102 - Augustine's Confessions, Books 7-8

a little bit different. Instead of recording through zoom as we usually do, we actually held this over on X through a space and so that's why if the sound sounds a little bit different than that's what's going on there. And if you're watching on YouTube, that's why there is not really going to be active video for most of this episode, even though I'm still posting it over there.

So just know that that's what's going on. And I think that we're going to keep doing this for the book club, just kind of a way to get a little bit more exposure and to get a little bit more involved in the community. I mean, after all, our book club. At least this book club is free, and we'll probably keep doing some free book clubs here and there, and so this is the opportunity. If if you see this happening live on X, feel free to jump in or you know, pay attention to when we're going to

schedule these. Feel free to jump into these conversations. Whether you've actually read the text or you just want to join the conversation, either as a listener or an actor participant,

You're more than welcome to do so. If we're hosting over there, and so keep an eye out for that I from not already make sure you're following me over at andrew In Snyder, although there's a pretty good chance you are if you've found this podcast, because again there's a pretty good chance of this is how you found

that podcast, because that'd be my main platform. All right, well, let's go ahead and jump right into this conversation, which included Kyle and Chase and obviously me on Augustin's Confessions book seven and eight. Oh and actually one last thing before we jump into that conversation, as a reminder, the next course is coming up on plato stoicism until we have Faces, and that begins the week of August third.

So next week, if you fear listening to this shortly after it comes out, we're going to be taking a look at Plato's fato, which, in my reckoning, is actually the most important companion text to go along with Till We Have Faces, I would say even more so than the myth of Psyche in Cupid, as important as that is obviously like that that's what Lewis is really working off of, But as far as the philosophical even the theological movements that he's using, I think that the Fato

from Plato is actually probably the most important companion text. And then also will be taking a look at some Stoic philosophers, Seneca Epictitis and Emperor Marcus Aurelius, given the importance of Stoicism in this story, especially through the mouth

of the Fox. And so whether you've read Till We Have Faces before, you've read these other philosophers before, or you haven't, I think this will be a very profitable study to go further up and further into what Lewis is doing in what he believed to be his greatest novel.

And I tend to agree to that. And so if you want to join that course, a few ways of doing that either become a Tier three patron monthly or annual over on patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind, or you can just purchase the course outright through the shop at Patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind. All right, now, let's get to that conversation. Come to the very first Mythic Mind space over on x. It's my first time hosting one of these, and so sorry if anything goes wrong,

but I think we'll be all right here. All right. Good to see Kyle and Chase here. They've been the regulars throughout this book club. Good to see Reverend David here. Thank you for joining us, and for anyone else who

stops by. You know, I am recording this to Cino for the Mythic Mind podcast, and anybody is welcome to jump into the conversation here, whether you are actively you know, reading along with us in the Confessions, you've read it before, you don't know anything about Augustin, you just want to join the conversation. You're more than welcome to do so along the way. But for now, I want to begin as we've been doing by reading a passage from this

section of the Confessions that we've been working on. I'm gonna start with a passage from book seven, which, if you're reading along with the Sheed translation is over on page one one, and this really sets the tone for what's going to be happening in book seven, So let me read that. It's kind of a long passage, but bear with me. I sought for the origin of evil, but I sought in an evil manner and failed to

see the evil that was there. In my manner of inquiry, I ranged before the eyes of my mind the whole creation, both what we are able to see, earth and sea and air, and stars and trees and mortal creatures, and what we cannot see, like the firmament of the heaven above, and all its angels and spiritual powers. Though even these I imagined as if they were bodies, disposed, each in its

own place. And I made one great mass of God's creation, distinguished according to the kinds of bodies in it, whether they really were bodies or only such bodies as I imagined spirits to be. I made it huge, not as huge as it is, which I had no means of knowing, but as huge as might be necessary, though in every

direction finite. And I saw you Lord, in every part, containing and penetrating it, yourself excumate, yourself altogether, infinite, as if your being were a sea, infinite and immeasurable everywhere, although it's still only a sea, and within it there were some mighty but not infinite sponge, and that sponge filled in every part with the immeasurable sea. Thus I conceived your creationist finite and filled utterly by yourself, and you were infinite. And I said, here is God, and

here is what God has created. And God is good, mightily and incomparably better than all these. But of his goodness he created them good. And see how he contains and fills them. So with that passage, Augustine really deals with this philosophical problem here of who is God and what is God in relation to the world that He's made.

