Reflections
on
Saint Augustine's
Confessions

by Nathan Vonnahme
for Church History I

Regent College
22 October 1998

"What has anyone achieved in words when he speaks about you? Yet woe to those who are silent about you because, though loquacious with verbosity, they have nothing to say" (I.1).

          By your grace, O God, you have brought me to read your servant Augustine's Confessions. Through him you have taught me about the world you have made, about myself, and about you. You have shown me first of all how prayer to you can be composed in writing. I commit this paper as an exercise of prayer and worship and confession to you. Thank you for this opportunity to compose my thoughts about this brother's writing before you. I confess that I found much of his book difficult; thank you for this opportunity to write about the "good parts".

          It seems so strange to me to be writing to you, I don't think I've ever done it before. But you are certainly as present here in this room with me, invading and filling this keyboard and whirring computer, as you are present in my heart and mind. My God, I am only a beginner in speaking to you, in writing to you and about you. In your mercy, teach me words to express what I have learned of you and to confess your love and your glory.

Creation

"Where have those who fled from your face gone? Where can they get beyond the reach of your discovery? (Ps. 138). But they have fled that they should not see you, though you see them, and so in their blindness they stumble over you (Rom. 11:7-11); for you do not desert anything you have made (Wisd. 11:25). The unjust stumble over you and are justly chastised. Endeavouring to withdraw themselves from your gentleness, they stumble on your equity and fall into your anger. They evidently do not know that you are everywhere. No space circumscribes you. You alone are always present even to those who have taken themselves far from you. Let them turn and seek you, for you have not abandoned your creation as they have deserted their Creator (Wisd. 5:7)" (V.2).

          Augustine's starting point, and the one he returns to more often than any other, is your first gift of creation. In this gift he sees you as fully transcendent and fully immanent. He has a powerful sense of your omnipresence. You have not made the universe and then abandoned it like the deists' clock maker, but you fill it, sustain it, and protect it. You are "supporting and filling and protecting, creating and nurturing and bringing to maturity" (I.4). Augustine sees your providence and protection at work throughout every step in his own journey, and profoundly sees and expresses how near you are to us. You are the friend that is closer than a brother (Pr. 18:24), you are even closer to us than we are to ourselves. Augustine writes that he even understands some things about you more than he understands himself (X.7).

          But just as he affirms and profoundly realises your presence in and sustenance of the universe, Augustine is acutely aware of how wholly different you are from the creation. You are not some panentheistic force, part of the world, but you are non-material, non-temporal, an "incorruptible and inviolable and unchangeable" (VII.1). Here is where Augustine's refutation of Manicheeism and involvement with Neoplatonism led him to truth about you--he had gone from believing that nothing but matter existed and that you somehow were material, to embracing a strict dichotomy between material things and eternal forms.

          God my Saviour, you have deepened my realisation of how close you are to me, how you fill every piece of this complex world, how you created it in love and sustain it, how utterly miraculous it is that I even exist at all. You have also deepened my knowledge that you are completely different from this world, and that even the most certain laws of physics, time, and space are a matter of indifference and are completely arbitrary to you. Please grant me the grace to comprehend both of these truths more deeply, that I may know and love and praise you more.

Restlessness

          " 'Happy is the person who loves you' (Tobit 13:18) and his friend in you, and his enemy because of you (Matt. 5:44). Though left alone, he loses none dear to him; for all are dear in the one who cannot be lost. Who is that but our God, the God who made heaven and earth and filled them? By filling them he made them (Jer. 23:24). None loses you unless he abandons you, and when he abandons you where can he go or fly for refuge (Ps. 238:7) unless it be to move from your serenity to your anger? Where can he escape from finding that your law is in his penalty? And 'your law is truth' (Ps. 118:142) and truth is you (John 14:6).
          'O God of hosts, turn us and show us your face, and we shall be safe' (Ps. 79:8). For wherever the human soul turns itself, other than to you, it is fixed in sorrows, even if it is fixed upon beautiful things external to you and external to itself, which would nevertheless be nothing if they did not have their being from you" (IV.14-15).

          Central to Augustine's understanding of creation is that we have been created to know you. In his opening paragraph, he writes, "You stir man to take pleasure in praising you, because you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you" (I.1). Just as you fill the universe, you fill us, surround us behind and before, and we cannot flee from your presence. And yet we try to escape you by turning away from you and refusing to acknowledge you, and our hearts wither in restlessness without you. In the story of his life up until his baptism, Augustine repeatedly comes back to this pervasive restlessness, this feeling of not being quite right or at home:

          "What tortuous paths! How fearful a fate for 'the rash soul' (Isa. 3:9) which nursed the hope that after it had departed from you, it would find something better! Turned this way and that, on its back, on its side, on its stomach, all positions are uncomfortable. You alone are repose" (VI.26).

