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Christopher Smith
Great Books 192.007
Nicole Fluhr
Language: The Downfall and Salvation of St. Augustine
St. Augustine writes Confessions to acknowledge his past sins in front of God and to also preach to future readers the horrors of sin and wonderfulness of his present faith. Beginning with his birth and tracing more than thirty years, he narrates the coming of age of a gifted young man who, despite being very successful, is spiritually lost and frustrated. However, Augustine is able to slowly transform himself from a misguided adolescent into a secure and ardent follower of the Catholic Church. Following the chronological order of events in his life, Augustine’s faith at any one given time can be attributed to the current ideas that catch his attention. Thus, language is critical to his beliefs, doubts, and personal thoughts of religion. Therefore, literature, theological teachings, philosophy, and stories are responsible for both Augustine’s descent into the unfounded world of Manichism and his eventual wholehearted acceptance of all Catholic doctrines and of the Holy Scriptures as the true word of God.
Augustine’s inability to remain with any one set of religious beliefs is due to his early impressionability. He is a teenage student of rhetoric and admires eloquence rather than truth. In Augustine’s mind, the just argument is less interesting and important than the crafty and convincing “wrong” argument. So any well-delivered ideas of the eternal he encounters seem to persuade him beyond any doubt of what must be true. This habit leads Augustine to make the critical mistake of initially disregarding the Holy Scriptures. He acknowledges his erroneous view of literature and admits: “To me [the Scriptures] seemed quite unworthy of comparison with the stately prose of Cicero, because I had too much conceit to accept their simplicity and not enough insight to penetrate their depths” (60). Cicero’s Hortensius, which Augustine had read earlier as part of his studies, catalyzes his intense hunger for the knowledge of what controls the material world. Augustine’s hunger and love of the shapely word will eventually combine to lead him into the darkest days of his spiritual life.
Augustine becomes entangled with a group that explains the nature of God and the creation of the world in a completely false manner—the Manichees. The Manichees believe in two gods, one of dark and one of light, and that evil and damnation lurk in certain objects, while light and salvation can be found in opposing substances. Despite the Manichees’ lack of sound facts that could back their claims, Augustine absorbs their theories and ridicules the holy patriarchs who teach the true word of God. He is wrapped up in the superficial delivery of truth rather than the substance of the true word. Augustine writes of his blindness: “The dishes they set before me were still loaded with dazzling fantasies, illusions with which the eye deceives the mind” (61). The writings and teachings of the Manichees, presented so eloquently and yet so false, saturate the mind of an impressionable Augustine and allow him to develop behaviors that make his conversion to Christianity all the more difficult and painful.
While following the Manichee faith, Augustine is characterized by sin. He confesses that he developed lust for a love for earthly desires: “Love of money had gained the better of me and for it I sold to others the means of coming off better in debate” (St. Augustine 71). Augustine also enjoys a base passion for sex and writes, “I lived with a woman, not my lawful wedded wife but a mistress whom I had chosen for no special reason but that my restless passions had alighted on her” (72). He keeps a mistress and eventually fathers an illegitimate son with her. The teachings of the Manichees directly affect his beliefs, but indirectly by not creating a system of laws against sin the Manichee faith has allowed for this blasphemous behavior. The persuasive literature of the Manichees certainly lead Augustine morally astray, yet these same teachings prove to be an objective comparison begging to be proved false in the future when Augustine once again stumbles across contradicting material.
Though a dedicated Manichee, Augustine begins to read scientific literature that leads him to doubt whether his system of beliefs is correct. Although the works of astronomers and scientists that he reads do not investigate religious topics, they contradict the scientific writings of Manes—the leader of the Manichees. Augustus knows if Manes is wrong about one thing, all his other teachings can also be discredited. Confused and doubting the validity of his present faith, he writes, “As [Manes] knew no science and yet had the effrontery to try to teach it, he could not possibly have had true wisdom” (St. Augustine, 95). Thus, as Augustine’s interests have shifted from the ideological literature of the Manichees to scientific readings, his beliefs have also begun to shift. With Manes’ illusion of knowledge of the truth shaken, Augustine is ripe to completely dismiss his convictions about the Manichees.