And at this time, you know he's he's already detailed some of his philosophical journey that's very much tied to his biographical journey, which I suppose I should briefly review at this point. And so Augustine was born to a Christian mother, Monica, and a pagan father, and so he was raised to know the faith, but he certainly didn't

embrace it in his youth. And so he's he throws, he throws himself off into all kinds different, less of the flesh as well as less of the mind as he is pulled by various philosophical cults and sets and heresies. He finds his way first to Carthage, where he teaches rhetoric, but the students didn't really treat him very well there, you know, they didn't show up on time, they didn't

respect him. That just was part of their culture. And so he decides to lead Carthage and go to Rome, where he thinks he'll be better valued by his students, but then they stiff him on the payments, and so that doesn't really go very well either. Eventually he finds his way over to Milan, where he meets with Ambrose, who is going to be pivotal in his conversion to Christianity, to Orthodox Christianity. But along the way he he as I said, goes through these philosophical stages. For a time.

He's with the Manicheans, who are kind of like this mix of Zoroastrianism and Christian heresy. They believe that good and evil kind of have this. I don't I don't know any yang's the right way to frame it, but they're they're competing substances. It is the best way to understand it. And so he had this idea of a competing substance between goodness and evil, but that that led to some problems like Okay, if God is the creator, then like how do we get the substance of evil?

Like did God create evil? And if so, he doesn't seem to be very good. And so he he's struggling with with these these issues. At this point, he's largely moved beyond that and now he's he's just ruggling to understand God outside of that paradigm, and he doesn't know how to conceptualize it. And so in that passage, I just read like it sounds really, it sounds good if you're not really paying attention to what he's saying, right,

it seems like he's glorifying the magnitude of God. But really what he's doing is he's he's essentially identifying God with the physical order, with the created order, and so he's actually doing something like pantheism in conflating God with creation. He still just doesn't understand how to understand like spirit apart from space, and so he's he's falling into this kind of pantheism that sounds good at first, but then he goes on to say like it was evil and

it's not right. And so that's a long way introducing what's going on here in book seven. This is this first pair of books that we're looking at. But I've monologue probably too long, and so I would love to hear from some of you, especially Kyle, Chase and the others, if you're you're able to join the conversation regarding just what has what stood out to you from this book, and we can take the conversation wherever it goes. Kyle, you want to pick it up next. I'm sorry, I'm

not hearing you. Is anybody else hearing him? It is me, all right, So see if you can work on that. Jase, you wanna take it up next.

to be corrupted is not good. Nor are you against your will constraint to anything where your will is not greater than your power. Kind of seeing where he is not relying on scripture in God to answer these questions, he's trying to kind of like figure out himself.

that is, in its very nature opposed to God. Like, that's the way he's framing, and I think, if we're honest, that's how a lot of us tend to understand evil. It's kind of facebook mean, theology where you know, sometimes I'll see these posts come across that's like, you know, God is is fighting for your soul, and so is

the devil, and then you've got the deciding vote. Like I've seen that that sort of theology meme go around, and it's this idea that like good and evil are somewhere on equal on equal footing, like they're they're equal in power, and it's like there's a question as to who's gonna win out in the end, and that that's really a fairly manichy and kind of framework. And Augustine recognizes that, no, that that's evil because he is he doesn't think highly enough of God, and so he thinks through, okay,

like what what is goodness? And ultimately goodness the good? Right, this is the question that Plato asked, what is the good that makes good things good? Augustine himself, being very much favorable toward the Platonists of his time, that he moves this direct. He wants to know what is the good that makes good things good? And of course, for the Christian the answer is God. God is the good.

He is the font of goodness, as Ethanatius says, And so if God is good, then well, evil is basically whatever's not God like, whatever is not connected to God, which is of course nothing, because there is no existence apart from God. That all things were made through the Word, and nothing was made that wasn't made through Him. As Paul tells us, in Christ, all things are held together. God is the only independently existing reality. And so what that means is that anything that exists is upheld by

the act of power of God. Existence itself is fundamentally good. I'm convinced that this is a necessary Christian philosophical position, that existence itself is necessarily good because it is directly tied to the nature, the person, the will of God, and so evil in this context is not actually a substance.

