92 - Augustine's Confessions, Books 3-4

three and four. I don't have a lot of front matter to provide you with for this episode, but there's one thing I want to mention is that I'm running a special right now where to reward all of my Tier three patrons, whether you pay annually, whether you pay monthly, I'm running a special bonus gift to you at this point, and so that if you are a Tier three patron by the end of this week, and so that would be by the twenty fourth of May twenty twenty five.

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get that access. But for now, let's go ahead and jump right into our conversation on a Gustin's Confessions book three and four. Wells jump right into it here. Talking about books three and four, this is I think we really start to really get into it as we get into Augustine himself. You know, the first couple of books are anyways just setting up what we're doing in orienting

himself toward God. I mean, he goes a little bit into you know, some of his past, looking at the Pear incident, but even that's mostly to set up sort of theologically, like what his sin is, what temptation is,

what sin is, and that's just kind of example. But now we're going a lot more more methodically through his life, kind of step by step with the progressions that he takes, and so right at the beginning of book three here we get this pretty just powerful diagnosis of his condition when he says, I came to Carthage, where a cauldron of illicit loves left and boiled about me. I was not yet in love, but I was in love with love, and from the very depth of my need, hated myself

for not more keenly feeling the need. I saw some object to love, since I was thus in love with loving, and I hated security and a life with no snares from my feet. For within, I was hungry all for the want of that spiritual food, which is thyself, my God. And so he starts off by saying, like, I loved the idea of love, but I didn't yet recognize what love was for who love was for, And so he

loved love while simultaneously hating himself. It kind of reminds me of what Tolkien says about Gollum about how he loved and hated the Ring as he loved and hated himself. It's because he didn't recognize the proper object of love. And then so from there on we just we get his his traveling and his restless heart, loving various things that he ought not loved with the Manicheans and whatnot. So I just I love the way he sets us up.

But I'd love to hear some of your thoughts. And I'm going to use the word love apparently as many times as they can. Right, Uh, Kyle, you're umueded. Tell us something about book three?

themselves they're good in and of themselves. But if you stop there, you're it's still vain, it's still empty, you know. It's it's like Ecclesiastes, Solomon or the Teacher, and it's just like this, there's no there's no value here unless you follow these things towards their tell us. And I, oh, gosh,

I don't remember who it was. I was listening to a conversation maybe two months ago, and it was about how aros is meant to be a ladder towards one of the other forms of love, and that Aros is sort of like that that earthly affection we have, but it's always just meant to be that compass that points us towards that love for God. And he seems to like here in the beginning of book three, he's showing like he's not he's not looking at the like, he's

not looking where they're pointing. He's just looking at the things themselves. And he sees how clearly in hindsight, how why that's what left him empty.

makes good things good. And in so doing, the things themselves may still be good, but our desires are evil because they're turned away from the good. Right. That's a very platonic way of seeing things, and especially in Augustine way of seeing things. Who you know, Augustine's going to reteem redeem the material world and see that a little bit better than playto himself does, because he recognizes like anything that exists exists by the will of God. Therefore

existence itself is good. You know, I'm still wrapping up some of the Tolkien materials, so I've got Tolkien still running through my mind here. But you know, Tolkien says that, you know, he doesn't believe in absolute evil. Yeah, absolute evil would be non being.

he can receive wrath more fully. So there's no such things as that complete absence.

get out of that. Recognizing that you know, all things are you know, from God, and all things are held together by God, existence itself is fundamentally good, which really, if we believe that, then we have reason for joy

at simply being itself, regardless of particular circumstances. This is why this idea is going to get a lot of play in Boethius a little bit later on in time, that Boethius can say that, no matter how much injustice I'm facing right now, the fact that I'm here able to recognize injustice means that high exist, and existence is

good existence. The affirmation of existence provides a straight line to the beatific vision followed, you know fully, to its course or to its source, kind of same thing, beginning and end. And so this, this idea that being is fundamentally good, it gets a lot of play in medieval Christian philosophy. And I think that's one reason why you know, as much as as you know, we we talk about the dark ages. I think philosophically, these are the bright ages.

