Hello, and welcome to Mythic Mind, where we produsue wisdom in the past between primary secondary worlds. Ador Snyder and I'm glad that you're here. We've recently begun our first free book study, our first free book club, and based off a patron vote, we've been going through Augustine's Confessions. Now we've only met this point for our first meeting. Our next one is going to be let's see the twelfth, May twelfth at nine pm and then every other Monday
at that point until we finish the Confessions. And so if you want to join in moving forward, you're more than welcome to do so. On our next meeting on the twelfth, we'll be covering books three and four, and so if you want to catch up and join us for that meeting, you're more than welcome to do so. All you need to do is sign on on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind. You can sign on as a free member, you can sign on as
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But for now, on to go ahead and provide you with that first conversation that we had, and so let's go ahead and get right to it. So, yeah, we can go ahead and get started here talking about Augustin's Confessions. Now, is anybody here reading it for the first time? Okay, Chase, all right, Chase has been on an incredible literary journey for the last little while here reading all kinds of amazing books. You know, you need to launch off on your own podcast or something. I'm sure you've got some
things to say. Well, you know, I've been reading this book for a number of years. I mean since I was in seminary doing my master's degree, which was like it's crazy to think that I was I don't know how many, like over a decade ago. I've been in school so long it's hard to keep track of where
one thing ended and another thing began. But this was in many ways like the beginning of my real literary journey in my love of reading, that especially when it comes to narrative, comes to fiction, Like I didn't read a lot of fiction, and this isn't fiction, but it
is very much narrative base. It is kind of his own spiritual auto biography here, and it just resonated with me so much, as you know, this philosophically inclined individual just wrestling with ideas, wrestling with the flesh and finding his way in many ways in well finding that he's being brought along his way to Christ. Just so much of that resonated with me. That really did begin my love of books, my love of reading, my love of
narratives in general, whether it be fiction or nonfiction. And so the special book to me, I did just recently for the first time read the Sheet translation, which I love this translation. I've been reading the Penguin up until now, which I mean that's that's fine as well, although I've been informed by the great Books guys that that's not so great. But yeah, So in summary, this is something's
been near and dear to me for a while. But I'd love to hear some of your thoughts, all right, Jase, I got to start with you just since your reading afresh, what are your initial thoughts to kind of wherever you know, first impressions.
Oh, man, this is great so far.
Very much can tell like kis poll like was influenced by this work for sure, and just so much. It's just insight and how you can see that how his mind was working and wrestling with different sins that he had throughout his whole life.
Yeah, it's it's been awesome so far.
Good. Yeah, I guess it is one of those figures that moderns like to diagnose as something wrong with them from the way that he obsesses over his sin.
Right.
They do the same thing to Luther, that they tried to diagnose him with some kind of psychological condition because he was so apparently obsessive over his own sin. You know, he treated every small little thing, you know, as this you know, incident with the pairs in his youth, like he treats that as such a enormous thing. But I think what we really see, for if we read honestly, we see somebody who just has learned to love holiness, and out of his love for holiness, he has a
just hatred for sin. Beginning with himself. I mean, he he talks about He's got a line here where he basically says, you know, we are our own worst enemy, that it is our displeasure with God that is going to do us the greatest harm. And so he treats that with utmost seriousness, the same way that we would likely treat some of our enemies, recognizing that we're misplacing that label in the most primary sense. And so, yeah, I agree that he just from from the very beginning.
I mean, it's just this powerful intermingling of philosophy and existential concerns, which for him are one of the same. Cool. All right, what about let's see. I know some of you said you read it for Randall. Have you have you read this before?
I've read parts of it. It's been a long time ago, and I just found out about this like two days ago, so I have not caught up yet. But what I do remember is just like being surprised, maybe this was partly translation, but just surprised at like how modern it felt like it could have been written five years ago or something.
Yeah. Yeah, And just the genre is definitely very unique. I mean, it's been approached as like an early form of depth psychology, like how Augustine gets so in detail with his own internal thoughts, and it's a way that really does make it stand out largely from the kinds of things you get in the ancient world. In that sense, it does read it's a very modern, almost existentialist kind of text, like the way that he writes is not
entirely different from someone like Kirkey Guard. And in fact, I almost made my doctoral dissertation on the intersections between Kirkyard and Augustine until I unfortunately came across the book that already did what I wanted to do to do, which is one of the worst things you're doing research to find out that someone else has already done what you want to do, and then you know, got to go find some other niche. But yeah, it so it is definitely a modern kind of text in that sense.
It seems like it is right. Well, I guess I will. We'll kind of run this how we've done some of our other book studies. I'm just gonna kick us off with a thought from early on and then which is kind of go around with you know, whatever stood out to you. We'll start off with book one, and then we'll move on to book two. But for me, one of the things I appreciate is just right at the very beginning, that we see that first and foremost, this book is a conversation with God, or it's an orient
it's oriented toward God. I mean, what you to expect from a book called the Confessions, right, that he is confessing his soul. He is confessing his sins. He's really confessing all that he is before God. And in kind of orienting himself toward God, he's able to better understand himself. And in understanding himself, he's able to more authentically engage with God. And so this is back in fourth connection.
You know, it's like Calvin said that you know, all knowledge comes to knowledge of self and knowledge of God. And I mean, I go reformation. Let me stick to the text. Right, So so we start off set showing us that this is an orientation toward God first and foremost. And also Augustine says, so great art thou, o Lord, and greatly to be praised. Great is thy power and of thy wisdom. There is no number, and man desires
to praise thee. He is but a tiny part of all that thou hast created, and so there's this emphasis on our place within the broader story. And so that's a sense it's a very much a not a modern text in that this there's a stark contrast between pre modern and postmodern philosophy. Where the pre moderns, so they're talking about the medieval Christians and Augustine, would be easier to category categorized as early made evil, late Christian antiquity.