It's actually just the movement away from God. A little bit later in book seven, he's going to push the question back a little bit and he's gonna say, Okay, well, how do we account not only for the fall of Adam and Eve? I mean, okay, maybe we can say that, well, the devil is involved in there, the devil is involved in tempting Adam and Eve. But what if we back up that question and deal with the fall of the devil himself, Like, how can a perfect being with no

external temptation to sin? How can that thing made by a good God for good purposes? Like, how can that being fall into sin? How can it rebel against God? What would even bring up up that idea? And I think that Augustine answers this about as well as we can.

That evil is not actually an external thing, but evil is an act of the will in turning away from the greater good of that is God, the good that makes good things good, and he turned toward lesser goods, And in turning toward lesser goods, you're ultimately facing in

the direction of non existence, as you're facing away from God. Now, as long as you're looking at something right, like maybe you're sinning through you know, Augustine in his youth, lusting after the pairs or the camaraderie, or you know, whatever's inciting him to steal those pairs that he's he might be looking at a good thing. But what makes that a sin, what makes that evil, is that his will

is turned away from the good towards lesser goods. And in elevating lesser goods above the ultimate good kind of you lose goodness, which is to say that you're moving in the direction of non existence. You're you're becoming nothing. Is why in the Great Divorce, you know, the the characters that aren't what they're supposed to be are illusory ghosts, because in looking toward what is illusory, they themselves become illusory.

They lost the substance, the foundation of existence. And I think that this is I mean, i'm, I'm, I'm very influenced by by gust and myself, and but I think that this is probably the most consistent way of understanding evil that's not actually a thing. It's a privation, it's an absence. As he says in the City of God, that the original evil is in looking away from that light, which would make us a light if we would set

our eyes upon it. And he kind of approaches that idea, or he gets that idea, but I would sayless directly in the confessions in this in book seven. So it Takeshi a while to get here, but once he gets here, he recognizes it's not only a philosophical breakthrough, but that it's it's a theological breakthrough, it's an existential breakthrough. In recognizing the distinction of God's independence compared to what is

corruptible in the world that he has created. And so there's I think there's a lot of real spiritual value in his epiphany that goes beyond mere philosophical value understood. If we understand there's that separate things. Cool, Kyle, do you want to try again about now? There you are?

he can through natural revelation and natural philosophy. He gets he gets as far as human reason can take him. And that's really the lens his own reason through which we've seen his entire journey, his entire biography. Yet he also says outright that while philosophy can teach him, that philosophy can't teach him about Christ right, Philosophy can't teach about the word made flesh that comes specifically through special

revelation alone. And he's falling into these things like pantheism, you know, a man of keyism and all of these things because he has not yet come to terms yet with with the God Man Jesus himself.

and Augustine here. But Augustin here does a great job of demonstrating that he's not just a Platonist. He is a Christian Platonist, which means that he sees the value that Plato has to offer. But he's going to he's going to sift him. He's not going to take them, you know, whole cloth. He's going to take what is valuable, and he's going to leave the rest. And so here's what he says about what he got from the Platonists.

And this is book seven, section nine. And first you will to show me how you resist the proud and give grace to the humble, and how with great mercy you have shown men the way of humility in the word sorry, in the word that was made flesh and dwelt among men. Therefore you brought in my way by means of a certain man, an incredible conceited man, some books of the Platonists translated from Greek into Latin. In them I found, though not in the very words, yet

the thing itself improved by all sorts of reasons. That in the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without him was made. Nothing that was made in him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness

did not comprehend it. And yet in those same writings that the soul of man, though it gives testimony to the light, yet it is not itself the light, but the word, God himself is the true light, which enlightens every man that comes into this world, and that he was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. And so Augustin says, like I got all of that basically John's prologue. I got all of that in Plato, which it is remarkable,

and like I get exactly what he's saying. I mean, you know, when when you read Plato, when when you read the the you know Phedro, or you read the Tmayas, his creation account, like Augustine says that God, which he uses and capital g God, like Augustine Aristotle, that they at the very least, I think we can say they move in a monotheistic direction. Whether or not we want to call the strict monotheist or not, I don't know. I don't know if I want to make that hard claim,