They make so much, give so much priority, just the luminosity of existence, and I think that's something that can deeply enrich and really re enchant our lives. I often quote this, this Thomas Aquinas line when he says that all the efforts of the human mind cannot exhaust the essence of a single fly like existence is far more

wondrous than we tend to think. It just it's just it's marvelous, all right, reach why you share something with us about and thing from from the section of reading whatever foot to boot.

fictional characters. But that's kind of where it ended. The idea of Catharsis is that you're supposed to sort of let something out in a way that allows you to actually better integrate your own psyche together. But what he was doing, and what we often tend to do, is, I mean, we might sympathize with a you know, some situation in a show we're watching, but we don't take that step further and actually recognize what this means for us.

We don't mourn for ourselves in the appropriate way. We don't sorrow for ourselves in the appropriate way, And so I do think he makes some pretty important points regarding the way that we engage with entertainment.

could not bear his own person. I think he definitely picks on something good where sometimes we almost want to see like a sometimes like a train wreck or something go bad in somebody else's life that we can pity them, but also kind of realized, like which is something that's a bad feeling to have, But you're like, you know, like, oh, other people go through suffering too, right, And it's it's weird that we feel that way sometimes, And he later on says, may it be that whereas no one wants

to be miserable, there is real pleasure in pitying others, and we love their sorrows because without them we should have nothing. We should have nothing to pity. Yeah, And then he follows it up with some imagery of kind of not wanting them to bite too deep the sorrows, but just to scratch his heart basically causes information and sores and us flowing and just kind of pondering if that's even a life to have, you know, the life that he was living, was it even a life?

that make them happy. Oftentimes, do I need to do is pity people because they're happy, he says, But today I have more pity for the sinner getting enjoyment from his sin, then when he suffers the torment from the loss of pleasure which is ultimately destructive, and the loss of happiness, which is only misery. This is clearly the truer compassion. But the sorrow I feel him gives me no pleasure. And so, you know, he used to feel sorry for people when you know they lose the things

that make them happy. Now he sorrows for people who, in their happiness don't recognize their misery, don't recognize their sin, because it's exactly where he was, right, he didn't recognize what his misery truly was. And so now he has a new kind of perspective. You know, it makes me think of and you know, it's getting a little bitead

to the next course that I'll be teaching. But you know, to Plato's allegory of the cave that you know, when the guy gets out that now he has not pride in that judgment of those who are still stuck in the cave, but now he has pity for them. He has compassion for them, and he's able to willingly now to send back into the darkness out of pity for those who are where he was. And so you know, we see this idea in Plato, but I think even more profoundly in Augustine, of pity for those who don't

recognize their pitiable state. You know, Augustine is an interesting kind of figure that on one hand, he's obviously interested in dogma, he's obviously interested in philosophy. He's going to advocate for, you know, taking out certain sects of heretics, and so on one hand he is a very theologically driven guy, but also as you read him like, he reads as somebody of a contrite and broken spirit remade

by God. And so you have both strength as well as real meekness, which obviously those aren't opposites, rightly understood, And you know, Kyle mentioned in the chat here this line that's had underlined as well, the very limit of human blindness is to glory in being blind. We celebrate the very things that are handicapping us and keeping us from fulfilling our purpose. Which, again, because Augustine's idea that evil is principally in the will, we decide to be blind,

essentially we glory in it. We don't want to be healed.

It kind of seems like an obvious, obvious state. Maybe I'm just wowed by his words, but just in terms of like how how twisted it is to like, it's a twisted thing to almost to desire that people are in the situation so that you could serve them like the well the well ordered desire is that that they they are they're off or they're in right relationship with God, and that they're not miserable.

could set her free. It's like this this twisted kind of idea where I want to feel like I had the moral superiority by expressing pity, but I don't actually want them to be well, it's yeah, no, yeah.