But whether we're talking about the Medievals, whether we're talking about the ancient Pagans, there's this prevailing idea that we are born into a story and the path of virtue, the path of fulfillment, the path of fulfilling what we are meant for is in finding our place within this
broader story of reality. That's in direct contrast to what we get with really the moderns, and especially the postmoderns, where we start to get this move to not how do I contextualize myself within reality, but how do I
contextualize reality within myself? You know, I teach like a million different places, but on campus, I teach with philosophy with a state university, and this is something that I'm always dealing with with my students and helping them to understand the postmodern climate that they've lived in without even really realizing it. The start contrast between how do I find my place within capital or reality versus the postmodern idea of how do I create reality? How do I
contextualize you know, everything into myself? And so I appreciate that outward orientation because it provides so much more hope because now we actually have somewhere to go. We can talk about progress in a meaningful sense because we actually start somewhere and we can actually move somewhere, which you know, again contrasts with what we get in like Lewis's Great Divorce, where he conceptualizes you know, hell as this radical isolation,
which really is his commentary on the postmodern condition. And so even as Augustine is going on and on about how terrible the sinner he is and how awful he is, and you know how he's nothing but for grace like, it sounds rather dismal, and to the postmodern perspective it sounds almost diagnosable. But at the same time, once you actually understand what Augustine's doing, it becomes it opens up the possibility of actual purpose, actual freedom, actually getting somewhere.
It allows us to receive rather than constantly create at all times. And so just from the very orientation that he's engaging in, it provides a strong corrective to our postmodern mindset, which is actually very liberating to me. So there's my initial thought, Well, we can kind of just go wherever things have to have to move here. Would anyone like to volunteer just kind of share some thoughts wherever you want to go with this from book one? Yeah, Ian, thank you.
I read this back in high school, and I've always really appreciated Augustine because he's so God's centered and confessions is I mean, from the opening lines, it's all about God and comparing our worthlessness with God's greatness and the
grace that he lifts us to be with himself. I thought, especially when I was reading the second chapter that we're reading for today one and two, when he talks about loving Virgil and struggling with Homer because of Greece, it feels to me like he's really taking that opening hero Mus and seeing me a tale, and he's converting that to a Christian perspective, And that really struck me this time. So I really liked that part of his classical pagan education being baptized into the Christian world.
Yeah, that's a good way of putting that. That he he one hand, he very much criticizes the way that he approached the pagan poets. You know, in his past how you know, he learned to mourn, but not for himself. You know, he learned to participate in the play, but not to recognize kind of his own narrative. And so he very much criticizes the poets, and you know, even says like you know who was aneas like I didn't even know who I was. And so on one hand he takes some shots at the classic to at least
a wrong approach to the classics. But the same time, in his confessions, you know, in his own meditations he'll sometimes quote Virgil. You can see that if if you have a translation, if you have an addition that has you know, notes, reference notes, footnotes, you know, sometimes he'll be quoting the classics. And so he's not against the classics, but he very much is against approaching the classics from an unbaptized perspective, as he is with anything that there
is no good apart from God. And so if we are going to approach anything as good apart from God, then what we're severing it from the very font of goodness? And so it does have something somewhat thing of a complex relationship with the classics. But I agree that he definitely appreciates their their baptized potential. I did think that I don't know, sometimes I felt like he went a little bit too hard on fiction for my taste. I'm not down with a with all of all of what
he said at that level. Yeah, Ian good.
Sorry, I get my mute button mixed up. I think that we have to remember what kind of fiction's Augustine would have available to him. He didn't have a Lewis or a Tolkien, he didn't have a history of Christian literature like Jane Austen and Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. He was the beginning of the Christian tradition of literature. And before him you have stuff like Appalaus' is the Golden Ass, which I read in college, and that is fowl. It
is very disgusting. Depictions of women having sex with acid like donkeys is just despicable, and you can see why Augustine would be like, Yeah, I think fiction has a has a real danger of getting you sucked into these perversions and being enamored of the wrong parts of the world. So I think that's part of where he comes from in the literature. As I mean, I did an English
major in college. I'm not against literature, but I think thinking about the context and what he had available, he didn't have those those myths that he could reach to that didn't point towards evil in some way.
Yeah, I think that's actually a very fair point. And you know, even looking at his context in still moving against paganism, like there's still these very pagan influences. You know, we tend to view pagan literature as literature rather than
first and foremost as paganism. And so you know, someone like Lewis can look from this kind of late modern purity that he lived in, and he can look back and recognize some virtues in paganism that modernism has largely lost, right he can he can find the good there and
find that there are things that are worth recovering. Whereas Augustin is still very much in the midst of things, you know, operating in Carthage, operating in Rome, and so it does make sense that he would have a lot more hesitancy towards those sorts of things, there are still very much life and breathing that that is a very good point. Yeah, Chase, I.
Was just gonna say I agree with the in there and you because I think it was even an intro was talking about how like promised beauty at that point wasn't even seen like as any kind of bad thing at all, like compared to like even in his view, compared to like everything else, like his friend that was the bishop was like cheering on blood sport basically with
the crowd. And You're like, yeah, I can see if basically all the entertainment, which is what I'm sure he would see fiction as would have been kind of not you know, honoring to God and worthy of anyone's time, especially if you found so much like enjoyment in the place the lewde place is as a young guy.