but they at least move in a monotheistic direction. And in his creation account in the Tamayas, Plato says that God fashion was formless and void through his word. I mean that's very much in line with what we get in the Genesis account, is very much what we get in John's prologue, which I think is just remarkable. And so Gustin is like, I found all of that in Plato, But I did not read in those books that he came unto his own, and his own received him, not

but to as many as received him. He gave power to be made the sons of God, to them that believed in his name. Again, I found in them that the Word of God was born, not a flesh, nor a blood, nor the will of man, nor the will of flesh, but of God. But I did not find that the Word became flesh. And then he goes on

further with this. But that gives you the gist of the idea here that as far as a system of thought, of understanding where truth, good is, and beauty lay, that understanding something about the purpose of the human soul and what our teleology is, are our goal where we ought to be headed. It's like all of that you can find in Plato, but don't find in Plato. Is God

coming to us? You see a means of the soul assenting to God, But we see nothing of God descending to the human soul to lift us up to actually provide that that redemption, that active movement of God in history. That's something you don't find in Plato. And so, and this is why a number of the Christians of the early Church considered Plato to be preparatory for the Gospel. And Plato play an important role in some of the

early categoral schools. And so that that Plato, he provides a system of knowledge, but he does not provide the Gospel. He does not provide us with the incarnate word that raises us up to where God is. And for that reason, I mean it's ultimately the Christianity is not Platonism, even

though there's a lot in Platonism that is Christian. I think the best way to frame that, And you know, as somebody who appreciates Plato but is first and foremost a Christian, I just I love the way that Augustine lays us out in this section, and he goes on much further than that.

the things that I made. But I lacked the strength to hold my gaze fixed, and my weakness was beaten back again, so that I returned to my old habits, bearing nothing in me but a memory of delight and a desire for something of which I had caught the fragrance, but which I had not yet the strength to eat. So his reason has still left him two weak.

eighteen picks up. So I set about finding a way to gain the strength that was necessary for enjoying you, and I could not find it until I embraced the mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who is over all things God blessed forever, who was calling unto me and saying I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and who brought into union with our nature that food which I lacked the strength to take, for the word was made flesh that youer wisdom by

which you created all things might give suck to our soul's infancy.

it not up to this point. You know, this is why he talks about how in all of his philosophical wanderings up to this point that even when he saw something worthwhile, something that drew him in, something attractional, that all of these different systems, whether we're talking about the Manicheans or the academics or the various philosophers, that he saw value in, even in the good ones, something was missing, something didn't satisfy his soul. As he says, Christ wasn't there.

There may have been something like an echo of Christ that was pulling him in, something of value that was wedding his appetite. But what he was looking for is not to have his appetite wedded. But he was looking for is to have his appetite satiated with the incarnate Christ. He was looking for the Church. And you know, as he gets drawn in by Ambrose, and he at this point in the Confessions, he is he's a cate of Cuman and so he's counting himself as a Christian. But

he's not all in yet. But he recognizes there is something different here. This is not just another philosophical phase that he's going through, but that in the Church, what he's finding is genuine substance, although it won't be intel book eight when he really really embraces that wholeheartedly. All Right, is there anything else, Chase or Kyle or anybody else from book seven that you'd like to bring up?

of Jacob and Esau to refute astrology, saying like, you know, if we had read the same horoscope, they would have had the same horoscope, but their lives were so vastly different, and I think it shows just that God has different journeys for different people.

And I think that that's very much in line with what we've already been discussing regarding the nature of goodness and evil as it relates to the will that you know, evil is moving in the wrong directions, looking in the wrong direction. Goodness of the will is moving in the right direction, and so that this was a movement in the right direction that ultimately led him to the truth of the word. And yeah, I think that that's a fascinating way that he lays that out.

to Calvary. But if you're already standing at Calvary and you're going back on the road to look at those way points once again. And that's not that's not to say Christians can't read Plato, but it is to say that without maybe a certain act of sifting, it can be dangerous.

this dijectory versus the other. At the same time, and as you provide that a caveat there that I think that there, of course is a lot of value if you are rightly situated to recognize not that we go to Plato for ultimate wisdom, but that we recognize that all truth is God's truth wherever it can be found. Right, this is why we we don't need to be afraid of like finding truth things in the Pagans or or as C. S. Lewis said, I just looked at this

and oh, I can't remember. I'm always reading somewhere in Lewis, But he talks about how as that the Christian doesn't need to kind of stake a claim in disagreeing with every other religion on every single point that obviously on the most central issues. Yeah, of course they're there are differences.