don't want to read that out of context. But then later on he goes on and he says, I wandered from you and my arrogance, going ever further away from you, loving my way and not your ways, in love with my runaway liberty, which my footnote says is an allusion to being a runaway slave. And so it's interesting because it's almost it's like these passions for for a disordered pity, these passions for disordered friendship. He likens them to like

the slave masters of him, it seems almost. And but it's also interesting because he's he talks he's glorying in that in that slavery, because he says he wears his chains with bliss and that that he is in love with his runaway liberty. And it's like, I know, my favorite quote from the Oxford Classics comes in book nine, and it's how sweet it became to me to be without the sweets of folly. What I want, feared to lose, became a delight to dismiss. That's in book nine. That's

the Oxtra Classics translation. And as you see the progression of he he's loving his chains, so that he's loving to be without his chains, as as his affections are becoming better ordered throughout the confessions.

loves rightly oriented. Whereas the bad man, you know, he may be reigning, but he's he's a servant to his lust. He's not in control of his own passions, and that's not freedom, And that I think speaks pretty directly to our modern understandings of freedom. I encounter this all the time teaching philosophy, at a public university. You know, I'll ask students, you know, what does freedom mean? And with various wording, they basically say freedom is being able to

do whatever you want to. But then, you know, I follow up with, Okay, why do you want what you want? And if you want the wrong things that are constantly leading you to a less free kind of life, you're becoming addicted to your own vices. Is that actual freedom? I mean, I take a little bit longer to lead them to in that direction, but eventually, you know, it starts to become obvious that simply doing whatever you want is not freedom because very often we want the wrong things.

You know, Plato says, one of the worst things that can happen to you is you want the wrong things and you get them.

But Augustine goes a little bit deeper. You know, while his colleagues are reading Cicero so they know how to speak better, Augustin's actually reading Cicero to see what he's saying, and out of that he he is awakened to a desire to study philosophy. He's awakened to the early stages of a love for wisdom, which is going to lead

him in the wrong places along the path. But ultimately this is the beginning point of his like intellectual movement toward God, even though he doesn't know that's where he's headed yet.

And it reminds me of In I can't remember for his Screwtape letters or Screwtape proposes a toast, but in one of them, Screwtape is talking about how the how they they've you know, the forces of Hell have say, convinced moderns to study the ancient text, the great Text, for kind of form for style to learn about like you know, historical realities regarding you know the text, or you know how people are talking, how people are thinking.

But what they don't want people to do is actually read the text for what they are saying, as if they're actually saying things that may be true, that may actually come into terms with the way that we understand wisdom, the way that we understand the world today. And Augustin does exactly that. That. Yeah, all right, well thanks for sopping by, rah hope see next time.

there with my mother's milk. My infant heart had drunk in and still held deep down in it that name cordn sheer, mercy, Lord, the name of your son, my favor, and whatever lacks that name, no matter how to learn it, and excellently written, and shrew could not win me Holy and I find that so strange being where this is in his life that I almost I almost just don't know how to interpret it, as if this is something that he's like saying in hindsight retroactively, or if it's

like this subconscious thing because he's, to my understanding and I'm in my reading comprehension is far from the best. He's he's still living in rebellion. Yeah, for whatever reason, Like he says that it lacks the name of Christ, I don't know. I got to that, and I just it just put questions in my mind and no answer. So I was wondering what you guys thought.

be their reason? Name is how I'm interpreting it, and him basically saying, like Ray says, for with my mother's milk, my infle heart had drunk in and still held deep down in the name, according to your mercy.

The Manicheans would certainly claim that. And so it's like, even though he's engaging in all these these these I don't know, these cults and these heresies and these vain philosophies, like there's still something of his mother. There's faith there at the very least in name. And so it's like he he desires the name of Christ, but he doesn't

desire Christ. And I think that's yeah, And I think that honestly, a lot of people today can probably relate to that, and you know the whole like expangelical movement or you know, people so deconstruct the faith, but they still want to maintain certain labels. They still want to maintain, you know, certain wordings that they want to maintain the appearance of what they came up with, even if they projected the substance.