Yeah, he talks about how in you know, the pagan myths, you know, the kinds of things that you know Zeus did for example, or you know, he says that you know, these are the things that people would look to and you know, basically find a way to justify or even deify their basist desires and say oh, I'm like the gods, you know, I mean, who am I to judge, you know, jove here and and so he he, he takes Homer to bat here, and you know, it says that so much of the pagan myth or just an attempt to
just do that to deify or base desires. And I mean, to be fair, I mean, he's got something to say there, Yeah, I mean what else I mean so when someone jump in here, I mean, I can kind of scan through my notes.
But I really like how you mentioned the conversationality of the confessions, and actually I was looking for it. I can find out. But I wrote a paper on this this semester for the actually the on that exact same topic. And it's really interesting to see. You know, he's literally having a conversation with dot and in this conversation, you know,
a dustn't is steeped in the Bible itself. Yeah, he's quoting the Psalms, a lot of them, a lot of other places to you, but he's quoting the Psalms all all over the place, right, and other things as well. But it's just really interesting and he's not afraid to ask God questions. It's almost comical in a sense of my and what I've seen, because like you see, it's like a little kid asking their father, like the heaven and Earth. Then containing like, since do you feel that
you know what I'm talking about? You know, you guys have the same question. It's really interesting. He's not afraid to do that, you know, I'm not.
Afraid at all.
Yeah, he's very he has a very humble, childlike kind of approach. You know, understood in the best possible framing of that idea that he is constantly asking God the kinds of things that we take for granted. I mean like you know, we might pray, you know, God fill me or I mean you know people people will talk about God like coming into their heart or whatever, like what does that even me? God is everywhere that you don't have existence without God, and so what does that mean?
Where's God traveling to? And so Augustine is just kind of debating with himself over the relationship that God has to space, to physicality, to location. And you know, we're going to see that as his intellectual journey continues. This is going to be something that he really wrestled with of how does how does an immaterial God even make sense.
I mean, you know, this to one of the reasons why the Romans called the early Christians atheists, because they talked about a transcendent, invisible God, and it's like that that wasn't They didn't have a category for that, and so this assumed that Christians were actually, in reality, just denying all gods, and so they had the charge of atheism. So Augustine, you know, very classically trained here, he very
much struggled with that. And so as he sort of works through that, and you know, as he has conversion first of intellect and then of spirit, that he just continues to marvel in these basic things that you know, he once struggled so deeply with. And I think that there's something just so healthy about that. You know, if you've been a Christian for a while, you know, whether you have a formal theological education or not, like you think,
you understand a lot more than you probably do. And I very much have learned this, you know, with my my twin three year olds when they ask me questions, and you know, I'll give an answer and then ask a follow up, and I realize I don't really know how to explain this, probably because I don't understand it myself, and it's a yeah, Augustin definitely has that spirit about him.
I mean, I love how later on, you know, he'll be going through his his meditations here and just almost randomly just say like, but what is time to sort of go off, like he thinks very much the way that I do, and he just has such a wonder about everything because he reconnized is that all things, all true things, come from God. Therefore all true things are
infinitely wondrous. And as as Aquitas would say, you know years later after this, that all the efforts of the human mind cannot exhaust the essence of a single fly. And I think that we see that same wonder very much at play with Augustine. Good.
Yeah, just even the very start where he's talking about the line for thou hast made us for thyself and our hearts are restless until they rest in me, which is going through the whole first book, and I guess the second book too, is just like you know, I've been at Christian my whole life, but you know, until I've made it later in my like mid twenties, like I didn't really take it as seriously, especially the last two years, I've learned so much that I didn't know.
I'm just like you're saying, you think you know a lot, you think you know everything about it that you're like realize you know, if like babies have are early sinful, like how does a baby send?
And then he even goes into that, which was awesome.
Yeah, maybe we should talk about the babies. So I go ahead, what do you say, Jeremiah.
No, Joe joking, Agustin hates babies. No, that's a common thing, I get. I get the comment or frame.
So so does Augustin hate babies?
I don't think so.
I guess.
Kind of overreacted to his his sexual sin in his youth by kind of over embracing the the ideal of celibus and virginity. And I think it's to me, it's psychologically understandable. But I do think that it was not balanced with what you see in the whole Bible. I think he maybe pulled on some of the Apostle Paul's statements about being single a bit too hard instead of focusing on the creation order of Adam and Eve and the redemption of that in Jesus.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's fair that he Yeah, he definitely had a big problem with sexual sin, you know, leading up to his his heart conversion. Really, I mean, you know, we're going to find that, you know, he had he had a concubine for quite a while, which was just common practice, and so he I mean, he just that was that was his chief his chief failing
really before conversion, chief sin that he struggled with. And yeah, I mean it's reasonable to say that maybe he argued against that, or he reacted to that perhaps a little bit too much on a dogmatic level rather than strictly existential. Now, as far as the baby thing that, Okay, babies cry because they're selfish, essentially, I don't know that I buy that. I'm with him theologically that we are born into sin, that we have a sin nature that naturally disorders our desires.
At the same time, babies need stuff and they can't talk. I feel like I feel like we could have a rather simple, common sense kind of response to some of that. I feel like he gets a little bit excessive. I don't know. Same one wanted to defend his rebuke of babies, Yeah, go ahead.
Jason, I mean I just thought the line where he says thus in the sense of children is in the helplessness of their bodies rather than inequality in their minds. I seen a baby jealous. It was too young to speak, but it was livid with anger as it watched another infant at the breast, and like, yeah, it could also be hungry.
But I don't know. I feel like you.
There are kids that kind of do something when they see another kid, and you're like, oh, that's like a little spark of just like you're not getting You're not liking what you're getting there, you know.
So I don't know.