          Though the human eye roves around, lighting upon the beautiful things of your creation, it cannot find rest except in you. Augustine sees this restless roving very clearly in the scientists of his day:

          "They have not known the Way, your Word through whom you made the things that they count and also those who do the counting, and the senses thanks to which they observe what they count, and the mind they employ to calculate. . . . They have not known this way by which they may descend from themselves to him and through him ascend to him" (V.5).

          My Lord and sweet strength, how applicable this is to my time, when everyone accepts the word of empirical science and does not realise its inability to study or even to speak about non-material things. Help me to not be distracted by the wonders of your creation but to seek you and find my rest in you. Help me to not ignore or accept the restlessness that comes when I am found in myself but to persevere in finding you that I may be found in you.

Redemption

"How can salvation be obtained except through your hand remaking what you once made?" (V.14)

          Augustine's story begins with the goodness of your creation, takes a turn for the worse in his early life of restlessness, but by your grace he is wooed to you and finally won. It is so wonderful to hear his story, to see how personally you work in our lives. Even from so many centuries later I understand most of my brother's feelings, and I share in his journey toward you. In so many ways it reminds me of my own story, though somehow Augustine, who was much older than I am, remembered much more of his. You called me out of an ignorant, self-indulgent youth into sweet friendship with you. Through your blood you brought me to the death of myself and new life in you. I praise you that Augustine knew these same things and wrote about them, that though he was "a vast problem" to himself, you took him and remade him. You took his gifts and kept them, and redeemed his previous skills with words and philosophy for your glory. You filled his amazing mind to overflowing with your Word. You truly redeemed and him answered this prayer:

"My God, I give thanks to you, my source of sweet delight, and my glory and my confidence. I thank you for your gifts. Keep them for me, for in this way you will keep me. The talents you have given will increase and be perfected, and I will be with you since it was your gift to me that I exist" (I.31).

          Lord God of wonder, one thing that most amazed me about how you called Augustine to you was your persistent wooing, the way you tempted him away from his empty life and into your arms. He writes of this, as he was on the verge of deciding to follow you:

"Inwardly I said to myself: Let it be now, let it be now. And by this phrase I was already moving towards a decision; I had almost taken it, and then I did not do so. Yet I did not relapse into my original condition, but stood my ground very close to the point of deciding and recovered my breath. Once more I made the attempt and came only a little short of my goal; only a little short of it--yet I did not touch it or hold on to it. I was hesitating whether to die to death and live to life. Ingrained evil had more hold over me than unaccustomed good. The nearer approached the moment of time when I would become different, the greater the horror of it struck me. But it did not thrust me back nor turn me away, but left me in a state of suspense" (VIII.25).

"What filth, what disgraceful things [my old loves] were suggesting! I was listening to them with much less than half my attention. They were not frankly confronting me face to face on the road, but as it were whispering behind my back, as if they were furtively tugging at me as I was going away, trying to persuade me to look back. Nevertheless they held me back. I hesitated to detach myself, to be rid of them, to make the leap to where I was being called. Meanwhile the overwhelming force of habit was saying to me: 'Do you think you can live without them?'" (VIII.26).

This passage reminded me of terrible times when I have been tempted away from you--though part of me kept whispering to hold me back, the perverse part of me kept pushing toward sin, hearing the whispers but unmoved by them, until I fell into a mire. But this is a beautiful example, Lord, of your power to call us gently to you, to ignite the desire of our wills toward you so that the whispers of sin in our lives do not easily entangle us. Father, Son, Spirit, tempt me toward you in this way. Transform me so that my temptation is toward you and let me give in to you every time. Kill the part of me that rises up to turn away from you. Let me listen to my old loves with less than half my attention rather than ignore your truths as I have.

Praise

          " 'O Lord, I am your servant, I am your servant and the son of your handmaid. You have snapped my chains. I will sacrifice to you the offering of praise' (Ps. 115:16-17). Let my heart praise you and my tongue, and 'let all my bones say, "Lord who is like you?" ' (Ps. 34:10). Let them speak, answer me, and say to my soul 'I am your salvation' (Ps. 34:3) " (IX.1).

