Augustine's Confessions

TO BEGIN with, it is necessary to define what Augustine actually meant by the use of the word Confessio. After all, without a brief examination of precisely what the term signified towards the close of the Fourth Century it would be impossible to delve into the realms of Augustine’s mind in order to judge whether the title of this great work truly achieved its purpose. In other words, without a basic understanding of what Augustine was trying to achieve, we cannot grasp the nature of the Confessions itself. Furthermore, we need to know something about the context in which the work was actually written.

In his Enarrations on the Psalms, Augustine has a profound message for his readers: “If thou wilt be brought from faith to the possession of the reality, begin in confession. First accuse thyself, and having accused thyself, praise God.”[1] This demonstrates the vast importance that this learned saint attributed to the whole issue of confession itself, but what, exactly, did Augustine mean by this term? According to Peter Brown, “the Confessions are one of the few books of Augustine’s, where the title is significant.”[2] Indeed, even in Augustine’s time the term Confessio had several meanings and the title of the work did not merely arise for want of another, more suitable definition of the author’s intentions, on the contrary, it was chosen in order to reflect different methods of approaching the nature of the Christian religion. The term was not, however, applied in an ambiguous fashion. Indeed, it was deliberately intended to convey a whole trinity of theological objectives. So what are the three objectives contained in the Confessions? John O’Meara contends that - overall - the term “is a confession of sin; it is a confession of faith; and it is a confession of praise.”[3] But attempts to isolate such definitions from the rest of the work are, at best, a difficult operation which clearly betrays the scholarly intentions of its creator. After all, “for though the emphasis varies from place to place the confession of sin nearly always implies faith and praise, and likewise each of the two implies the others.”[4] One example of how this interrelated formula works is contained in the passage: “Let the proud deride me, O God, and all whom you have not yet laid low and humiliated for the salvation of their souls; but let me still confess my sins to you for your honour and glory. Allow me, I beseech you, to trace again in memory my past deviations and to offer you a sacrifice of joy.”[5] Here, Augustine is undoubtedly employing all three aspects of the term. Firstly, he seeks to identify his past mistakes (confession of sin); secondly, he pays tribute to the finest attributes of his Creator (confession of praise); thirdly, and perhaps more importantly, he expresses his joyful and boundless admiration of the Christian ethos as a whole (confession of faith). In fact many of “Augustine’s works are coloured by this joy, but it comes to fullest expression in the Confessions, of which the true subject is not the wanderings of Augustine but the love of God.”[6] For Augustine, therefore, “there is a joy that is not given to those who do not love you, but only to those who love you for your own sake. This is true happiness and there is no other.”[7] It is, perhaps, also worth noting that this final section of the Confessio triad - an ejaculatory procedure, of course, entirely consistent with the General Confession made by modern Catholics in the wake of a recent conversion - “was also meant to authenticate Augustine’s progress from the ‘old’ to the ‘new spiritual man’, from the vetus to the novus homo spiritalis, stripped of pride, curiosity, and concupiscence and equipped with their trinitarian opposites (humility, charity, and wisdom) which made him capable of a foretaste of God whose presence to man forms the fundamental and mystical theme of the entire work.”[8]

