The Allusive Saint Augustine

Allusions to Saint Augustine show up in various works. Dorothy Sayer’s Wimsey, for instance, often references St. Augustine. Historians rely on St. Augustine. I figured Confessions by Saint Augustine was one of those “be a well-rounded reader” works I should check out.

Now that I’ve read Confessions, I can appreciate why it is one of those seminal works. Written in the late 4th century C.E., Wikipedia refers to it as the first “Western autobiography,” which is an entirely fair description.

Saint Augustine’s attraction is that he can’t help throwing in personal details. He takes Saint Paul’s occasional references to personal life events in letters and raises them to a literary level. He lays the foundation for the much later Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis since Augustine is providing personal details to explain his spiritual conversion.

By themselves, the personal details would still be fascinating: 4th century life in the Roman world becomes clearer. What makes Augustine so much more bearable than so many religious lecturers is that he is also trying to figure out himself—very much like the irascible, “talking out loud” Saint Paul.

When he discusses stealing fruit as a kid with other kids, he questions, as an older man looking back on his youthful self, What was that all about? Why did we do it? “Why then was my delight of such sort that I did it not alone? Because none ordinarily laughs alone?” He evidently values the friendship associated with that event but concludes ruefully: “[W]hen it is said, ‘Let’s go, let’s do it,’ we are ashamed not to be shameless.”

See the Opies and kids playing.

His religious beliefs are fairly standard with an extra bit of grit since they take real life conditions into account. He asks again and again, What is God? How can we understand Him? He points out that there are many languages and many peoples. So a single definition of an idea may not be entirely possible—yet God, as Augustine understands God, doesn’t change. All this multiplicity must exist because God wants it to exist. Consequently, “I conceive Thee to have granted us a power and a faculty, both to express several ways what we understand but one; and to understand several ways, what we read to be obscurely delivered but in one.” 

Mr. Introspection

Like C.S. Lewis and George MacDonald, Augustine appears to have loved life. The God he worships is a God of creation and, moreover, a God who loves that creation. More is, in fact, better. In Confessions, Augustine's beliefs are flooded through with deep reverence for God coupled with the mercy and grace that show up in Saint Paul’s letters: “Thou art the most overflowing Giver of all good…Verily all desire joy…Let it be asked of Thee, sought in Thee, knocked for at Thee; so, so shall it be received, so shall it be found, so shall it be opened."

There are downsides to Augustine--though fewer, in my reading, than his reputation has garnered. Since, like Saint Paul, he was answering events and problems in the moment, it is difficult to judge him entirely by later standards. 

Overall, it is his willingness to be human that keeps him an important touchstone, for historians and for readers of religion and philosophy and for lovers of autobiographies.