Commentary on Confessions, Book I
i(1)- "To praise you is the desire of man…" Augustine here is making a commentary on human nature that is at the heart of his anthropology. For Augustine, at the core of the human identity is the understanding of our being Created, as well as an understanding of the goodness of our Creator-God. In this life, then, human fulfillment lies in coming to recognize this aspect of our humanity. Restlessness seems to natural to us because in our fallen condition it is impossible, or apparently so, to live in constant awareness of this fundamental truth. As we go on later to consider Augustine's notion of concupiscence, keep this in mind, so as to examine the notion of concupiscence through its relationship to our conscious awareness of God as the ground of our being.
"Which comes first…" I believe Augustine here is highlighting the tension between the need of Christians to proclaim the Gospel and the mysterious ways in which God makes Himself known to all who seek Him sincerely.
ii(2) Here Augustine asserts the understanding of God as ground of all being.
iii(3) Several concepts are at play here. One is the Plotinian concept of creation as emanation. Consider Plotinus III.8.4, 5:
4. And Nature, asked why it brings forth it works, might answer if it cared to listen and to speak:
'It would have been more becoming to put no question but to learn in silence just as I myself am silent and make no habit of talking. And what is your lesson? This; that whatsoever comes into being is my vision, seen in my silence, the vision that belongs to my character who, sprung from vision, am vision-loving and create vision from the vision-seeing faculty within me. The mathematicians from their vision draw their figures: but I draw nothing: I gaze and the figures of the material world take being as if they fell from my contemplation. As with my Mother (the All-Soul) and the Beings that begot me so it is with me: they are born of a Contemplation and by my birth is from them, not by their Act but by their Being; they are the loftier Reason-Principles, they contemplate themselves and I am born.
5. This discussion of Nature has shown us how the origin of things is a Contemplation: we may now take the matter up to the higher Soul; we find that the Contemplation pursued by this, its instinct towards knowing and inquiring, the birth pangs set up by the knowledge it attains, its teeming fullness, have caused it - in itself the object of Vision - to produce another Vision (that of the Cosmos).
Without getting into the grand scheme of Plotinian metaphysics, Plotinus here is working from a framework of hierarchy, where creation is ultimately an emanation from contemplation. The result of this is that all of creation in some way maintains its connection to God. How does this compare or relate to the concept of a monotheistic Creator-God, particularly when a theology asserts the permeance of God throughout all of creation, as Augustine does by arguing that God is the ground of all being? Why cannot this permeance be considered pantheistic? Also, Augustine here considers the permeance issue and what that says about the nature of God. Christianity rejects the notion of God being composite. How can God be simple (meaning, non-composite) yet still be contained in creation?
v(5) In reading what Augustine writes about God's anger when man sins or when man does not love God as he should, consider both what was said in the previous section as well as in i(1). The anger cannot be regarded as caprice, but rather the manner in which man apparently experiences God when man sins. Sin does not hurt God, so the experience of God's anger cannot be compared to the gods of Roman myth who cast down might storms because they have been offended and hurt. Rather, as we considered in i(1), sin takes us away from God, and so we are thus taken away from the experience of divine love. This creates a variety of phenomenological experiences, including the feeling of divine wrath. But providence is always working its governance and drawing us back towards God, and so any experience of what we call God's anger is in fact oriented towards bringing us back to our natural path, our teleological fulfillment in God. The design of our nature is that we are oriented towards God, and so sin will always cause us to be disoriented, which can lead to any variety of experiences in relation to God, be they anger, apathy, despair, etc.
vi(8) It seems that Augustine's observations of infancy are quite in line with modern understandings of developmental psychology.
vi(10) Strongly rooted in Plotinian concept of time and eternity. Consider Plotinus III.7.1:
Eternity and Time; two entirely separate things, we explain, 'the one having its being in the everlasting Kind, the other in the realm of Process, in our own Universe'; and, by continually using the words and assigning every phenomenon to the one or the other category, we come to think that, both by instinct and by the more detailed attack of thought, we hold an adequate experience of our minds without more ado.
vii(11) Augustine certainly does not place any moral culpability on infants here, which I believe he makes clear by his reference to the "coming of age," meaning when the rational faculties become sufficiently developed. For Augustine, reason should always guide humans to positive moral behavior, and so the evidence of our fallen condition will not be so much the jealous eyes of an irrational infant (though that is a lesser effect of the Fall), but the immoral behavior of a person with a mature faculty of reason.
viii(13) Augustine recognizes the continuity of identity. The stage of his life has advanced from infancy to boyhood, but the infant has not gone away. The person he was in his mother's womb, the person he was as an infant. The person he was in his mother's womb, the person he was as an infant, and the person he describes as a boy, are all the same, just in different stages. Reminiscent of Aristotle's idea of substantial and accidental change.
ix(14) Augustine is clearly not a fan of corporal punishment. I think Augustine also says something important about how children are taught about God, and how if they are taught poor theology as children, they will grow up basing their discernments of God on that early teaching. Perhaps then it is important to develop sound education in faith just as in other subjects where what is taught is presented in an age appropriate manner but is nonetheless orthodox in nature. It seems that it is easy to fall into the Santa Claus trap: "We'll tell him the truth when he's older," so that children may be taught one thing about God when they are young, only to find out that it's not true when they are older, and that they were intentionally lied to in the process. This will only naturally lead to skepticism, doubt, and disbelief.
x(16) Here begins a common theme in Augustine, and it is important to note what he really seeks to understand. His lament is not that a child loves playing games. Rather, he is seeking to understand the motivation that differentiates innocent joy from the pursuits of our fallen nature. So it is pride, it is the thrill of deception, and so forth.