We don't want to gloss over those. But the fact is that just because somebody outside of you know, the Church says something true, well, according to Augustine, that actually belongs to the Church, and so that we we we shouldn't have any problem, you know, plundering the Egyptian so to speak. Is that's the kind of language he uses in on Christian doctrine, recognizing that all truth is God's truth.

But at the same time, you're exactly right, Kyle, that we need to have that mindset of Christ is truth. And if we don't have that, if we're looking for wisdoms without recognizing where wisdom is found, if we're looking for goods without recognizing where the good is found, then of course we're going to be led in all the wrong directions. Right that, Seramon breaking the white light into its various refractions, that we're moving from the unified to

the disunified. Whereas if you are solid in your faith, you're solid in your mind, you are convinced of the fact that all truth ultimately comes from He who is truth. Well, now we're able to look at the various rays of light that move in isolation throughout the various thinkers various times various world views, and now we're able to bring them into the unity, the white light, which ultimately is Christ as we bring things back to the right orientation.

So again we've got this. It comes down to where you're oriented, Like are you oriented toward unity or are you moving in the direction of disunity and ultimately disintegration. Yeah, and so there's there's that anything else from book seven.

through going through the philosophers and academics and stuff. It's the same as like somebody that may have, you know, a convert from a different religion, Like they would have knowledge that they could then share with people that were their previous religion.

And you know, not that we have reason to I mean, Paul, I mean, he was obviously a sadducy. I mean, he was a Jew. He assume is it coming from philosophy, so to speak, But he definitely was aware of it. And we see in his ministry how that can be used as a way of touching the culture around him.

And so too, I think that when you look at someone like Augustine, who is led through philosophy ultimately to the substance of wisdom in Christ, that now he is uniquely equipped to deal in that kind of language and in turn to to recognize the wisdom of Christ in a kind of way that you know, you might not be able to do if you aren't even if you're not prone to ask the kinds of questions that philosophers ask, right whereas when you do ask those kinds of questions

that philosophers ask, maybe even the question that you know make some religious teachers a little bit uncomfortable, But like you're willing to ask those questions with the conviction that there are answers to be found in Christ. Well, now you're able to appreciate the wisdom offered in the Word all the better. And I think that's exactly what we find in Augustine. Anything else related to book seven?

natural revelation can't get quite far enough. But even you know, we read the poetic gota. Recently, I wasn't there with you guys, but in the introduction, Learning is talking about how Odin is sacrificing himself to himself by hanging on the world tree, that is zeked yourself. And it seems like it seems something like typology. Who I read it, and maybe that's me reading into it, but it seems

like a typology. And it's like we all, we all have that that Christ shaped hole that's in us, and well, we can't fill it with Christ until we meet him. It's almost like we can sort of feel out, feel out the empty spaces, and and our philosophy and our storytelling and our armathology is is mapped according to that empty space, and so it almost takes on that Christ form. That was me going on a tangent. I don't know if it's strictly Augustinian, but no thinking about that recently.

sacrificing himself to himself on the tree. Like, yeah, that's obviously not exactly what happened with Christ, but it's very close as far as echoing a very distinctly Christian theme in in the in paganism, in Norse paganism, or I mean, same thing in the North Tail North Tales, you have a balder who's dying as a as a sign of basically the end times, of moving towards Ragnarok, and then afterwards he's going to be resurrected to bring about restoration.

You see, even in I can't remem wach one off, one of the edic texts, Odin is told that like someone far greater than he is going to come and basically put an end to the Norse pantheon. And you know, they're all these what seemed to be echoes of Christianity in the mythology. And you know, Lewis approaches this saying that you know, some people might look at this and say, okay, well, then what that means is the Christian message is just a regurgitation of these old pagan ideas of dying and

rising gods and whatnot. But Lewis says that no, Actually, if the death and resurrection of Christ is indeed the center of cosmic history, that is the narrative, then you would expect that echoes of that would be seen again and again and again in the human mind and the human soul and human desires. That this is the true story, the myth that became in fact, that this myth just is integral to what it means to be human, and so we should expect that it's going to rise up

again and again in different forms at different times. And you know, we can say that the same can be true of philosophy, and that brings us directly back into the Augustinian angle here that just as in the great myths, we very often see even in the pre Christian pagan myths, we see echoes framing time in a certain way, because I mean, obviously usually echo happens after a thing, but a kind of looking at the eternal perspective. Here we see echoes of what we're going to get in the

