ConfessionsEssay Preview: ConfessionsReport this essayAugustine titled his deeply philosophical and theological autobiography Confessions to implicate two aspects of the form the work would take. To confess, in Augustines time, meant both to give an account of ones faults to God and to praise God (to speak ones love for God). These two aims come together in the Confessions in an elegant but complex sense: Augustine narrates his ascent from sinfulness to faithfulness not simply for the practical edification of his readers, but also because he believes that narrative to be itself a story of Gods greatness and of the fundamental love all things have for Him. Thus, in the Confessions form equals content to a large degree—the natural form for Augustines story of redemption to take would be a direct address to God, since it is God who must be thanked for such redemption. (That said, a direct address to God was a highly original form for Augustine to have used at the time).
This idea should also help us understand the apparently lopsided and unusual structure of the text. The first nine Books of the Confessions are devoted to the story of Augustines life up to his mothers death, but the last four Books make a sudden, lengthy departure into pure theology and philosophy. This shift should be understood in the same context as the double meaning of confessions—for Augustine, the story of his sinful life and redemption is in fact a profoundly philosophical and religious matter, since his story is only one example of the way all imperfect creation yearns to return to God. Thus, the story of the return to God is set out first as an autobiography, and then in conceptual terms.
This idea of the return also serves as a good access to the philosophical and theological context in which Augustine is thinking and writing. The most important influence here (besides the Bible) is Neoplatonism, a few major texts of which Augustine read shortly before his conversion. The Neoplatonist universe is hierarchical, but things lower on the scale of being cannot be said to be bad or evil. Everything is good in so far as it exists, but things lower on the scale have a less complete and perfect Being. In contrast to God, who is eternal, unchanging, and unified, the lower levels of being involve what we know as the visible universe—a universe of matter in constant flux, in a vast multiplicity, and caught up in the ravages of time.
The Bible in part draws from Neoplatonism, and the same can be said of the later writings of Augustine. However Augustine’s thought about being is somewhat different than the “God-like” doctrines that he gave his followers in Genesis. That is, God is a mere “sub-human being,” a creature that exists only in his own image. God’s image is never real enough to claim infinite power—even to the extent that there are “real” beings. He is “unconscious,” that is, completely unreal, without the capacity to experience or sense anything—even if the world has somehow given it this position, or at any rate to be of that form and countenance. He is not really all, but he is like the image of the perfect Being in that he is completely different to our human being. There is also no physical or psychological aspect of his self-consciousness, at least for most of Aristotle, who never saw a need to connect that with any of the theological concepts in the New Testament. There is, however, a sense of self-realisation under a particular form and nature. And there is something very different to what we get when we read the later New Testament writings. God himself is a materialist. And Augustine, to the extent he understands Neoplatonism, did not always understand that much of what he writes is an evolution of Christianity. Thus, if there were a God who existed, it must have included him; so there is nothing to say about a God who was not created prior to Christ. For Augustine’s ideas about God were radically different from those given to Neoplatonism. A god like God is not the same as a God who was created. It is only when God is created that something is created, which is to say, he emerges to make his own living and share in the good life of the whole universe. For a God of these beginnings is certainly a God of the whole and is not the same God of Neoplatonism. This difference is an important one—at least until it is realized that Augustine’s ideas about God have much to do with his own spiritual development of the world in general, as well as his own personal life.
Conclusion
It seems that the “New Testament writers” were right all along in one way or another about God. They were right that there must be a God in the universe who created his own existence on his own will and will, and that there must also be a universe that is God’s. Yet Augustine’s thoughts about God are inconsistent with the theology of the New Testament and with the common sense of the Bible. The New Testament is not the theology of God, but a set of laws that must be used to support human life. Augustine was aware that the New Testament does not deal with the supernatural in a literal sense. It will deal with the supernatural in a religious sense.
The Bible in part draws from Neoplatonism, and the same can be said of the later writings of Augustine. However Augustine’s thought about being is somewhat different than the “God-like” doctrines that he gave his followers in Genesis. That is, God is a mere “sub-human being,” a creature that exists only in his own image. God’s image is never real enough to claim infinite power—even to the extent that there are “real” beings. He is “unconscious,” that is, completely unreal, without the capacity to experience or sense anything—even if the world has somehow given it this position, or at any rate to be of that form and countenance. He is not really all, but he is like the image of the perfect Being in that he is completely different to our human being. There is also no physical or psychological aspect of his self-consciousness, at least for most of Aristotle, who never saw a need to connect that with any of the theological concepts in the New Testament. There is, however, a sense of self-realisation under a particular form and nature. And there is something very different to what we get when we read the later New Testament writings. God himself is a materialist. And Augustine, to the extent he understands Neoplatonism, did not always understand that much of what he writes is an evolution of Christianity. Thus, if there were a God who existed, it must have included him; so there is nothing to say about a God who was not created prior to Christ. For Augustine’s ideas about God were radically different from those given to Neoplatonism. A god like God is not the same as a God who was created. It is only when God is created that something is created, which is to say, he emerges to make his own living and share in the good life of the whole universe. For a God of these beginnings is certainly a God of the whole and is not the same God of Neoplatonism. This difference is an important one—at least until it is realized that Augustine’s ideas about God have much to do with his own spiritual development of the world in general, as well as his own personal life.
Conclusion
It seems that the “New Testament writers” were right all along in one way or another about God. They were right that there must be a God in the universe who created his own existence on his own will and will, and that there must also be a universe that is God’s. Yet Augustine’s thoughts about God are inconsistent with the theology of the New Testament and with the common sense of the Bible. The New Testament is not the theology of God, but a set of laws that must be used to support human life. Augustine was aware that the New Testament does not deal with the supernatural in a literal sense. It will deal with the supernatural in a religious sense.
Augustines lasting influence lies largely in his success in combining this Neoplatonic worldview with the Christian one. In Augustines hybrid system, the idea that all creation is good in as much as it exists means that all creation, no matter how nasty or ugly, has its existence only in God. Because of this, all creation seeks to return to God, who is the purest and most perfected form of the compromised Being enjoyed by individual things. Again, then, any story of an individuals return to God is also a statement about the relationship between God and the created universe: namely, everything tends back toward God, its constant source and ideal form.
A question to which much of the last four Books of the Confessions is devoted is how this relationship between an eternal God and a temporal creation could exist. How could the return to God be a process that takes place over time, if God is an eternal essence to which we already owe our very existence? How did God create the world (and when could this have happened) if God is eternal and unchanging? The solution, for Augustine, involves a deep understanding