had inverted immediately. This would be so much more insightful if I remembered quotes or what the book was. And I remember, I remember he was saying, it's like, oh, how that convicted me? How how quickly he turned from his sin when I have still been trying to hold onto mine. And it's almost it was kind of just like this watershed moment where he finally realized that he needed to give it all up. So I wonder how much of it is that, but it, yeah, I mean,

it's it's interesting. It's interesting how he's he seems to have his toes in the water, but he just doesn't want to jump. And then he's even like later on the next section, he finds another excuse to be repelled by Christ again, because he says, because now he's reading the scriptures, and he says, I can see it was repelled by their simplicity, and I had not the mind to penetrate into their depths. They were indeed of a nature to grow on your little ones, but I could

not bear to be a little one. I was only swollen with pride. But to myself I seemed a very big man. And so he's constantly finding these things to excuse himself to walk away. Again. It's really interesting. It's a very interesting relationship.

for excuses not to believe. And so this is one reason why he is attracted to the Manicheans, because they maintain certain Christian ideas, the very ly certain Christian vocabulary, but it seems a lot more complex and sophisticated than playing Christian faith, the Plaine Christian faith that he would have most keenly associated with, the Plane Christian faith of his mother, who was not a learning theologian. She was not a great philosopher. She was just a simple woman

of faith. And so to him, that's probably what Christianity was, and he wanted something more sophisticated, more more learned than that, which kept him from recognizing just how deep and profound the scriptures are.

going to push to the pronunciation day turnichate whatever. It's like this big corpus on the trinity, And I don't know, I wonder if it's maybe I guess I'm asking your advice if we should read him with that nuance or should we should we read him more absolutely and just sort of taken for his word.

have Augustine truly saying that the scripture is simple. You don't need a summary degree to pick up the scripture and get the basic meaning, to read the Gospels and understand the basics of what Jesus is saying. But at the same time, you could study for an eternity and not mind the depths of what's revealed there. And so I think it's simultaneously true as he says that it's simple and that it is complex and infinitely profound. And by the way, side note, I definitely endorse his day

trinitat or is on the Trinity. It's just it's a beautiful expression of Trinitarian theology. My first paper publication was a chapter showing the Augustinian, specifically his doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the Calvin's Institutes, and so I worked a good bit with it with that day trinatae is. It's beautiful, highly highly recommend it. But that's kind of a side note. I guess.

One of my best classes I ever took was a seminar class on Augustine in which we read pretty much all of his major works, the Confessions, on Christian Doctrine, on the Trinity, City of God, some of those Antipolagian writings. By far, just the best single course I've ever taken. So I recommend reading anything.

it mean to have an immaterial being? Because Augustine, you know, coming out of Roman culture, like the Romans, didn't have a category for a transcendent, purely immaterial God, which is why the Romans accused the early Christians of being atheists, because they assumed that Christians were just denying deity altogether, because they had a very different understanding of what the

deity actually was. And so these are just some of the philosophical issues that he's dealing with that the Manicheans, at least for a time, provide him with some answers for, but ultimately he just doesn't find them to be satisfactory, which is going to move him back in the direction of Christian orthodoxy.

Stop pestering me. Essentially like there's there's no way that a mother could shed this many tears over her son and not have them get a response. And so that was enough for her, And then of course she receives this dream that confirms that idea.

it's it's kind of tough to read. Sorry I'm saying something else, but again, it's kind of tough to read because it's like, so, all right, so we're talking about Ciso, we're talking about how he's too proud for scripture, talking about all of these things, and then and I'm sure it's related, then he kind of breaks off and what seems like a tangent of divine justice and how it doesn't change but it seems to change, or it doesn't it doesn't even seem to change, but it's just it

relates to people differently depending on their time period. And then we're at the Manichees and it's kind of it's like, how I read that, And it's like, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to place this in this narrative because it's like where we got We have like your life, and then we have a theological tangent, and we're back to your life, and then we're back to a theological tangent and he's just he's just writing whatever goes into his mind. And I'm yeah, I don't know. I digress.

the day might not be lawful another time. I mean, you know, in my own household, like the children are allowed to be awake at certain times and they're allowed or they need to be asleep other times, and so too with the course of history, that there's no reason why the standard transcendent justice of God can't demand certain things at some time and other things at other times. Yeah, but to I mean, really respond to your your question. Yeah, it just you seem to be answering his younger self.