Christian Gospel. So too in philosophy, especially in the likes of Plato, and even in Aristotle and of course others, you know, even Confucius and some people made that argument, although unless equipped to speak on that that we see these premonitions of clear Christian teaching coming out in often twisted and corrupted ways, but nonetheless in remarkably similar ways to what we get in Christianity. And I think that

ties into what Paul does with the Greeks. I think it very much ties into what Augustine does with the Platonists, that there's something very true, there is something very Christian there as Plato, to the extent that he's able without clear Christian revelation, you know, operating in a pre pagan I'm sorry, pre Christian paganism, disconnected from as far as we can tell, you know, even Old Testament prophetic teaching, that he just through reason, being in tune with the

logofs that enlightens all men, he's able to get remarkably close to the truth. Then you know, he even says things like, you know, if there ever were a perfect man, then you know, surely we would would kill him. I mean some translations even say crucify him. Like as far as just broad abstract ideas as well as I mean some rather specific ideas, we get these premonitions of Christianity in philosophy, very much as we get it in the mythology, and that's because what we get in Christianity like it.

It is true, Christ is the truth. All things were made through the Word that became flesh in time, and so we can expect that people who are using revelation to the extent that they're able to use it, are going to move in the direction of that which is principally revealed, which is the eternal logoss the Word. And so I think that that very much gives Augustine credibility

in his use of the Platonists. You know, I when when I first started telling people that I was going to study philosophy, a lot of people were very concerned about that, like like I was, you know, going to be going off the deep end, which I mean to

be fair, like that happens. But you know, I came to find that even studying philosophy in a public university, which I mean something like atheist seminary is kind of what it feels like that I just became more and more and more convinced that all riches of wisdom dwell in Christ. Like there's so much substance there. Things make sense in a way that they don't make sense outside

of that, that context, that the context of Christ. And so I'm very convinced that a true study of philosophy, not just ideologies, but a true understanding of like philosophy being the love of wisdom, a true love of wisdom and earnest pursuit of the truth is going to lead in the direction of the truth. Now, we do need that special revelation of Scripture of the New Testament. We need that special redeeming grace to open our eyes, like we need God to act, which is what Augustin talks

bout hearing a difference with the Platonists. But I think that just using the revelation that's available to us at all times is going to move us in the direction of the truth. And in the best of Paganism, we see that worked out pretty pretty directly. Now, did you have anything else to say about that, or you know, wherever else you wanted to go?

is evil, and we covered that in chapter seven. And he gets to a point where he confesses that he no longer has has reason not to be fully in.

He no longer has reason not to be fully in, but he is still at the point where he doesn't have the strength to do so, because while his loves of passion have acted as a latter to a love of God, at the same time they are not rightly ordered because he is in sin, and so his passions are now acting as an iron chain ement against him, and they are weakening as well.

rests in God. That he's been throwing himself away into all these lusts of the flesh, not recognizing that his restlessness isn't meant to be satisfied by temporal things, but his restlessness is meant to be satisfied by the eternal.

he comes to recognize that it's a vanity. Everything is vanity under the sun, Everything is chasing after wind under the sun. And really what he concludes is that what we need to do is get above the sun, so to speak, recognizing the Sun as our chief point of temporal reference, like the sun symbolizing time. In this world of time, of things that are falling away, things that are fading away, we try to latch on as if they're going to provide security, but they're not going to

because this world and desires are passing away. With something you find in Scripture, something you find in the Greeks, and going all the way back to Heraclitis who said that everything is like a river, and you can't step into the same river twice because well, the water is always moving. And so in this world of finite goods around us, things are always moving and passing away despite

our temptation to latch ourselves onto them. But what we recognize in Ecclesiastes is that what we need to do to gain real significance is to get above the sun, so to speak, and to anchor ourselves in the eternal reality of God. And when we do so, now even

our temporal pursuits gain eternal significance. They gained substance. We gained substance because we're rightly related to the eternal And I think that I agree with you that in book eight that that idea is really starting to come into fuller blossom in his in his reflections.

