AUGUSTINE ON THE INNER LIFE. Confessions, Books 4-7 Outline

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1 Confessions, Books 4-7 Outline 1. Discourse regarding the inner life is practical because it effectively can strengthen people for ministry and sustain their efforts toward social transformation. 2. Augustine differs from Gregory of Nyssa and Athanasius, whose concerns regarding the soul were mainly objective. In Augustine, there is a turn to the subject. 3. Paul, too, developed an anthropology based on discourse regarding the inner man and the outer man. His experiences of persecution and his reflection on the Corinthians discourse caused him to speak this way. 4. In Augustine, feelings are for the first time in western theology deemed worthy of God s attention. 5. Augustine believes that God is the one in whom the human person is integrated. 6. He was no stranger to anxiety, but God s grace could heal it and transform it. 7. Augustine had fleeting experiences of being held in God, being beloved of God, finding his home in God, and he artfully used language to describe these in order to lead his readers toward similar experiences. 8. Please be mindful of passages from the Confessions that describe how Augustine was led away from worldly experiences to experiences of God. 9. From Charry s chapter on Augustine, note passages from De Trinitate, On the Trinity, regarding the soul s relationship to God as Trinity 10. Contemporary science, especially brain research, explores contemplative practice. While this is not theology, it suggests a physiological basis for our theologians descriptions of interiority and contemplative experience. 11. Augustine s views on the inner life have implications for leadership. In particular, a leader who has experienced wholeness in relation to God, and expresses this in relation to others, primarily will have a unifying effect on her or his constituency (which was St. Paul s observation, as well).

2 Confessions, Books 4-7 Passages for Discussion and Reflection. Page numbers are from Chadwick s translation.... means something is omitted that you should pursue in the text itself. Book IV His friend dies. He was half my soul! What madness not to understand how to love human beings with awareness of the human condition! 59. The reason why that grief had penetrated me so easily and deeply was that I had poured out my soul on to the sand by loving a person sure to die as if he would never die. The greatest source of repair and restoration was the solace of other friends, with whom I loved what I loved as a a substitute for you; and this was a vast myth and a long lie. 60. For wherever the human soul turns itself, other than to you, it is fixed in sorrows, even if it is fixed upon beautiful things external to you and external to itself, which would nevertheless be nothing if they did not have their being from you What does this experience teach Augustine about God? Parts and Whole. All that you experience through [the leading of your flesh] is only partial; you are ignorant of the whole to which the parts belong...but if your physical perception were capable of comprehending the whole...you would wish everything at present in being to pass away, so that the totality of things could provide you with greater pleasure. 63 What is at stake for Augustine here? What kind of vision is this? If physical objects give you pleasure, praise God for them and return love to their Maker lest, in the things that please you, you displease him. If souls please you, they are being loved in God; for they also are mutable and acquire stability by being established in him. Otherwise they go their way and perish. In him therefore they are loved; so seize what souls you can to take with you to him and say to them: Him we love; he made these things and is not far distant. For he did not create and then depart; the things derived from him have their being in him. Look where he is wherever there is a taste of truth. He is very close to the heart; but the heart has wandered from him. Return, sinners, to your heart (Isa. 46:8 LXX), and adhere to him who made you. Stand with him and you will stand fast. Rest in him and you will be at rest. Where are you going to along rough paths? What is the goal of your journey? The good which you love is from him. But it is only as it is related to him that it is good and sweet How would you characterize this experience? Book VI The authority of the Bible seemed the more to be venerated and more worthy of a holy faith on the ground that it was open to everyone to read, while keeping the dignity of its secret meaning for a profounder interpretation...humble style of diction...holy humility. 96. What does Augustine have to give up in order to accept scripture? Milan Beggar. May my soul now adhere to you...on that day when I was preparing to deliver