Yeah, it's it's difficult. And you know, I'm not somebody who thinks that kids are innocent. I have three of them now, so I'm not somebody who thinks that kids are innocent. That there's definitely that sinful nature there, and
it's that's just I don't know. I think it's hard to delineate what's simple versus like babies need stuff and they can't talk, Like I feel like there is a very natural and I mean natural in the sense in the positive sense of like in line with nature that like they need to communicate in the way that they can, and I don't know that frustration like not being able
to articulate what it is that you need. And this is for I think a baby or an adult, whether you can speak worse or you can't do that yet that I don't know. That frustration itself is inherently simple. But at the same time, we do have this natural event towards end, which I mean, I suppose is the most important aspect of what he's getting at here. But I don't. I think it's a little bit too hard on babies. But maybe some can talk me out of that.
I think it's really interesting. He mentions like baptism, how was deferred? And he directly asked God, like, why was my baptism deferred? Of course, I know there's a whole bunch of ideas on baptism in the church today, and but yeah, as anyone, I'm sure some people are aware of the practice back then to wait until your deathbed and to give baptized.
Yeah. I ain't going to elaborate on that, okay.
Yeah, yeah, so they come down if you can see me inside. Yeah, yeah, So there is a common thing because there's this idea that after your baptism, you know, your sindrome washed with right and you know you're you're dead with Christ. Now you rise again with Christ as well.
But you there's this other idea that you would your sins are the sins after that you need to basically like they only wash the sins you've done, not the ones that you do after there's some there's some ideas that basically there's more than that, but it is a big thing. So people would wait until their deathbed and to get baptized. They would wait and be like, I'm on my deathbed, I'll get baptized, so I have more time to then, you know, have these sins washed away, which is a common thing.
Yeah, it's very Yeah, like Constantine exactly that Constantine waited until his deathbed and then he requested an Arian priest, which is kind of strange.
But both Augustine, what's interesting is that because of that, and you see a little bit of a he says, why was my baptism delayed? Augustine will later on rail against that idea, and then you'll argue for infant baptism.
Yeah, but it's it's just good sad. But I mean, obviously he recognized this as disordered here when he says that, you know, as young I was sick and they were going to baptize me because they thought I might die, and then it got better, so they decided to push it back just right, No, I'm gonna need here. Uh you know, we don't want to give give me a bathroom.
I'm gonna get dirty again anyways. Yeah, and then you know, even you know, talks about his his mom here, which I mean, you know, Monica, his mother is obviously a hero of his story here, but the same time he recognizes that, you know, she she didn't always have the best priorities at heart, like when you know, he was young and gallivanting around, and he says that basically she should have encouraged me to just get married, but she didn't because you know, she was worried about how that
would have impact my career. And you know, so she she was pushing him in a certain direction as well. And so she she seems to me like somebody who has a very lay kind of theology, even though very sincere heart and she was pivotal in his conversion. She kind of just embodies this common I don't know, almost I would say, pagan kind of theology regarding stuff like the sacraments, where it's it's not I don't know that they don't. It's about sort of magic rather than what
you actually get in biblical sacramentalism. Right, let him be wounded, worse he has not yet cured. Ye, welcome Rach. So yeah, it's like for popping in. Have you read this before? Or is this.
Oh?
Yeah, sorry, I'm not sure what time you actually started, whether I'm half an hour.
Or just five minutes in.
I'm in Australia, so I was like, what times are there?
I thought it was eleven here.
But I think it might have been ten thirty. But anyway, Yes, I'm the one that commented on X that I sort of got about a third of the way through and then stopped. So I've read these books at least, although it was about three years ago.
Good.
And I've got the Sarah Rudin translation.
Okay, I ever read that one? Yeah? So how's it gone so far in this round? Yeah? Good?
And it's been a crossover because I've just started Bible College this year, and so we're doing Christianity in history and so we looked at Augustine and sort of summer well, we's looked at the account of his conversion, so that was sort of interesting to read it in a different
translator's words. I suppose, yeah, it's good, I enjoy I don't know, sort of the insight says to his thinking about how he reflects on his childhood, like when I look back to I don't know, I can't remember much before being maybe two or three years old, but I still remember being a I think maybe a four or five year old and deliberately hiding a coin so that Mom would pay me my pocket money again. And so I knew the simpleness of my heart when I was
that young. So it's just funny too. I mean, I don't remember being breastfed, but you know, maybe he has a brilliant memory.
But yeah, yeah, yeah, there's some memories I'm glad to have forgotten. The Yeah, so you've got your own Paris incident. I'm a little bit younger, but you know, oh good, good good, gotta gotta heav you along from across the
world here, yeap. So another thing that I'd appreciate about Augustine is he very much has a kind of platonic way of understanding well everything really, I mean, in fact, in City of God, he says that you know of all the philosophers, the platon has come closer to us than anybody else, and so why do we even need to read anybody else. So he's very much intentionally trying
to baptize Platonism here. And you know, there are a lot of passages here in his reflections toward God about how all goods ultimately come from God and are meant to lead us back to God, and sin really comes from a disordering of that relationship, where we treat things in isolation from God, as if anything could be an isolation from God. And so, you know, being itself, like existence itself has a very deeply theological existential meaning for Augustine.
And so you know, again it's the kind of thing that some people will read Augustine and they think that he's too extreme and making everything so important. But again, if you actually believe the things he believes, he believe the things that the Bible says that you know, in him we live and movement, have our being, that all things are made through the log Austin, it's in him that all things are held together. Then literally everything has significance.
