as religion of law and Christianity as some kind of improved religion of faith.
  11. Andrew Slater from Canada writes: William Haworth: If what you say about Judaism is correct literally millions of animals had their blood spilt needlessly on an altar in the Temple in Jerusalem. There is no grace in Leviticus.
  12. William Haworth from Minneapolis, United States writes: I stated that, in Judaism, the purpose of sacrifices, and their replacement, prayer and charity, is to motivate a true repentance. Inasmuch as a sacrifice motivated true repentance on the part of the person bringing it, that sacrifice served a purpose.

    One might argue that there is no real grace in Christianity: after all, in Christianity God does not freely forgive the sins of mankind. Rather, he extracts punishment from Jesus.
  13. Al B from Canada writes: On the topic of Jewish sacrifices. Judging from Sanders' 'Judaism: Practice & Belief: 63BCE-66CE (SCM Press, 1992), sacrifices are at the most basic level akin to Catholic confessions. For instance when a man bring a animal to be sacrificed 'he put his hand on the head of the victim and told the priest what the sacrifice was...We do not know whether the priests responded with any sort of formula. Probably not: they worked in silence, and the worshipper understood that, if the sacrifice was for a transgression, offering was the final step in securing God's forgiveness.' (p. 109) Sacrifices was the Temple's big business, and it was truly a business.
  14. Jim Kelly from M'Chigeeng, Canada writes:
    The nature of some of the comments on this page remind me of something Augustinian scholar James O'Donnell has said:"We live in a time, moreover, in which his words have reached their largest audience (if we count rather than weigh readers), but it is a time that imagines itself more free of his influence than any other since his lifetime, and that views some of his most characteristic ideas as rebarbative. But even hostility is a token of esteem: if you despise Augustine and write or speak about him in that vein, you judge him worth despising somehow; and so even there he hovers over us." (http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/augustine.html)

    May I remind readers that this is a page not about Augustine, certainly not about Paul's Letters or the nature of Levitical regulations, but about the Confessions of Augustine, as part of a great books series.

    And surely, outside of the autobiographical structure (the life of Augustine) and the "self as subject" is not the next main issue the nature of human memory?
  15. IC Weiner from Ottawa, Canada writes: Wonderful dialogue all around. Any Muslims in the room?
  16. Dave T from midwest, Canada writes: From the perspective of the theological debate of the Renaissance, the 12th century Renaissance, not the 16th, at least some of the discussion concerning the nature of reason and revelation are antecedent to Augustine's time, and specifically, to his writings. So the pervasiveness of his work within theological circles was profound (not to mention the founding of the Augustinian Order) for many centuries and certainly still prominent at the Council of Trent. And yet, what develops more from the late 1200s is the emergence of Thomas Aquinas, who very likely eclipsed Augustine as the new poster boy of the Church. Which begs the question: will the Summa Thelogica also be part of the greatest books series? With respect to the Confessions, I struggled with the text, knew little about the Manicheans, and even less about St. Ambrose, or any of the other historical conditions. The number of times Augustine prostrates himself before God seems endless, as does the numbers of times he affirms God’s greatness. (I thought the book could have been called The Confessions and Affirmations of St. Augustine). At no time did I feel that I was reading something other than a “medieval” text, something that could not have even been written in Loyola's time, the sermons of Cotton Mather or the meditations of Saint John of the Cross notwithstanding. Hence, the book's ability to reach across the centuries and touch our distant secular world eluded at least me. By contrast, I found the Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau far more interesting and “modern” if it’s confessions we’re after. It too is replete with human foibles, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities, yet strangely unrepentant. As W. H. Auden wrote in “The Massacre of the Innocents,” “Oh, God, put away justice and truth for we do not understand them…..Be weak and interesting like us, and we will love you as we love ourselves.”
  17. Jim Kelly from M'Chigeeng, Canada writes: "Confession"--I suppose in normal usage we think of the confession of a crime to the police, or confession of sin to a priest. But the Latin "con-fateri" indicates to avow or to declare.

    Although it was not mentioned in Randy Boyagoda's original article, the title of this work indicates more an avowal of faith than an admission of sin. "Late have I loved thee..." Augustine fesses up, "beauty so old and so new.
  18. jeff johns from Thunder Bay, Canada writes: I read the confessions of St.Augustine and hope to read the book again. Some of the comments are childish and ignorant. "After having all his fun.." some of you just don't get it. He is writing about God's grace and forgiveness, and the Catholic view of the body is that our bodies are sacred and a wonderful gift of God. Just read Pope John Paul's masterpiece, The Theology of the Body. I am surprised this book was on the globe and mail list, as our society and media is very secular.
  19. The Wight from Canada writes: jeff johns:

    "I am surprised this book was on the globe and mail list, as our society and media is very secular."

    I'm not. The western world owes a lot to it's Christian heritage from the Romans on in, and Augustine is a big part of that. In a time of very dangerous travel, he made it from Northern Africa where his bishopric was to Roman Anglia, no small feat. He was particularly strict and his monastic disciplines survived in the Augustinian orders through to today. Know any secular rulers who have had an effect 1000 years after they died?

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