But whilst Augustine’s spiritually-charged concoction is literally teeming with self-criticism, tortuous philosophical reasoning and the trials and tribulations which inevitably bear the hallmarks of his arduous passage towards the faith, it has also been designed for an audience: “O Lord, since you are outside time in eternity, are you unaware of the things that I tell you? Or do you see in time the things that occur in it? If you see them, why do I lay down this lengthy record before you? Certainly it is not through me that you first hear of these things. But by setting them down I fire my own heart and the hearts of my readers with love of you, so that we may all ask: Can any praise be worthy of the Lord’s majesty?”[9] One source rightly points out that Augustine “wants his readers to fix their minds, not upon the frailties of a fellow-sinner, but upon the magnificence of God’s gift: the omnipotence of God’s grace”[10]. Another upon the fact that he was “trying to make out a case against himself before an audience which was predisposed to believe him a saintly man.”[11] Similarly, “one of the reasons why he wrote was to persuade his admirers that any good qualities he had were his by the grace of God, who had saved him so often from himself.”[12] Augustine also had the advantage of possessing a captive audience, for “Pagan philosophers had already created a tradition of ‘religious autobiography’ in this vein”[13] and the demand for well-respected men and women to record their experiences in written form was consistent with the “amazing spread of asceticism in the Latin world.”[14] After all, it does remain a fact that Augustine’s work was primarily composed in order to satisfy the demands of his earthly contemporaries. In 395, when Bishop Alypius of Thagaste wrote to Paulinus of Nola requesting a copy of Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, he also sent his friend a selection of Augustine’s own literary offerings. But whilst this act of generosity was initially designed to provoke Paulinus into complying with his request, Alypius inadvertently transformed his correspondent into a devoted student of the great man himself. Consequently, Paulinus became so excited by the apparent holiness of his friend that Alypius probably became either too embarrassed or too modest to continue their mutual exchange of ecclesiastical and philosophical information on a regular basis. According to John J. O’Meara: “We do not know Alypius’ reply to this flattering request. Feeling, doubtless, that he could not comply with it himself, he asked Augustine to do so”[15]. As a result, Paulinus then began to enquire precisely how Augustine had been converted to Christianity, a request which led to the great work upon which this essay is based. Although this account cannot be authenticated beyond any doubt, it certainly does seem as though one of the most interesting theological works ever produced (or, at the very least a significant part of it) was actually conceived from something apparently so trivial as one man’s determination to know more about the life of his scholarly corespondent. But, regardless of whether Paulinus was himself directly responsible for Augustine’s decision to compose the Confessions, several other factors must also be taken into consideration. Henry Chadwick has noted that “Augustine’s presence induced apprehension. He was known to be a terror for demolishing opponents in public disputations. Some did not quite believe in the sincerity of his conversion at Milan.”[16] On the face of it, Chadwick may be implying that Augustine wrote the Confessions in order to undergo a more genuine conversion than that which had allegedly transpired earlier on in his career. But far more credible, however, is the suggestion that the work “was probably occasioned by a combination of internal and external factors - his new renown as a bishop, inquiries about his earlier life, attacks on his integrity, his own reflections on classical culture, his new understanding of grace, all of them together requiring a massive re-examination and interpretation of his own life.”[17] Peter Brown is of the opinion that, since 391, “he had been forced to adjust himself to a new existence, as a priest and bishop. This change had affected him deeply. It had already driven him to anxious self-examination.”[18] Augustine, therefore, wanted to set the record straight in a variety of different areas and, in a textual sense, it is for this very purpose that we must ultimately accept that his Confessions is a complex work which has been divided into the three main sections described above: confession of sin, confession of praise, and confession of faith. In order to see whether the title of this work illuminates its very purpose, we must examine each area in turn.