As you know, as Calvin was said to have said that there's not one color in this world. There's not one blade of glass of grass that's not meant to make us rejoice. And you see that same impulse very much in Augustine that somebody who you know just is able to understand the negative, isn't going to recognize that even in his framing of the negative, it's so full of joy at the goodness and the grace of God. And so he really does take this platonic idea that
all things are naturally oriented towards the good. He baptizes it, and I think that we get something just very i don't know, very beautiful here in this exit return idea, which would is going to become very important for Aquitas as well later on this exit return. All things come from God, all things return to God. It's a very harmonious, very beautiful way of understanding what everything is, the life's universe and everything. Far more than forty two. Someone throws
something else out there. I can blot it on for a while, but.
The question, and I apologize, I have dogs in the background. If they get noisy, I'll cut the audio right away. I found it very interesting, and this is really kind of off the topic, but he did write about it, so I'll mention it puts in here at one place that he says, if you ask, basically an unlearned person if Anas went to Carthage, they would say, oh, I don't know. If you asked the scholarly person, he would
say most certainly not. And as I read that, I was trying to figure out, does he think that Anas wasn't a historical character or is he talking about some high level of intellectual who at the time would say, oh, we know Aeneas was real, but he didn't actually go to Carthage.
I would.
My mind went down this rabbit trail because I had read the India I guess a year or so ago, and so still somewhat fresh.
In my mind.
Did he have any belief in the historical accuracy of some of these Roman tales he was reading?
No, I don't really know. Uh, I mean, based off the way that's framed, I tend to think that kind of much as is the case today that he's taken shots at the learned for being so critical in dismissing the miss is how I would understand that, which, again, this can be read as a very modern text that you know, sometimes having you know, being someone who's you know, well learned can actually be that can be a liability
regarding getting to the heart of the matter. It's it's the same problem of oh man, I'm just drawn a blank here. I don't know the numerous problems of you know, falling in love with your own intellect. This is you know, Milton's approach to Satan. He fell in love with his own intellect essentially, and so yeah, so that's how I would understand this as a criticism of the high end learned more than anything else.
Well, it's definitely a modern problem too.
Yes, it most definitely is. As I said, I teach on campus at State University, and I don't have a lot in common with my fellow humanity's faculty. Yeah, that's an interesting question. I'd like to dig into that a little bit more, but that's my first response to that. I thought his meditations on the relationship between curiosity and
discipline were significant. You know, he talks about he says free curiosity is more value in learning than harsh discipline, and so, you know, he talks about how you know, he had such harsh discipline that you know, he didn't get his Greek writer or whatever, and he gets beaten for it, and that people were cool to him, they were unjust, they didn't do the right thing. At the same time, however, he doesn't allow himself to be treated as a victim. He doesn't treat himself as a victim.
You know. Well, he'll say that, yeah, people are unjust toward me in the way that they treated me my schoolmaster's no hooever else and ultimately, like, I messed up and you know, I wasn't a perfect student. And so he's primarily owning up to his own injustices rather than that which is committed against him. So that's right there, I think is significant in the way that he's framing the own injustice that he suffered. That he's focusing in on what he was able to cont and not so
much on the broader misfortune brought against him. You know, it's a very you know, premodern. It's it's almost a stoic way of approaching your experience that I'm not going to identify with the fortune that has dealt to me. I'm going to identify with the way that I'm responding to fortune. And so that alone, I think it's a very ennobling way to view your life and your relationship
to the world around you. But more specifically to the point where I was headed with that is when he says that you know, free curiosity is more value in learning than harsh discipline. But by your ordinance, Oh God, discipline must control the free play of curiosity. For your ordinance ranges from the master's cane to the torment suffered by the martyrs, and works that mingling a bitter with sweet, which brings us back to you from the poison of
pleasure that first drew us away from you. And so he said curiosity is very important in learning, but at the same time, that's got to be led by discipline. It has to be willing to receive discipline, because free curiosity alone can just lead you into wild places of isolation. The right kind of curiosity leads us to the truth, and ultimately the truth is God. But that requires discipline
and requires receiving the discipline that's brought against you. So that's something I've underligned here and continue to meditate on.
I think a couple of things really stood out to me from reading that and then responding to your analysis there. The first is that I think it's so interesting that even though a lot of people trace back the development of Calvinist or reform theology to Augustine, I think rightfully so as a Calvinist myself.
I.
Like the fact that he has this approach that doesn't focus the locus of control on someone else, Like even though he is that God is in control of everything, that everything from beatings at school to martyrdom from wicked authorities, they're under God's ordinance. He controls them, he is all knowing of them. It is still our responsibility to do the right thing. It is our responsibility to make our life a service to God, to act in a way
instead of just oh, what happens will happen. We can't do anything about it, so we must just accept what I come. He does say, we must accept what may come. But then he says, and you must pursue the love of God. You must do the right thing.
You must love.
Truth, beauty and goodness. And the other thing that really struck me was this kind of understanding of children's psychology and educational psychology that I think does feel quite modern in some ways, the idea of you need to have a balance of curiosity and discipline. You can't just make a student love learning, have to inspire that curiosity, you have to guide the curiosity. And I thought that felt like a really modern psychological insight to me.
Yeah, definitely that the educational system or the school masters or whoever, that you can't you can't force somebody to learn. And ultimately, learning is it's it's about conforming yourself to the way that things are. And so there's always an existential element to that, and and so that that can't
be simply forced. It has to be accepted. And you know, that, on one hand is a fairly modern idea, but also it's very Socratic, right when you consider the way that Socrates educated people in his philosophy, He engaged them, he asked them questions rather than forcing ideas on them. I mean, you know, I think compulsion has its place in certain contacts, like to maintain order and whatnot. But as far as real education goes education of the person, education of the soul.