"Deliver also those who do not as yet pray, that they may call upon you and you may yet set them free." This one line is in keeping with Augustine's belief that anyone who sincerely seeks God will find Him, even if imperfectly. God's nature is to be found. God is for Augustine what Plotinus would call the highest object of all contemplation, and so the mind set out on contemplation, for Augustine, by grace will be drawn towards its natural object.
xi(17) The sacrament of reconciliation in 4th century Christianity was something very different in manner than the Catholic practice today. It was only available through a bishop, typically only available once in a person's lifetime, and the penance was typically very public and harsh. Because of this, baptism was quite ordinarily delayed, if not until death, at least until the child gets through the wild adolescent and young adult years (especially boys).
One thing that will come up several times throughout this book is Augustine's treatment of women. I submit that given the time in which this book is written, that Augustine's views of women are quite progressive, and I believe that has much to do with his adoration of his own mother, St. Monica. Here he refers to her as morally superior to his father, which is not a common sentiment in the 4th century, not as far as I am aware. It was quite common to consider men intrinsically morally superior to women.
Thus I believe Augustine also says something interesting about the family dynamic. In one sense, Monica took on a maternal and spousal role that was very much in keeping with tradition, and it was a great sign of her virtue and her humility that she did so. On the other hand, Patricus (Augustine's father), seemed to recognize her moral superiority, for he let Monica make such key decisions about Augustine's upbringing and religious education. As we will see later in the book, and already alluded to here, her great and radiant moral witness convinced Patricus to be baptized on his deathbed.
As the book proceeds there will be several insights into Monica's character that are timeless and worthy of consideration. What virtues do you see in Monica that are universally good and worthy of imitation in any context? Does Monica teach us anything about how to deal with conflict in our lives? These are some questions to keep in mind going forward.
xi(18) I believe Augustine is saying something interesting about the nature of freedom. There is one attitude that considers freedom to mean absolute license to do as one pleases, represented here by those who call for permissiveness prior to baptism. There is another train of thought, to which Augustine appears to subscribe, which considers formation in virtue as necessary for an authentic experience of human freedom.
This raises the question of Augustine's conception of human nature, which I believe is often misrepresented and/or misunderstood. Augustine believes that we are intrinsically good because we are created by God, but that original sin, the fallen condition into which we are born, fabricates in us an inclination towards evil, towards sin, and thus is a form of slavery because it prevents us from freely and naturally moving towards the good which is the natural telos of the human person. This understanding will serve as the underlying principle of Augustine's doctrine of grace.
There exists an interesting parallel here between his treatment of Monica's relationship to his father, Patricus, and man's relationship with God. If Monica found freedom in submission to her husband, who was not good, how much more will we find freedom in our submission to God, who is all-good and only orders us towards the good. Chadwick's footnote 20 is illuminating, as well.
xii(19) This notion of sin as disorder is absolutely essential in Augustine's thought, and also sheds light on our previous consideration of God's wrath, etc. What is experienced as punishment from God is often simply the experience of our own disorder - that is, the experience of being ordered, or re-ordered, in a way that takes us away from our natural good.
xiii(22) For this entire discourse on his education I believe Augustine is making an analogy to the disorder of the soul. For Augustine, this disorder does not necessarily mean doing something that is intrinsically evil. Rather, it means choosing a lesser good over a greater good - hence why it is disordered. We will see this in some detail in the famous story of the stolen pears.
Also, by choosing the example of mathematical truth, which he disdained to recite, versus the fables to which he loved to listen, there is a subtle point made about the fiction we pursue and thus call freedom, when authentic freedom is that which liberates us in truth.
xvi(26) Augustine brings up a similar point in the early part of City of God, where he responds to the accusation that Christianity and the imperial proscription against pagan cult caused the fall of Rome by arguing instead that it was the immorality and lack of virtue in the people, the people emulating the gods, that led to Rome's fall. Virtue is thus not merely a private matter but serves a greater good, as well.
xviii(29) Subtly here Augustine is moving along the hierarchy of goods. Previously he has considered how it is better to be skilled in reading and writing, in language, than to know fictitious fables. Now he is demonstrating that it is better to love God and be ordered by His law than to be skilled in language. Skill in language is an intermediate good, which means it can be directed towards good (praising God) or evil (praising evil men).