basically unable to control his joy. You know, he went with them, and everybody that's there has basically been waiting on this moment of him coming.

supposed to be. That and this very much goes into it to Augustinian theology philosophy that it's it's the will that determines your direction, and that evil is found in the will, and so despite the fact that his intellect was in the right place, like he intellectually assented to the truth of Christianity, that his will was still keeping him from fully embracing it, not for any reason other than the fact that he still loved his sin. He

still loved the things that he knew were wrong. And of course that's something that we can all relate to, Like we all recognize that we're drawn to things that are not good for us, they're not in line with what we know to be true. You know, it's very easy to like sign a confession of faith saying yeah,

I mentally assent to all these things. It's very different to live a life of daily holiness, of rejection of the things that were that were wrong and true, embrace of the things that are good and right and true and beautiful. And so in his will he is still holding back. And so, yeah, I think you're right that that's a good contract to the story that he gives us, but also of course a good lead up to his

his heart conversion, the real conversion of his soul. And so he toward the end of book eight, we actually get his full fledged conversion here when he's just thinking about his own sin. It says, he was scrutinizing, he was thinking about all of his violeness from the secret depths of his soul, and heaped into his heart's sight. A mighty storm arose within him, bringing a mighty reign of tears. And so he's at this point, he's just kind of broken down all sudden. He's thinking about his sin.

He's thinking about this disconnect between what he knows to be true and the way he's actually living, and that's giving rise to this deep lamentation, a storm of tears, he says. And you know, as he's thinking about these things, he hears this voice. He says, it's a child's voice, maybe a boy, maybe a girls, he doesn't really know. And he hears this repeated frame, take up and read, take up and read, and he says it sounds kind

of like a sing song y like child's game. But he says, I can't think of any child's game that would include saying this phrase again and again. And so he takes it as a divine sign, as a special revelation, to like a command to him. And so he picks up and he reads the scripture. He opens up to Paul saying not in writing and drunkenness, not in chambering in impurities, not in contention and envy. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for

the flesh in his concup. I always struggle with the word, and it's uh, it's lust. I'll translate that I And he says that he didn't need to read any further because he recognized, like, that's exactly what it is that he needed to hear to give up your sin, turn away. He didn't need at this point a philosophical exposition. He didn't need an answer to some some question that he had. What he needed was conversion. What he needed was to in his will turn away from his sin and turn

to Christ. And this is what he finally does. Of course, not that he's gonna be perfect by any means, and he wouldn't suggest that he is. But at the same time, like this is when he takes the base seriously. And then he tells his friend about this, who then reads a little bit further and you know, takes the scripture as a command to him to kind of take Augustine under his wing and to lead him into the heartfelt

faith that he's now discovered. And it's just like if you've been invested in Augustine's story up to this point, and you know you've been rooting for him, like this is a it's an exciting moment, right, this is when he finally gets it, or or rather when it when

the Gospel finally gets Augustine and inst doing. I mean this experience that he recounts in these few pages, which obviously connected to everything came before it, but like this changed world history, that so much of Christian history and by extent, the history of the world, was impacted by Augustine picking up scripture, reading these words, turning from miss

sin and turning to a genuine Christian faith. Which can't overestimate the or can't Yeah, we can't overestimate the impact that this has had on the world history, but even more importantly, the impact that genuine conversion had on Augustine as an individual. Yeah, anything else to say about his conversion or anything else from book eight?

to THEE and confess thy mercies upon me. Let my bones be pierced through with thy love, and let them say, who is like unto THEE? O, Lord, thou hast broken my bonds. I will sacrifice to THEE the sacrifice of praise. How thou hast broken them? I shall tell all who adore THEE, will say, as they listen, Blessed be the Lord in heaven and earth. Great and wonderful is his name. All right, that's where we will leave off for now.

We will pick it again with the next couple books in a couple of weeks, and for everybody else, I think we're going to continue with some of these other conversations we're having right here on X and so stay alert for those messages if you'd like to join us live. But until next time, god speed. All right, Thank you for listening, and I hope that you'll continue with us make sure that you subscribe to all of the Mythic

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