101 pages • 3 hours read
Saint AugustineConfessions
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 400A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
Confession as a Fundamental Act of Faith
In naming this work Confessions, Augustine extolled the act that is unquestionably the central force behind his text. The confessions that comprise Confessions come in a variety of forms, all serving Augustine’s overall purpose in confessing: to “give [God] glory” and “let the human soul rise” to God (76).
Most apparent is the common sense of the word as declaration of sin, and, at least on the surface, this sort of confession seems to be the most central as well. From the first moment of his narrative, when relating an infancy he cannot remember, he nevertheless confesses that he “cried greedily for those breasts” (19), asserting that babies only appear free from sin because they are too weak to do much harm. In sharing the rest of his life, which he does remember, Augustine sees sin everywhere, often dwelling extensively and unforgivingly on it, such as with the pear episode, in which he characterizes himself as “in love with my own ruin, […] for I was depraved in soul” (37), or with the onset of his lustful habits, which he describes as “a time […] when I was afire to take my fill of hell” (33). Even after his conversion, Augustine is exhaustive in listing the sins that persist, lambasting himself for having “dreams with power to arouse me” (204). Such a degree of honesty and self-criticism may be alarming, but he perseveres in total admission of sin because God’s greatness merits his apology, confident that in giving it God “may grow ever sweeter to me” (33).
Still, even before Augustine admits that he was an evil baby, he confesses in a different sense, exalting God’s excellence in the very opening line: “Great are you, O Lord, and exceedingly worthy of praise” (14). Together with confession of sin, this more positive sense of the word drives the nine autobiographical books of Confessions. Frequently, Augustine interrupts his story to remark on God’s excellence or to praise him for his charity, often erupting into poetry to capture his passion. He ends Book I with just such a poetic confession, celebrating that “everything is wonderful and worthy of praise, / but all these things are gifts from my God” (32). Few episodes pass without an exultant admission of God’s glory, such as the one that accompanies the story of Victorinus in Book VIII: “Ah, how high you are in the heights of heaven, how deep in the depths!” (142). This sort of confession, Augustine asserts, is often overlooked but is just as important for the glory of God, as it recognizes that all that is good has its origin in God, so that “confession to [God] consists in not attributing my goodness to myself” (181).
In close relation to this last point is a third sense of confession, least conventional yet perhaps most crucial for Confessions. As Augustine holds that everything, and especially everything good, has its source in God, sharing his story and his interpretations of Christianity is, in effect, an act of confessing that the good that emerges through him is in fact a product of God. This collaborative and creative sense pervades the text in the form of his incessant entreaties to God to permit and empower his confessions, such as at the beginning of Book V: “Accept the sacrifice of my confessions, offered to you by the power of this tongue of mine which you have fashioned and aroused to confess your name” (76). Through this partnership with God, a conduit that he feels he must constantly tend to keep it open, Augustine is able to tell his story in a way that feels meaningful to him, to take the lessons he has learned and the interpretations he has gathered and forward them to his reader. Thus may Augustine fulfill what he perceives to be his duty: the realization of his vision of a world where all “creation sings praise to [God] so that we may love [him]” through recognition of the transformative power of confession in all its senses (305).
Augustine views virtue as the recognition that God is the ultimate source of all goodness, and he views evil as the disproportionate valuation of God’s creation over or instead of its creator. Confession, then, in all its forms is for Augustine a vitally essential rite. His emphasis on its value would contribute to the establishment of confession as one of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church. In composing this text, then, Augustine confessed to God that his heart was with him, and in publishing it Augustine held that confession up as a model for the rest of the world to see.
Sin and Redemption
Sin is an obsession for Augustine in Confessions. The confession of it drives the autobiographical portions of the book, the understanding of it was crucial to his conversion to Christianity, and the promise of redemption from it is the basis for the authority he wields to compose the work, especially those portions that provide Biblical commentary. As is the case with the Parable of the Prodigal Son to which Augustine returns repeatedly, sin and redemption are a major source of Augustine’s influence and the power of Confessions.
Augustine’s sinful past, or at least the picture he paints of himself as a hopeless sinner, is the vessel by which he makes this work compelling and accessible. He explains early on, “I call to mind the foul deeds I committed […] not in order to love them, but to love you, my God” (33). Since he views loving God as his most central calling, he can justify committing the details of his shameful past to paper. Of course, Augustine wrote for a human audience as well, “So that whoever reads [these writings] may reflect with me on the depths from which we must cry to you” (35). Augustine understood that a focus on sin and redemption would increase the appeal of his publication, for he recognizes that there is something “in the human heart that makes us rejoice more intensely over the salvation of a soul which is despaired of” (141). Moreover, though conceptions of sin vary, it is an aspect of life with which everyone struggles. Indeed, in Augustine’s view this struggle is inevitable because of “the original sin which binds all of us who die in Adam” (86). Therefore, by grounding his story in sin and redemption, Augustine not only serves God but also makes Confessions relatable and engaging.