Firstly, Augustine used his work as a springboard from which to openly confess his sins and clearly had little hesitation in describing the errors of his pre-Christian existence. The reader’s attention is drawn to Augustine’s life as a child and we share with him the “ferocious honesty”[19] which pervades this re-examination of a period which, to be fair, was hardly that sinful when one compares his youthful exploits to those of the modern child. But the impression that one receives from the way Augustine desperately seeks to re-evaluate the life of which he can only recall a limited amount, is that he was consistently attempting to wash away the final vestiges of guilt. Confession, of course, is about possessing the ability to recognise the error of one’s ways and the honesty to accuse oneself before God. But the episode of the pear tree, Augustine’s relationship with his mistress, the birth of his illegitimate son and his immense struggle against the sins of the flesh, are not the only mistakes that he decides to confront in his work. On the contrary, in Book X Augustine reveals the great extent to which human error can continue even after one has converted to Christianity. Indeed, one could argue that the Confessions should have ended with the close of Books VIII and IX in which Augustine describes the penultimate conversion itself, although one must never lose sight of the fact that “The last four books actually carry the clue to the whole.”[20] Indeed, “What the first nine books illustrate in his personal exploration of the experience of the prodigal son is given its cosmic dimension in the concluding parts of the work.”[21] However, constrained as he undoubtedly was by a never-ending search for personal fulfilment through the liberating tenets of absolution and penance, the man who became Bishop of Hippo is forced to admit that conversion alone does not bring an end to man’s struggle against temptation. In other words, Book X “is not the affirmation of a cured man: it is the self-portrait of a convalescent.”[22] For the prospective Christian, however, Augustine’s continuing battle against sin must, at the very least, have provoked a slight feeling of incredulity. After all, for the average reader who views conversion as a form of sanctifying treatment for his or her ailing soul, the fact that even a well-respected Bishop like Augustine found it difficult to avoid sin in his own post-Christian state meant that conversion seemed far less attractive than it had formerly appeared. Indeed, what hope for the ordinary individual when the Fourth Century’s leading theologian was seen begging his Creator not to “relinquish what you have begun, but make perfect what is still imperfect in me.”[23] It remains a fact, however, that the process by which Augustine confesses before God and before man is highly effective. The word Confessio, therefore, is used here in its most common and widely accepted form.

Secondly, few people would argue with the fact that by choosing to embark upon this work Augustine had intended to praise his Creator. Indeed, the Confessions even begins with the words: “Can any praise be worthy of the Lord’s majesty? How magnificent his strength! How inscrutable his wisdom!”[24] By demonstrating how God is consistently prepared to forgive those who have sinned (and continue to sin), Augustine is - whether inadvertently or not - lending credence to the all-forgiving nature of the Almighty. Most importantly, by praising the qualities of God the Merciful, the Confessions leaves its readers safe in the knowledge that they, too, can be redeemed if they renounce the errors of the past and learn to embrace the Christian message. As far as Augustine was concerned, God created man in order to praise him and such humble creatures can only discover true satisfaction by returning to their Heavenly Father. At this point, it could be argued that Augustine was still under the influence of Neoplatonism, especially as this allegedly ‘heretical’ doctrine also insists that man can find emancipation by returning to the light. On the other hand, if sections of Augustine’s Confessions do somehow adhere to a philosophy which he had come to renounce, it is merely coincidental. After all, Neoplatonism attempted to incorporate certain aspects of Christianity within its own Weltanschauung. When Augustine heaps praise upon God, he is reciprocating the love which he has received in turn. When he recounts that which God has done for man, therefore, Augustine is not only confessing his praise before God Himself, he is also attempting to convince his audience that God is undoubtedly worthy of such an honour in the first place: “How great was your love for us, good Father, for you did not even spare your own son, but gave him up to save us sinners! How great was your love for us, when it was for us that Christ, who did not see, in the rank of Godhead, a prize to be coveted, accepted an obedience which brought him to death, death on a cross!”[25] Thus, once again, Confessio has proved to be a fitting epithet for what is an interrelated work of great intricacy and design.