You know, this Socratic model, this Platonic model, is one of inquiry that draws people further up and further in. Right, to borrow a phrase from Lewis, which is a very Platonic phrase, and so Augustine is definitely continuing in that idea that we need to help people to recognize their natural desires. Natural desires being the desires that are placed into us by nature, which Augustine says clearly ultimately is the desire for God, which again very platonic idea, that
all men by nature desire the good. The problem is that we tend to value lesser goods over the ultimate good, and that that's where we go wrong. But we all do have this natural desire for the good, this natural desire for God, and real education is going to help to uncover different avenues of that natural desire that we
have by virtue of being made in God's image. So yeah, I think that that is an important point that you know, one hand, sounds very much but also in a way that is deeply rooted in truth, in a way that modernism largely is not.
Definitely. I remember when I taught sixth grade at a classical school one year and I told the sixth graders, I said, the world's gonna tell you need to follow your passions. I was like, I'm here to tell you you're not here. You should have follow your passions, and like, what do you mean? Like like that explain to them like, well, not all passions are here. Not all passions are there, some are, but some can.
Be that you know, correct, And you know, real education as a matter of learning how to separate the good from the bad, learning how to you know, to kind of discourage superficial passions to find what it is that you ultimately desire as a human and that discovery really
does work best at discovery. I mean I can in my own campus classes again at a state university philosophy, all of my students, almost all of them, ninety percent of them, would tell me on day one that pretty much everything is just made up, you know, truth, goodness, beauty, It's all just artificial constructs, you know, just sort of put out there in the world. But then you know,
I'll ask him questions. Primarily this is when I get to Plato, when I start going through the Youthifro dialogue, where Socrates is asking the question, you know, basically, what makes good things good? You know what is real piety? And you know in that dialogue, you know Euthafro socrates conversation partner says, you know that you know, okay, the good is you know what I'm doing right? Now and pursuing justice, and Socrates says, okay, what are some other
good things? Youth throws through some stuff out there, and then eventually he comes to the realization that Socrates ask him the question what is the good that makes good things good? And now when I bring that to my students, and I asked them, okay, tell me some good things, and they'll throw out things like, you know, justice is good, being nice to people is good. I mean, whatever is you know, popular virtues of the day, Charity is good.
I say, yep, okay, all those things are great. Now what do you mean when you call all these things good? And at that point they just get quiet and look at me like confused and kind of upset and kind of nervous. At that point they're starting to recognize the problem here that, you know, a little bit earlier in the lesson they told me there is no such thing
as goodness. Now they just told me all these good things, and and so, you know, by kind of stoking that conversation, you know, it helps them to recognize that I actually want goodness, but my current philosophy can't account for what that is. And I think that very Socratic model in this case literally is Socratic model, using one of have
played his dialogues. It's a way to help to sort of just push aside all this overgrowth that lays on top of the natural desire that we all have to you know, to to love God and to to serve him, to to know him, to worship him, to glory in him.
And so you know, that's something that we naturally want, but we also fight against, you know, as you know, as Land says, yeah, oh, Adam's Sun's you know, how how oh how hard you know, you fight against everything that brings you joy something like that, And I think that's that's absolutely the case, and I find that very practical terms in my own education experience.
If I can pick up on something that Ian was saying earlier, I am. I liked the comment that when you read well Gustine's writing here that there really is no room for blaming anyone else for his own condition.
He's pointing the finger righted himself. And that's interesting when you think about it in terms of him being proto Calvinistic or whatever term we want to use, you know, in some ways he's almost very obliquely rebuking the Hypercalvinists who wouldn't really show up on the scene for another twelve hundred years or so. But you know, he saying, look, it's all me. It's not God's decree that makes me evil in any sense that I can blame God is good. I'm the evil one. If I'm outside of his will,
outside of his favor, that's all me. Don't look anywhere else, don't try to blame him, his ways, anything, And that humility is really what you know, I think we all could aspire to that in terms of just coming before God and saying, you know, we have nothing to bring. And in addition, we're not only just zero, we're at net negative here, so we need you.
Yeah, exactly like nobody can read Augustine's confessions or Augustin at large and say that he's somebody who rejected his own agency by any means right, he is very much interested in his own agency and it's misuse as well as its positive use carried by Grace. And in fact, you know, we mentioned Calvin a few times, which it's hard for us to read Augustin not mention Calvin because of some obvious connections. But I mean it's worth noting
that Calvin himself. You know, if you read the Institute's he sounds very existentialist at times, very well Augustitinian. That a lot of times he is treated, even by those who claim to be Calvinists, who have never actually read Calvin, that he's treated as sort of this cold hearted stoic, which he absolutely is not. And in fact, you know, outside of scripture, Augustine's number one place for pro quotations is Augustine,
and so he is. In fact, I would go as far as to say that if you don't have Augustine, not only would Catholicism be very different, but I don't know that you would have a pros Reformation in the way that is established. I mean, Luther himself is an Augustinian monk. Calvin is constantly referencing Augustine, and so in you know, again, you can't read Luther and say that, you know, he's somebody who who ignored his own agency. You know, he very much obsessed over a sin as
Augustine did. You can't really read Calvin and say that he denies his own agency. He absolutely embraces it. But it's the kind of agency that recognizes every good thing comes from God, that doesn't leave my autonomy in a very good position, but does leave my base existence in a very good position, because that means if I exist, that I am sustained by goodness, if I am going,
if only I am willing to embrace it. Yeah, Yeah, I just love how powerful he phrases things like looking towards the beginning of a book too here where now he's really getting into his his confession proper right, And this is when he's really getting into his specific sins here and as kind of leading up to that, at the beginning of section one here of book two, he says, arrive now at adolescence. I burned for all the satisfactions of hell, and I sank to the animal in a
succession of dark luss. My beauty consumed away, and I stink in thine eyes, yet was pleasing in my own and anxious to please the eyes of men. And so he talks about how I burn for all the satisfactions of hell, and so he recognizes the that he naturally he actually desired his misery ultimately speaking, and that's what sin is. It's it's a desiring of our own misery. And he talks about how he sank to the animal, which is very much a drawing on of classical philosophy.
