Summary: Confessions (page 2)

Book VII of the Confessions is a pivotal section, marking Augustine's conversion and his first encounter with God.

He revisits his conception of the world as shaped by Manichaean doctrine. In summary: God is a body; evil is a body. These two bodies are in conflict, for if they were not, God could not be good. The problem is that if this is so, then evil can harm God, and God is therefore not perfect. Moreover, God is no longer infinite, but is instead constrained by this opposing element.

This Manichaean conception of evil necessarily entails the imperfection of God, a conclusion Augustine cannot accept.

Beyond this, the problem of the origin of evil torments Augustine: where does evil come from? Does it come from man? From the devil?

In truth, I was searching for the origin of evil, but I sought it in the wrong way, failing to see that my very search was itself a form of evil ¹.

He struggles to conceive of the relationship between God and the world. His understanding remains clouded, steeped in the naïve pantheism of Manichaeism:

I imagined Your creation as one vast mass, in which the various kinds of bodies were distributed. I conceived of this mass as immense, yet finite in all directions. And You, Lord, surrounded it and permeated it on all sides, yet remained infinite in every sense. It would be like a boundless sea [...] enclosing a sponge, however large one might imagine it, yet still finite, and entirely permeated by the immense sea ².

Everything changes when Augustine stops seeking God in the external world and turns inward instead, in an act of introspection that precipitates his conversion.

He reads the Platonists and, forewarned by these readings to look within myself, I entered, under Your guidance, into my inner self ³.

He encounters God within himself, not in the external world. He describes this enlightenment as follows:

I entered into it and saw, with the eye of my soul, an unchanging light—not that common light which all flesh beholds, nor any light of the same kind, but one far more powerful, far brighter, filling all space with its radiance. You dazzled my weak eyes with the intensity of Your brilliance, and I trembled with love and terror ⁴.

This encounter with God gives him a deeper understanding of the world and its relationship with the divine. First, the ontological status of worldly things is called into question: Then I looked upon all things beneath You, and I saw that they neither absolutely are nor absolutely are not. They are, coming from You; they are not, in that they are not what You are. For that alone truly is which abides immutably ⁵.

Moreover, the problem of evil is finally resolved: Everything that exists is good and evil, whose origin I was seeking, is not a substance, for if it were a substance, it would be good ⁶. God’s perfection as Creator is therefore not called into question. If evil were a substance, it would be one of His creations—and that would pose a problem. Yet this is not the case, and so the problem disappears.

What, then, is evil? Augustine provides two answers.

First, evil does not truly exist — it is merely a misapprehension of our limited intellect, which cannot grasp the perfection of the Whole. Actions that appear evil in isolation in fact contribute to that perfection, seen from a vantage point our finite nature cannot reach:

For You — and indeed for the whole of Your creation — evil does not exist at all—for there is nothing outside it that could disrupt or corrupt the order You have established within it. However, because certain elements, taken individually, fail to harmonise with others, they are perceived as evil. Yet these same elements harmonise with others, and in that sense, they are good. They are also good in themselves. Far be it from me to say that these things ought not to exist. Viewed separately, no doubt, I might wish them to be better; yet even then, I would still praise You for them ⁷.

¹ VII, 5
² ibid.
³ VII, 10
⁴ ibid.
⁵ VII, 11
⁶ VII, 12
⁷ VII, 13