Summary: Confessions (page 3)

This answer may recall the Stoic arguments establishing the perfection of the great Whole, understood as a harmonious Cosmos, as exemplified in Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations.

The apparent imperfection of an event arises from isolating it from the sequence of events to which it belongs: imperfection is always an abstraction.

Moreover, evil is not a substance, but the perversity of a will that turns away from the sovereign substance—You, my God ¹. Thus, the origin of evil is not in God but in man, grounding human imperfection rather than divine imperfection.

However, this enlightenment is fleeting, and human weakness draws Augustine back into his life of debauchery: My weakness receded, and I was drawn back to my habits; from that moment, I carried with me only a tender memory, one that, as it were, mourned the scent of foods I was not yet able to consume ².

The conversion itself does not reach its conclusion until Book VIII of the Confessions. Victorinus, a friend of Saint Augustine, publicly professes his Christian faith. Augustine burns with the desire to follow his example but cannot bring himself to act. He felt ashamed, for he had once refused to convert due to uncertainty, yet now that he was certain, he still did not convert. Moreover, some people convert even in the absence of certainty.

Augustine vividly describes this period of turmoil preceding his conversion: Thus, I was tormented within; I was consumed by a violent, unbearable shame ³.

He seemed to lose all willpower: With what blows did my thoughts not scourge my soul, striving to compel it to follow me in my efforts to reach You! Yet she resisted, refused, without offering the slightest excuse. All arguments were exhausted and refuted ⁴.

Thus, it is as if his soul were torn in two:

I was the self that willed, and the self that refused; I was both one and the other. Neither did I fully desire nor fully reject my will. Thus, I struggled within myself and was torn apart ⁵.

He experiences the final resistance of the flesh and surrenders once more to debauchery. At last, one day, he hears a voice repeating: "Take and read." So he picked up the Bible and read a passage at random. It urged the reader to guard against debauchery. Amazed by such a coincidence and convinced that God had given him a sign, Augustine converted and hastened to inform his mother, who rejoiced.

He renounced the teaching of rhetoric.

Books X and XI are immensely rich and contain the essence of Augustine’s renowned reflections on time and memory.

The Bishop of Hippo begins by reaffirming the idea that God is not found in the world but within ourselves:

What, then, is this God? I questioned the earth, and it said to me: 'I am not God.' Everything upon it made the same confession to me. I asked the sea and its depths, the living creatures that move within it, and they answered me: 'We are not your God; look above us.' [...] 'Then tell me something about Him.' They cried out to me, loud and clear: 'He created us.' To question them, I had only to contemplate them, for their beauty was their answer. ⁶

Thus, it is not through the senses that I come to know God.

Could it be through memory?

Augustine provides a remarkably profound description of this faculty. He is the first philosopher to devote such attention to it:

I reach the plains, the vast palaces of memory, where lie the treasures of innumerable images borne by perceptions of all kinds... ⁷

He exclaims: Great is this power of memory, prodigiously great, O my God! It is a sanctuary of infinite magnitude. Who has plumbed its depths? ⁸

¹ VII, 16
² VII, 17
³ VIII, 7
⁴ ibid.
⁵ VIII, 10
⁶ X, 6
⁷ X, 8
⁸ ibid.