You know, Plato will talk about this, Aristotle will talk about this. How we have you know, we have something in common with the beast, our base desires for food, for pleasure, for you know, pack dominance, you know, per sex, whatever. We have these things in common with the animals. But which makes us different is that we have, you know, as Aristotle would say, a rational soul, we have this
ability to aspire to be something more than that. And what matters first and foremost is not even so much where you're located, but where it is that you're headed, what it is that you're directed toward, and that sort of feeds back into well also what's pulling you. And so you know, in his rejection of his true nature in relationship to God, it says, I sink down into
the animal. He's just sending down. As Boethius is going to tell us a little bit later that you know, basically the higher you are, I mean, the deeper you can fall. And so you know, he's actually worse than
the animal. He's downright something demonic at this point, which is why Augustin connects himself with the desires of hell, and so it's just I don't really have a whole lot to say beyond what Augustine is saying, But I just think he does a great job of demonstrating this stakes that are at play, that nothing in the understood within the cosmic order should be taken lightly.
This kind of goes a little bit with what you're saying. This is just a footnote at the end of book one. We're just talking about the passage outlining Augustine's theology of desire. The appetite for physical pleasure. Pleasure is ultimately a groaning for happiness in God unless the attempt to satisfy it with created goods, and so the Creator ends and sorrow rather than joy. Just the way that he had set it up in the passage just makes it clear to me for sure.
Andrew Mude, Sorry, let me, I was looking at a different screen, all right. Yeah. It reminds me of this line from Lewis's Perilandra, where he says, and though there seemed to be, indeed were a thousand roads by which a man could wan through the world, there was not a single one which did not lead sooner or later to the beatific or miserific vision, that every step we take is headed toward a direction and ultimately, you know, moved towards the end. It's going to be one opposing
direction versus the other. That all things are naturally moving back toward their their source in the goodness of God, or then moving away from that source, which is a way of approaching nothingness. It's it's why in for the medieval cosmological order, like you get in in you know Dante, why you know Hell is frozen over because on one hand, it obviously exists, but it's sort of approaching nothingness and
it's movement away from God. And so for that reason, it's it's stagnant as sort of an imitation of the eternality of God. But ultimately all things are moving either toward rest in God or this artificial rest of stagnation in Hell. And I think that that's a good way of framing reality and where all passed ultimately lead. Yes, I think that that philosophy of desire is definitely significant.
I love how he ends book two. I don't know if we're there yet, but I don't know if I can be there or not. But but he ends up saying whoso enters into the I don't know what translation, this is just the one I found a coopla. But whoso enters into the enters into the joy of his Lord, shall not fear, and shall do excellently in the all excellent, very good, and just acknowledging his own sin and the sin of his youth, which you know he calls, you
know lost basically, yeah, acknowledging it. But then going to guys like I find rest in you. I might be senterful, but you are.
Right that he was led astray by various desires, but in God he finds his ultimate desire. He finds true satisfaction as opposed to the vain satisfactions that he sought elsewhere. And it just really shows us, in Augustine, that the pathway of spiritual discipline, the pathway of God, obviously requires sacrifice. It requires turning away things that you might very much enjoy, but it's a turning away of ultimately lesser joys for the ultimate beatific joy. It's a sacrifice of the lesser
for the greater. And I don't think that's an exchange that anyone would truly regret. Now looking back a little bit before that section, you know, he's referring back to his signposts along the way, and so leading up to the Para situation, he says that you know, already he at sixteen when he comes, you know, back home, that he's engaged in all these you know, these indulgent activities, and his mom is cautioning him about some of us, saying, look, hey,
don't don't sleep around, especially with another man's wife. Meanwhile, his essentially pagan father is just saying, all right, you know, be a man and go do whatever you want to. And kind of kind of a weird I don't know if this is normal, but kind of weird section where you know, he says, like I was at the Roman baths with my dad. He said, I see that you're becoming a man. Now go forth and do stuff with that. And he says that, you know, his mom was like
cautioning about that. He says, all that to me sounded like well minish advice, and so he just totally dismissed her. But you know, now looking back, he recognizes that this was the voice of God. That he thought that God was silent during all this time as he's indulging in his various fleshly desires, but God was very much speaking. He was just ignoring her. He was ignoring, you know,
God speaking through his mother. You know, it's in my own campus class, teaching a course called Life, Death and Meaning, and I made the students read Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis, And you know, towards the end, one of the students is talking about how, you know, if God really existed, you know, there'd be signs everywhere and et cetera, et cetera, and you know, why would
he hide himself? And my response to that is that a sign is of no help to the blind, and you know, in this case they willfully blind, or at least someone who has their eyes shut. Maybe it'd be a better way of framing that to demonstrate the agency here. And so he recognizes, like there were signs everywhere, he just didn't want to see them. And so again it comes down to the will rather than anything else. It wasn't God mistreating him by not giving him wisdom here,
he just didn't want it. And so again agency is entirely on his part here.
You know, we have a collect in the Anglican tradition of which I'm part of, that, and it actually comes from Augustine. And we say, Oh, God, who are at the officer of peace and lover of concord and knowledge? I who can stand it our eternal life? Whose service is perfect freedom? Really telling their service being perfect freedom, for in freedom and service a service to the ultimate good that is God.
