Gazing into the Mirror of Eternity: Why You Should Read Augustine’s Confessions
Saint Augustine in His Study by Sandro Botticelli, circa 1490. (Source: WikiCommons)
C. S. Lewis once remarked that the moral life is composed of innumerable small victories and losses. Further, all it takes for sin to keep going is the lack of courage to put an end to it. Indeed, this life is lived and lost by one small act of the will at a time. Even though we are mortal beings, our choices have long-lasting implications.
I would point out that some basic truths can be taught even to children. If you wish to explore these kinds of questions more deeply, I would invite you to take up and read St. Augustine’s Confessions. It is a theological classic with few comparisons, a work of piercing clarity and burning conviction. It is also one of the few works of theology that can be considered a genuine classic of literature, a testament to St. Augustine’s genius. In it, the saint reflects upon his life and conversion. He considers his sins and his salvation, interrogating his failures and heresies. He often contrasts these personal failures with the goodness and majesty of God by breaking out into ecstatic praise and worship. It is as if in recalling the depth of sin from which he was saved, he is compelled to praise God for his mercy and majesty.
St. Augustine’s meditation on the power of words is a crucial facet of the work’s genius. The story of his life, the theological reflections, the moments of praise—these are the saint’s confessions. The work is sometimes caricatured as a list of embarrassing stories cataloging Augustine’s horrible sins, a “tell all” in which he accuses others that they are just as bad. This is such a poor reading of the work that I suspect those who advance it simply have not read the book at all.
No, the power of the book is that the saint of Hippo confesses his own sinfulness and the majesty of God’s glory. It is not a long and lurid look into sin. Augustine asks no sympathy from the reader. He does not ask us to pity him, to relate to his sins and find ourselves in his story making the same decisions. He is painfully aware that in confessing heresy, he came as close as one can to committing the sin of permanently blaspheming the Holy Spirit.
The whole drama of the narrative is driven by a contest between God and humankind. Much like Jacob who wrestled with God, the saint wrestles with phantoms and images in which he thought himself the master of his own life. Through his retrospection, his immorality and self-justifying are laid out plainly as hollow slavery to the self. Still, there is something happening at each step of St. Augustine’s journey. As he moves from a career-minded pagan to a committed heretic, then to a reluctant convert and finally joyous worshiper, it becomes clear to the reader that the Holy Spirit was at work in each stage.
The work of God was kept secret from Augustine until the moment of decision. In that moment, each confession and each decision weighed him down or raised him up according to its kind. In the end, none could deny that the grace of God alone was victorious. The little interspersed hymns and snatches of spiritual songs that St. Augustine inserts into the story suddenly break into a chorus of heavenly song.
If you pick up and read Confessions for the first time, you may be surprised when you approach the end of the book. St. Augustine was a bishop in the chaotic region of North Africa. He lived during the decline of the Roman Empire. He was substantively involved in every theological dispute of his day, and his opinion is perhaps the key difference between Eastern and Western Christianity, a distinction that continues to this day. He shunned heretics and was sometimes attacked in the street for his orthodoxy and his commitment to the Church. And yet, his autobiography contains none of these details.
Instead, just as Augustine arrives at his full conversion, he drops the narrative and takes up a difficult discussion on the nature of eternity and God’s relationship to time. It is an abrupt change of pace for the reader. Perhaps there is some help for us readers in a biblical analogue. In its first half, the prophetic Book of Daniel tells the story of the Jews in exile, the wisdom and exploits of Daniel and his allies, and the pride of Babylonian and Persian kings. These are dramas, escapades, tragicomedies. It would make good material for HBO. In its second half, Daniel, the interpreter of dreams, is given dreams. In them, he sees the end of the world and one like the Son of Man riding on clouds, high and lifted up—a jarring experience for the reader. But the careful reader will discern that Daniel’s visions portray the pride of worldly kings, the wisdom and the wars of Daniel’s heavenly allies, and the story of the permanent end of our exile in this fallen world. The two halves reveal themselves to be deeply interconnected stories.
Similarly, St. Augustine begins with his early life and ends his autobiography at the point when he begins to see God clearly. Then he begins again at the creation of the world. He discerns the great differences between God and his creation. He foretells the divine moment when God draws his creation back to himself by love. It is the same story told in rhyme, and it is the story of all who belong to the true Church.
St. Augustine invites us to gaze into the mirror of eternity and to see ourselves clearly for what we truly are. He leads by example and teaches us to confess ourselves as fallen and to confess Jesus as Lord and King. Take up and read, then, and learn anew who we are, who Christ is, and how he has saved us.
Teagan McKenzie is curate at All Saints Anglican Church in Morehead City, NC and a student at Asbury Theological Seminary.