Thirdly, it is no coincidence that the Confessions is written in the form of a prayer. Indeed, this “was common to a long tradition of religious philosophy”[26] and prayer “was a recognised vehicle for speculative enquiry.”[27] By using the work to confess his faith, Augustine was joyfully expressing his own personal affection for Christianity. As a result, the great Bishop felt that he had to defend his faith in a philosophical regard, renouncing his former involvement with Manichaeism and, instead, seeking to validate his beloved Catholicism beyond any doubt. As R.S. Pine-Coffin rightly points out: “Whatever his precise plan may have been, it is unlikely that St. Augustine would have been content merely to repudiate his early errors. His logical mind would require, not only that falsehood should be demolished, but also that truth should be made apparent.”[28] The confession of sin involves facing up to one’s responsibilities, and by proclaiming how Manichaeism had enabled him to retain a free conscience whilst “It flattered my pride to think that I incurred no guilt”[29], Augustine was reaffirming his love for a faith which had given him a new beginning in exchange for complete spiritual loyalty. Indeed, even the famous twentieth-century convert, G.K. Chesterton, was forced to admit that for him the main attraction of Catholicism was its ability to alleviate the load of the sinner. By using the devotional precepts of worship and thanksgiving, therefore, Augustine was clearly making his religion appear highly attractive to those who sought to redeem themselves. Professing one’s faith plays a major role in the Confessions and the fact that it is included within the terminological triad of the book’s title, is testimony to the way Augustine was able to employ a variety of methods for a sole purpose. It is rather surprising, therefore, to discover that Augustine’s biographers have failed to make the connection between the structure of his own work and that of the Holy Trinity. Just as the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost represent three sides of a single omnipotent Being, so then does Augustine’s Confessions imitate the edifice of the Godhead by immersing three ministerial objectives within one text.

To conclude, although some historians have argued that the Confessions was merely written for those about to embark upon a life of monasticism or, in a more cynical vein, to provide Augustine with an opportunity to rewrite the extent to which he was really involved with Manichaeism, the title of this masterly work is more than adequate and serves a profound purpose in conveying that which underlies the author’s overall objective. But not only does the term Confessio act as a unifying agent which binds inextricably the subtle trinity of Augustine’s theological endeavour, it is also validated by the very fact that he skilfully achieves his objective. In the words of the great man himself: “For behold, you have taken delight in truth: and he that does truth comes to the light. I desire to do truth in my heart, before Thee, by confession: with my pen, before many witnesses”[30].

Notes:

1. St. Augustine; Enarrations on the Psalms, quoted in Roy W. Battenhouse (ed.) A Companion To the Study of St. Augustine (Oxford University Press, 1956), p. 407. [Back]
2. Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo (University of California, 1967), p. 175. [Back]
3. John J. O’Meara; The Young Augustine: An Introduction To the Confessions of St. Augustine (Longman, 1980), p. 2. [Back]
4. Ibid., p. 3. [Back]
5. St. Augustine in R.S. Pine-Coffin (tr.) Confessions (Penguin, 1961), IV:1, p. 71. [Back]
6. Eleanor McDougall; St. Augustine: A Study in His Personal Religion (Student Christian Movement Press, 1930), p. 105. [Back]
7. St. Augustine, op. cit., X:22, p. 228. [Back]
8. Robert J. O’Connell; St. Augustine’s Confessions: The Odyssey of Soul (Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 7-8. [Back]
9. St. Augustine, op. cit., XI:1, p. 253. [Back]
10. R.L. Ottley; Studies in the Confessions of St. Augustine (Robert Scott, 1919), pp. 39-40. [Back]
11. R.S. Pine-Coffin in his introduction to St. Augustine’s Confessions, op. cit., p. 12. [Back]
12. Ibid. [Back]
13. Peter Brown, op. cit., p. 159. [Back]
14. Ibid., p. 160. [Back]
15. John J. O’Meara, op. cit., p. 4. [Back]
16. Henry Chadwick; Augustine (Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 66. [Back]
17. Eugene TeSelle; Augustine the Theologian (Burns & Oates, 1970), p. 189. [Back]
18. Peter Brown, op. cit., p. 163. [Back]
19. Ibid., p. 171. [Back]
20. Henry Chadwick, op. cit., p. 68. [Back]
21. Ibid. [Back]
22. Peter Brown, op. cit., p. 177. [Back]
23. St. Augustine, op. cit., X:4, p. 210. [Back]
24. Ibid., I:1, p. 21. [Back]
25. Ibid., X:43, p. 251. [Back]
26. Peter Brown, op. cit., p. 165. [Back]
27. Ibid., p. 166. [Back]
28. R.S. Pine-Coffin, op. cit., p. 16. [Back]
29. St. Augustine, op. cit., V:10, p. 103. [Back]
30. Ibid., X:1, p. 207. [Back]