Yeah. Absolutely, I mean, let's see a little bit later here in book two. You know, he talks about trying to really get the nature of sin. He talks about disordered loves, that we love the lesser over the greater, and he says that you know, these lower things, whatever it is that we might love other than God like, these things might be good. They have their delights, but not such as God has, for He made them all, and in him doth righteousness delight, and He is the
joy of the upright heart. And so it's not even so much that we have to sacrifice the lesser delights for the greater. But when you recognize the greater delight, the lessers actually become greater as they are understood in context of the greater. And so, you know, you look for earth and you lose heaven. Look for heaven and you gain earth in the process. And so there's so much delight to be had, there's so much desire to be had, But it really comes down to maintaining the
proper order. You love the greater over the lesser, and in so doing you actually love the lesser even more. And you know, this this idea, that this very platonic idea that everyone by nature serves the good. We find that in his analysis of the pair incident, you know, when he's talking about how, you know, the parents weren't even that great. We didn't even really eat them, you know,
we just fed them to the pigs. And so he's trying to figure out, why did I even do this thing, And you know, he says, Okay, well, maybe it's because I just love companionship. So maybe it was a love of friendship, which I mean, that's a good thing. Or but he really just comes down on I loved it because he was wrong. It's really his leading idea that I just wanted to do what was wrong. But even that is a perverted kind of way of wanting to do what is right, because he recognized some good that
he was serving right. And the problem there is, well, it was totally inverted. As he said at the beginning, of this book, he was pursuing the satisfaction of hell rather than of heaven, and so it was totally inverted, hence his need for conversion. Thanks a lot, Sorry no.
For me.
It takes a lot to actually admit that though I think you know that you Confessions is such a deeply personal text, He's like, I loved it because it was wrong, right, Like how many people would probably try to find, you know, another excuse, but he actually like, you know, like I wasn't even hungry, but I just did it because it was wrong, really interesting.
Right, And so he really places sin in the well, in the will, in the desire, which is tied to the will. It's what matters first and foremost is where we're being directed. And this is one area where some people think that he's you know, a little bit you know, too extreme, because you know, he's not first and foremost concerned with his actions. He's first and foremost concerned with
the desires that produce the actions. And this brings us to the the deaf psychology angle that he's very much concerned with what is motivating him, but then even deeper than that, what he is allowing to motivate him. You know where he is directing himself, where he is moving his will, And I think that that's actually it's very helpful, you know. I mean, how many times have you done something that you know is wrong? Whatever it may be. You know, we all do stuff that we know is wrong.
You do something you know is wrong, and you might think, you might feel guilty about that, and you might think, Okay, why did I do that? Why would I do that? How could I do such a thing. But you're so much focused on the action that you don't stop and think what did I actually want here? And why did I want it? Because the until you recognize how corrupted your desires are, then that root issue is never actually going to change because you won't know exactly what it
is that you need to repent of. And what we see in Augustine is somebody who recognizes what I don't need first and foremost is to modify my behavior. Well, I need first and foremost is a new will. I need to be sanctified. And so you know, his his reliance on grace kind of simultaneously allows him to not work so hard, but also he has to work so hard because he recognizes, you know, how much is wrong in him, how much has to be overcome, But at the same time he's able to just receive. And so
it's to kind of grace that spurs activity. But again it comes down to recognizing how kind of unfruitful his autonomous will is. And I think that if we're honest, a lot of times we're not willing to get down to that level. We're willing to repent of actions, not so much willing to repent of our own being.
Yeah, it's one thing to resist an action that he knows that. That's another thing to try to change the whole make up like the I don't know how to put it. I mean, like just to the desire to do that, right, Yeah, it's like that that very thing itself. That's one other things you can resist that, but the fact that that's even.
There, right yeah, exactly, that we can't by ourselves just replace our desires.
Yeah, And I guess and we'll say, like you won't, he can't either. It's through God's grace.
M hm. Exactly. Anything else anyone want to bring up for these first two books, I mean, there are these first two books, and there's definitely some some philosophy here, but I mean we're largely setting up the orientation of what we're doing here moving forward, as he recounts his own philosophical and spiritual journey, I think that we'll have more I mean more well theology and philosophy to to work through here, but definitely a powerful introduction that helps
us to recognize that this is not first and foremost at academic philosophy text. This is first and foremost somebody wrestling with his relationship with God, and somebody who has been through great sin, but somebody who has experienced great grace.
And so I think that is something that resonates hopefully with all of us, and you know, I trust it as we move further along with Augustine's own journey here through his life, that you know, will experience some of that ourselves, hopefully on a deeper level than we have so far. So, unless there's anything else and wants to bring up, I think I'll just end with the final section here from book two. Who can unravel that complex, twisted knottedness. It is unclean. I hate to think of
it or look at it. I long for thee Oh, justice and innocence, joy and beauty of the clear of sight. I long for thee with unquenchable longing. There is sure repose in THEE and life untroubled. He that enters into the enters into the Joy of Lord, and shall not fear, and shall be well in Him who is the best. I went away from Thee, my God, in my youth. I strayed too far from Thy sustaining power, and I
became to myself a barren land. And so great celebration in the goodness, the joy and the beauty of the Lord, but also a solemn recognition of the barrenness of rejecting that joy that's ever before us. I think it gives us a good place to wrap up our introduction here, and I hope that you all and I think maybe a few others will come in next time as we cover books three and four. So I hope to see you in a couple of weeks. So we're meeting every other week, and so hopefully i'll see again on the
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