The spokesman of the Manichees, Faustus, is ironically the deciding factor for Augustine’s rejection of the Manichees. Augustine, with indisputable scientific research in hand, goes to speak with Faustus so that he could give him a clear explanation of how the word of Manes is superior to that of the scientists’. But instead of finding a wise and scholarly Manichee, Augustine finds Faustus a hollow man who only possesses the ability to speak persuasively and has no scholarly background. Faustus refuses to even consider the scientific contradictions of Augustine because he lacks the ability to come up with understandable and reasonable answers. Augustine does not bother to go to other wise Manichees with these discrepancies because Faustus had been the most revered Manichee teacher. In the past, Augustine may have accepted Faustus’ well-spoken rhetoric, but with his current love of scientific truth, Augustine cleanses himself of his old beliefs and beings a new search for truth.
Spiritually lost yet again, Augustine moves to Rome to begin teaching the subjects of rhetoric he had mastered. While in Rome, he attempts to fall back on the Catholic Church and fill the void of faith that had formally held the Manichee doctrine. However, Augustine is unable to accept Catholicism and writes, “My mind recoiled because the Catholic faith was not what I supposed it to be” (105). The Catholic Church claims that God is infinite and that God creates all things including evil. Augustine, holding tightly to his own theories that were still subliminally influenced by false Manichee teachings, will not recognize these ideas and therefore cannot readily acknowledge the Catholic faith or its teachings as true. Augustine will need a literary stepping-stone before he can comprehend the daunting Holy Scriptures.
Augustine’s struggles with the concepts of nature of God and evil are eventually put to rest after he reads the works of the Platonists. These philosophical works inspire Augustine to transform his ideas once again. Having gone from Manichism to scientific thought, he now enters the world of the philosopher. Augustine is going beyond fact and peering into essentialism and the nonmaterial. He explains, “By reading these books of the Platonists I had been prompted to look for truth as something incorporeal” (St. Augustine, 154). These Greeks books have opened up his soul to God, and he is able to visualize the light of a God that he now knows is the eternal truth. Augustine realizes that his theories about the nature of God and evil are wrong.
Augustine examines evil and recognizes that evil is of substance. He had correctly believed that God would not create something that had an evil nature. But he also explains, “Whatever is, is good; and evil, the origin of which I was trying to find, is not a substance, because if it were a substance, it would be good” (St. Augustine, 148). Augustine has reasoned that all earthly objects are corruptible, and thus must be good to begin with. So evil must not be a substance within objects, but the lack of good and the presence of corruption. Likewise, Augustine writes of the evil man, “I asked myself what wickedness was, [and] I saw that it was not a substance but perversion of the will when it turns aside from [God]” (150). Evil is a deficiency not a substance—a fact that clearly debunks Manichism and proves Catholic beliefs correct.
The essential question of the nature of God is also understandable to Augustine now that he has the power of reason granted to him by the Platonic works he had read. Firstly, he now sees God as truly absolute. All things seen by the eye are changeable. And their source, God, is the only being which is unchangeable and therefore absolute and true. And being absolute and unchanging, God is also more than an infinite body; he is a spiritual being. The idea that God is in and extends into everything is absurd. Augustine writes, “For if [this theory] were true, it would mean that a greater part of the earth would contain a greater part of you, and a smaller part less in proportion” (134). God is absolute and can be infinite and everywhere, but as a spirit rather than the bulk of everything. The nature of evil and the concept of an eternal God are not likely to be logically explained by the Manichees and their already laughable logic. Yet because these concepts cannot be physically explained, scientific reasoning is also useless in explaining evil and God. Therefore, by reading Platonic philosophy, Augustine has finally been educated in the spiritual and is ready to accept Christian doctrine.
The previous Scriptures that seemed so bland and useless to Augustine now take on new meaning. He reads the Epistles of Saint Paul and discovers that they reaffirm all the truth of the Platonists. In addition to this truth, the epistles also contain praise of God. Augustine writes of the Platonists’ books: “Their pages have not the mien of the true love of God” (156). The combination of truth and God’s great deeds excite Augustine. He has finally found comfort from his faithless wanderings and has uncovered the great mysteries of God and evil that plagued him. He is now on the verge of converting to Christianity and reforming his sinful ways.