The concept of original sin, which entails redemption solely from God’s mercy, is but one aspect of the complex understanding Augustine reached regarding sin and redemption, an understanding that paved the way for his conversion. Augustine long struggled to comprehend how evil could exist in a world created by an infinitely good and all-powerful God, and this perplexity may have been the greatest obstacle to his conversion to Christianity. The explanation offered by Manicheism, which rejected any god’s omnipotence and attested to the existence of an evil deity whose interference brought about sin, satisfied Augustine, vindicating his hunch that “it is not we who sin, but some other nature within us that is responsible” (88). Problematically, this perspective did not encourage Augustine’s redemption, for “I liked to excuse myself and lay the blame on some other force” (88), and so as a Manichee he glossed over his flaws, accounting them beyond his control. Thanks to Neoplatonism, Augustine reached the conclusion that “evil is nothing but the diminishment of good to the point where nothing at all is left” (50), an understanding that provided him an effective framework for seeking redemption while also reconciling sin with the Christian God, thus enabling his conversion.
At the end of Book IX, the autobiographical elements of Confessions behind him, Augustine begins an extensive philosophical and religious commentary, ending with an elaborate allegorical reading of scripture that justifies a society led by the church. As he was writing this, the Catholic Church was well on its way to becoming the most powerful institution in the Western world, and Augustine, then a prominent bishop, approved of this development and yet wanted to influence it to ensure that power was used to bring about a society with a “heart conceived by [God’s] spirit,” and from which its people could look back and know that “we made a fresh start and began to act well, though at an earlier stage we had been impelled to wrongdoing and abandoned [God]” (307). In these ways Augustine presented his own personal journey from sin to redemption to establish his authority to call for the redemption of the entire world from sin.
The Role of Human Relations for the Devout
While Augustine purports to value his relationship with God above all else, there is strong evidence that his human relations made a far greater impact on his life. Of course, it would be impossible for any organized religion to spread without human relationships, and yet when it comes to intimacy and close friendships, many of which facilitated his faith, Augustine begs God to “cleanse me from the uncleanness of such affections” (64). His vision of proper human coexistence is one of all people turned toward God rather than one another, only pivoting to help maintain communal focus on the divine. It is conspicuous, then, how often Augustine is unable to pass judgment on his relationships with other humans, or even to account for their power over him. Most perplexingly, these intensely loving relationships are essential to the development of Augustine’s relationship with God.
In his earlier years, Augustine’s friendships often led him to sin and misery. Reflecting on the pear episode, he professes repeatedly and with complete confidence, “I would not have done that deed alone” (42). This fact troubles him, as the allure of friendship and its undeniable impact complicate the passion for sin in and of itself that he views as the root of the transgression: “It follows, then, that I also loved the camaraderie with my fellow-thieves. So it is not true to say that I loved nothing other than the theft?” (41). Augustine provides some possible answers to this quandary but does not seem satisfied by them, ending his reflection by asking, “Who can unravel this most snarled, knotty tangle?” (42).
The death of his friend in Thagaste confronts Augustine with similarly befuddling aspects of human relationships. Following the tragedy, Augustine was unable to fathom his anguished soul, “which had become a great enigma” (62), and he found himself incapable of finding solace in God. He was years from becoming a Christian, but, amazingly, even though elsewhere in his writings he repeatedly makes clear his disdain for excessive attachment to humans, he appears to feel his immense grief was appropriate: “If I bade [my soul], ‘Trust in God,’ it rightly disobeyed me, for the man it had held so dear and lost was more real and more loveable than the fantasy in which it was bidden to trust” (63).
While Augustine engages with and acknowledges his confusion directly in these instances, trusting to God despite his uncertainty, he refrains from commenting at all on his reaction to what may have been the greatest interpersonal calamity of his life: the dismissal of his longtime lover. In tragically poetic terms, he speaks of her as “[s]o deeply […] engrafted into my heart that it was left torn and wounded and trailing blood” (113), and he describes the grief that followed as having “putrefied, and the pain became a cold despair” (113). These are his final words on the subject. Unlike with so many other allegedly sinful events regarding which he reframes his reaction in terms of spiritual immaturity, Augustine simply moves on from this trauma. In general he spends very little time talking about this woman, presumably because of the sinfulness of their relationship, but it may well be in this instance that the depth of his heartache revealed something so sacrilegious in Augustine’s attachment to this particular person that he dared not confront it more fully.
Finally, the two most important religious moments of his life—his conversion in the garden alongside Alypius and the transcendent meditation he experiences with Monica—not only occur in the company of other people but indeed hinge on their presence. Taken together, these experiences and Augustine’s treatment of them make it clear that even if Augustine preaches the need to avoid “carnal affection” and instead focus as much love as possible directly toward God (178), the experiences he relates in Confessions reveal a struggle not just to live in this manner but even to accept its wisdom.