And then yeah, I mean, as you mentioned the astrology bit, that he's drawn into these astrologers, and you know, it's kind of an interesting topic when you start talking about astrology and what's gonna happen with medievalism, you know, especially coming out of studying Lewis the discardant image, that sort of stuff when you get into medieval cosmology versus astrology.

And really the dividing line here seems to be that pagan astrology is fatalistic, where they say, basically, I'm not responsible that, you know, the heavens are responsible for the way that I'm living my life, and so it robs you of your own agency and your own responsibility, Whereas what seems to be the prevailing consensus with the medieval theologians regarding the heavens is that the heavens do have

influences over this life. And even that word like or even like influenza has a relation to the influences of the heavens. And so the heavens have influences, but they aren't ultimately a deciding factor in the way that we live our lives. They're simply that influences that then we choose to relate ourselves to positively or negatively. And so the difference here between pagan astrology and Christian medieval cosmology really comes down to where is agency located.

seems obvious. I'm like, all right, you say something so vague, eventually it's gonna in some ways it's going to ring true, right, Like it's that game of chance that he was speaking with that one man about, and you have this great saint of the faith falling into these cults that otherwise I might make like a rash judgment on a person, and if I knew them that were going to fall into it. So it's humbling for me to read it.

someone's so intellectual but also so passionate as Augustine. I mean, even in his attachment to the astrologers, it's not even so much that at this time he thinks that they have the better argument. It's that they seem to have the more powerful argument, the more compelling argument, and that's enough for him at this point. And so as much as he's an intellectual, he's first and foremost him, he's

a romantic. He's someone who follows his passions, which can be good or dangerous depending on where you're directed.

And you know, in he his friend gets sick to the point of near death, and so they baptize him while he's unconscious, and then he wakes up and has reaffirmed faith and you know, doesn't want any of Augustine's mockery or his his scorn. And you know, at that point there's this dividing line between them, which you know,

obviously we're getting into the territory of baptismal regeneration. You know, I don't know your theology is of baptism here, but it's it's clear that Augustine's and he's he's not unusual in this in certainly believing that baptism actually does something like it's sacramentally, it's not simply a ceremony. He seems to believe that baptism actually basically confirmed faith in his friend, even though he wasn't conscious for it.

that this happened, then okay, this happened. And then also you have the same thing even later on, which is like the relic experience where there's that healing episode from the bones of the saint, and it's like this isn't even like this is Romanist almost. It's like, again, I'm not going to call him a liar. But I guess how do I grapple with these things? That's a good point. I also just think it's funny because, like it's not creato baptism because as far as I know the guy's unconscious,

well it's not ideo baptism. But he's a full grown adult, So I don't I'm wondering what baptistic school thought does that does this episode belong to. It's a whole new thing.

feel comfortable saying that's not the right approach. I do have a lot of questions. I don't know where I stand really on a number of issues. I've I've come to the point of I think my favorite label for myself is reformed LOWERCASEE Catholic, whatever that means I don't know. I don't really know either. I'm comfortable saying don't wait until you're dying to get baptized, but beyond that, I don't know. I'm still working through some of this myself as well.

is not less than church membership. And so do I feel have I felt a sort of call from God to leave church? I haven't. I think church membership is significant enough that there should be clarity, right, I don't want to treat it vainly as though like that shopping. So I don't know. It's something I've thought about a lot, and this I remember reading this the first time. I

was thinking about it a lot. So it's it's interesting, it's very outside what is within my frame of experience, which is why it's reading historical text is one of those wonderful things, because it's like we don't recognize the water that we're swimming in until we jump out of it and go into a different ocean.

don't have a Protestant Reformation without Augustine. When you look at where the Protestant Reformers drew their inspiration from, you know, between Luther, between Calvin, you don't have them without Augustine. And you don't have Augustin without Monica. And it just shows how world shaping the prayers of a Weeping Mother can be. And I think that alone is something worth pulling out of the confessions.