3 a panegyric on the emperor! In the course of it I would tell numerous lies and for my mendacity would win the good opinion of people who knew it to be untrue. The anxiety of the occasion was making my heart palpitate and perspire with the destructive fever of the worry, when I passed through a Milan street and noticed a destitute beggar...already drunk, joking and laughing...the goads of ambition impelled me to drag the burden of my unhappiness with me...yet he had no other goal than to reach a carefree cheerfulness...true joy he had not. But my quest to fulfil my ambitions was much falser. There was no question that he was happy and I racked with anxiety. He had no worries; I was frenetic...i [would have preferred] to be merry...i would have chosen to be myself, a bundle of anxieties and fears. 97. What is Augustine saying he learned from contrasting himself with the beggar? Book VII By the Platonic books I was admonished to return into myself. With you as my guide I entered into my innermost citadel, and was given power to do so because you had become my helper (Ps. 29:11). I entered and with my soul s eye, such as it was, saw above that same eye of my soul the immutable light higher than my mind not the light of every day, obvious to anyone, nor a larger version of the same kind which would, as it were, have given out a much brighter light and filled everything with its magnitude. It was not that light, but a different thing, utterly different from all our kinds of light. It was superior because it made me, and I was inferior because I was made by it. The person who knows the truth knows it, and he who knows it knows eternity. Love knows it. Eternal truth and true love and beloved eternity: you are my God...I trembled with love and awe...i found myself far from you in the region of dissimilarity, and hear as it were your voice from on high: I am the food of the fully grown; grow and you will feed on me. And you will not change me into you like the food your flesh eats, but you will be changed into me. 124 What is going on in this passage? How would you assess Augustine s experience? I sought a way to obtain strength enough to enjoy you; but I did not find it until I embraced the mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus... who is above all things, God blessed for ever...the food which I was too weak to accept he mingled with flesh...to possess my God, the humble Jesus, I was not yet humble enough. I did not know what his weakness was meant to teach Why is humility so important for spiritual growth? Your intention was that the manner in which I was affected by [the Platonist books] should be imprinted in my memory, so that when later I had been made docile by your books and my wounds were healed by your gentle fingers, I would learn to discern and distinguish the difference between presumption and confession, between those who see what the goal is but not how to get there and those who see the way which leads to the home of bliss, not merely as an end to be perceived but as a realm to live in. 130 What is Augustine learning about humility? Discovery of Paul....all the truth I had read in the Platonists was stated here together with the commendation of your grace...make it possible for him to hold onto you..he may come and see and hold you...what will wretched man do? Who will deliver him from this body of death except our grace through Jesus Christ our Lord What essential point does Augustine learn from Paul?

4 SEMINAR 4 AUGUSTINE S CONVERSION, MONICA, MEMORY, TIME AND ETERNITY Please be prepared to discuss the following sections (page numbers are from Chadwick). In each case, say what the human person is like and what God is like: Augustine s conversion Vision at Ostia. 170f. The power of memory is very great, very great, my God. 187 You are my true life. I will transcend even this my power which is called memory...to be bonded to you by the way it is possible to be bonded. 194 All wish to be happy Late have I loved you Grant what you command, and command what you will. 202 Leaving behind the old days, I might be gathered to follow the One

5 Bibliography Betz, Hans Dieter, The Concept of the Inner Human Being (ho eso anthropos) in the Anthropology of Paul, New Testament Studies, 46, Cary, Phillip, Augustine s Invention of the Inner Self: The Legacy of a Christian Platonist Fredrickson, David, What are the implications of Augustine s view of time for the spiritual life? Unpublished paper. Kerr, Fergus, Theology after Wittgenstein Koenig, Elisabeth, Spirituality and Leadership: Women s Authority during Times of Crisis, Past, Present, and Future, Villanova University Theological Institute, Proceedings. Taylor, Charles, Sources of the Self Thomas, Owen, Interiority and Christian Spirituality, Journal of Religion 80 (January 2000): Vaught, Carl G., The Journey toward God in Augustine s Confessions, Books I - VI (State University of New York Press, 2003)., Encounters with God in Augustine s Confessions, Books VII - IX (SUNY Press, 2004)., Access to God in Augustine s Confessions, Books X - XIII (SUNY Press, 2005) Williams, Rowan, The Suspicion of Suspicion: Wittgenstein and Bonhoeffer, in Richard H. Bell, ed., The Grammar of the Heart: New Essays in Moral Philosophy & Theology, Know Thyself What Kind of an Injunction? in M. McGhee, ed., Philosophy, Religion and the Spiritual Life, Interiority and Epiphany: A Reading in New Testament Ethics, Modern Theology 13 (January 1997): 29-51