Having rescinded his former and false ideas, Augustine is ready to give up all but what is necessary to live a life according to God’s standards. But changing his behavior is not as simple or as enjoyable as learning truth. He must be convinced of the joys of completely converting not once, but twice before he gives up all his bodily desires and accepts a life in Christ during a dramatic conversion.
Augustine goes to Simplicianus, the spiritual father of Ambrose, to try and be persuaded to change his lifestyle. Simplicianus tells him of the conversion of Victorinus—the man who had translated the Platonists’ works from Greek to Latin. Like Augustine, Victorinus was a respected teacher, and a child of a Christian who lived far from God in his youth. At first he quietly converted to Christianity, but when the time came, Victorinus has no qualms about professing his faith to all regardless of the personal risk and sure slander of his name to follow. In addition, he obeyed the laws of the time that forbad Christians from teaching literature and rhetoric and gave up his successful school of words in order to worship the Word of God.
Though Augustine longs to follow the path of Victorinus, he cannot overcome his human desires. He explains the difficulties he faced: “For my will was perverse and lust had grown from it, and when I gave in to lust habit was born, and when I did not resist the habit it became a necessity” (St. Augustine, 164). His addicted to unholy passions and his yearning to be a true follower of God are tearing his soul apart. But persuaded by the story of Victorinus, he now approves of a holy lifestyle over his present way of living. Augustine confesses, “But while I wanted to follow [your love], I was still a slave to the pleasures of [my own lust]” (165). Augustine is chained down by his desires; however, his spiritual conversion is eminent.
That same year, Augustine and his friend Alypius are visited by Ponticianus and told the story of his own conversion to Christianity. Ponticianus and some friends came upon a book about the life story of Antony, an Egyptian monk. The story of his sacrifices for God was so inspiring that Ponticianus, with his friends, immediately gave up anything in their life that would distract them from becoming complete servants to God. While Ponicianus tells this story, Augustine becomes emotionally wrecked on the inside. Ponicianus, who had himself been inspired by words to turn to Christianity, has aroused the fragile soul of Augustine to completely subject itself to God’s rule. He sees himself on the inside, and compares it to the story of Antony and the conversion of the inspired Ponicianus. Augustine writes of his feelings, “The more my heart warmed to those two men and as I heard how they had made the choice that was to save them by giving themselves up entirely…the more bitterly I hated myself in comparison to them” (169). His faults were naked before his eyes, and he burned with shame for how he lived his life. Running off into the garden in tears, Augustine triumphantly fights off his most cherished desire, sex, and commits himself to God. He does so on his own and for his own reasons, but also because he has been persuaded by Ponicianus’ story that there is only one life worth living—a life of complete servitude to the Lord.
Augustine attributes his final inward push towards Christianity to his mother’s prayers to God. On a daily basis during her life, she devotedly attended Church and pleaded with the Lord to open the eyes of her son and let him find salvation through Christ. Upon Monica’s death, Augustine writes to God of her spiritual supplications: “This was the mother, now dead and hidden awhile from my sight, who had wept over me for many years so that I might live in your sight” (203). Her prayers to God may have very well spiritually aided Augustine in his conversion. Nonetheless, his direct influences came in the form of the written and spoken word.
From the scientific reports of astrologers to the writings of Greek philosophers to the stories of friends, communicated language has slowly converted St. Augustine into a pious Catholic. On the other hand, the power of the Manichee theology initially brought him down and away from God. However, language is not necessarily corruptible. Instead, it proves to be rather misguiding. St. Augustine is too intelligent to be fooled by nonsense, but he is impressionable enough to accept a completely new idea that conveniently answers a present question of his. In the case of the Manichees, he accepts their writings as the truth because they seem to answer the question of what is eternal. But likewise, he then, rather easily, accepts contradictory material because it authenticates any doubts that may be confusing him at the time. So while the power that language has over St. Augustine is great, it in no sense directly leads him astray or onto the right path. The written and spoken word simply answers questions that may or may not have a universal answer. Therefore, throughout his life, Augustine simply chooses the answer that is more interesting than the others and which he feels is true; however, that answer is in no way the absolute and correct one.