time that he was. But then Augustine sort of just spirals out into this despair over the death of his friend and probably really the double death of his friend that at the time he's sparing not only that his friend is taken away, but also that his friend recognized a good that he did not know, and so there was that relational break as well as the physical break of a physical death, and and so that leads him

into despair. But it's the right kind of despair that allows him to look beyond himself that you have to you have to descend before you can ascend, as he says a little bit later on, and so even this despair itself was a grace. Yeah.

die whenever one of my friends died. And it's like it's he's continuing to go deeper into the foolishness, and he's replacing the one friend that I obviously couldn't satisfy his soul and perished with more friends that obviously can't satisfy his soul and will perish. And so he's tracking down that folly further down the road, despite the pain and the torment that has already just assailed him.

whatever he can to hide from that reality. He's simultaneously hiding from God and hiding from himself because to recognize either one truly is to recognize the other. You know, you can't note that. So Calvin says that you know, all knowledge comes down to love, or to knowledge of God and knowledge of yourself. And so if we in our our neglective one, we're ultimately neglecting the other as well. And we definitely see that playing out here as he's he's afraid to stop and just to be. It's like

a stone skipping across the water. As soon as it stops, that's when it sinks. So he has to do what he can to keep moving.

are able to see. And he just is going to recognize again and again that any value that these different systems had to offer ultimately fall short of what he's pursuing. And so he gets frustrated again and again and again, which is helping to build the sense of despair of Okay, maybe wisdom isn't where I'm seeking it. And so that was preparing him for his conversation with Ambrose, which I believe is coming up in the next section or the next couple of books.

leading me down paths that aren't fruitful. And then it seems like right after he invented divine simplicity, where he says your greatness of beauty as if they might inhar a body. In fact, your greatness in your beauty are yourself. I was like, whereas, And yeah, he goes on, which I thought was interesting, just as like a little easter egg. It's my understanding is that he actually did invent that doctrine, so I thought it was neat to see it there in play. But yeah, and I mean, I've I've never

read Aquinas. I know nothing of Aquinas except what I've heard other people say of him. But my understanding is that he loves Aristotle, Augustine loves Plato, and I guess it would be interesting for them to like to dialogue on this passage of where is Aristotle appropriate? Where is he not appropriate? Maybe in heaven with the virtuous pagans, if they get there.

They're trying to Like even with the man Kens, he's like asking all these questions that like really aren't important questions even though they seem like they're deep and they're that type of stuff, and it just kind of like slowed.

like explicitly theological to be good. And it's like, no things are good in and of themselves, right, like light is casting on these things, Light is casting on these images, and that's true light, and that's good light, and that's beautiful light. It's just and you can be satisfied in that light, but it's just that you won't be fully satisfied until you find the source of light itself. And I love I love the the the way it dignifies, just like the surrounding things as well, that imagery.

to even read scripture, you have to learn language. There's something inherently Christian about Greek language, and so you have to learn things in order to even approach scripture that

aren't themselves explicitly scriptural. And so too, you know, why not, you know, why can't we recognize the value that comes from pagan sources, recognizing all true value ultimately comes from God anyways, And so he compares it to the Israelites plundering the Egyptians saying basically, we're putting things back into the proper context that we actually have a right to the truth. And so it's this idea that all truth is God's truth wherever it can be found. Very very august in me, any.

And I'm gonna I'm gonna quote John Piper here, which you guys might really rise at. And that's okay, I

roll my eyes. But he he has, he does have this really nice imagery of like the fact that God paints the same sunset every day and every day and every day, and it's like He continuously delights to do these things for eternity because the sun is always rising somewhere and it's like we look at that and we are filled with awe, and God again says again and again and again, and he paints the thing brush again

and again and again, and it's just like his glories everywhere. Yeah, I'm I'm just I'm rehashing the same thing I said. But I just I love it. I love to I love to see that reflected.

Let us now return to THEE, O Lord, that we may not be overturned, for with THEE lives without any defect our good, which is thyself. We have no fear that there should be sorry. We have no fear that there should be no place of return, merely because by our own act we fell from it. Our absence does not cause our home to fall, which is thy eternity. I think it's a good place to wrap. Next time, we'll get the next couple of books.

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