          My King and Shepherd, you have been teaching me what it means to praise you. Thank you for an example in Augustine's naturally overflowing doxology to you. You , not himself, are his salvation and he gives you honor and adoration. He is acutely aware of your reclaiming love for him at work through all the details of his life, and this stirs his heart to praise you.

          For Augustine, the song of your praise is for the redemption of his life, but most often it is for the miracle of your creation. He never gets over the wonder of your creation: you created anything at all, you have created him, you have created beautiful things without number. Augustine delights in your creation, because it pleases you: "The things which by the help of your Spirit delight us are delighting you in us" (XIII.46). For him the purpose of your beautiful works is your praise, glory and love: "Your works praise you that we may love you, and we love you that your works may praise you" (XIII.48).

          Creator and redeemer and author of life, Augustine's psalms to you remind me of the importance of memorizing your psalms and writing my own. His relentless acknowledgement of your amazing work in creation convicts me that I should not take the miracles of your creation for granted.

"That you are to be praised is shown by dragons on earth, and all deeps, fire, hail, snow, ice, the hurricane and tempest, which perform your word--mountains and all hills, fruitful trees and all cedars, beasts and all cattle, reptiles and winged birds; kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all judges of the earth, young men and maidens, old men with younger: let them praise your name (Ps. 148:7-12). Moreover, let these from the heavens praise you: let all your angels praise you in the height, our God all your powers, sun and moon, all stars and light, the heaven of heavens and the waters that are above the heaves: let them praise your name (Ps. 148:1-5)" (VII.19).

          Creator and lover of everything, press these truths into my life and show me the beauty of your design in what you have made. Arouse my heart to praise you for your creation and value it for your sake. Give me grace to worship you in all ways fitting to your glory, and increase my wonder at these marvels of nature you surround me with, which I usually go for days without noticing. Let me not be distracted by them, either, but let them focus me on you.

Integrity

          "You are so high among the highest, and I am low among the lowest, a mean thing. You never go away from us. Yet we have difficulty in returning to you.           Come Lord, stir us up and call us back, kindle and seize us, be our fire and our sweetness. Let us love, let us run" (VIII.8-9).

          Lord my God, I thank you for the way Augustine pursued his relationship with you and sought to extend the influence of your leading and redemption into all areas of his life. I thank you for the way he pursued you with his mind, and thought through philosophical issues carefully and honestly. I thank you also for the warning you've given me in him--that his philosophical commitment to and affinity for Neoplatonism drastically affected his reading of your Word. It is to his credit that he integrated his philosophy with the rest of his life in this way, but the effects of his overemphasis on Neoplatonic themes like the inferiority of the body have left a grim legacy in your church. How is it that one so amazed by your creation and convinced of your goodness could see marriage as evil? And how can he be so apparently oblivious to matters of family, his relationship to his concubine and son?

          Most of all, God of truth, how can a brother so convinced of his own fallibility before you be so convinced that he can ascend to you through the logic of his mind (Book VII) ? To me, this is rather like dogs having a meeting to discuss theology, human nature and the nature of dogs. The dogs may be able to communicate most of what they know to each other, and may be able to reason out some things about you, and they should get quite a few things right about canine nature because they are so familiar with it. They would probably understand many things about these things which we perhaps do not. But we know that dogs would not truly understand human nature--it seems like they would just never be able to grasp some of our concepts, much less some of yours. How, then, are we any different? Unless you reveal yourself to us, we have no hope of knowing you. Teach me, Holy Spirit, to rely on you only and not on my own power of reasoning.

          Despite a few errors and wrong emphases, Augustine sought you and sought to obey you. His obedience to you, God, was also based in you. He prayed, "My entire hope is exclusively in your very great mercy. Grant what you command, and command what you will" (X.40). Likewise I pray that you will give me the ability to fulfill your will in every area of my life, and the wisdom and integrity to apply your truth to the most basic assumptions and even to the peripheral activities of my natural life.

You

          "Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours" (X.38).

          My Lord and God and Saviour! How beautifully these words of Augustine turn my thoughts and hopes to you! Father Son and Spirit! You have loved me so much in creation, in redemption, in the patient teaching me to walk in your way. I pray that the ears, eyes, nose, mouth and skin of my heart will be opened to you more and more, that I might know you more closely and long for you more dearly. You were first, you will be last, and you are present. Draw me to you. Help me to find my rest in you.

 

 

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