Notes on Confessions Book X

Confessions
St. Augustine

Ch. 1

God seeks the truth.

Ch. 2

God sees all. Hiding something from Him is futile. Rather than hiding something from God one merely hides God from one's self.

Ch. 3

Why not confess solely to God rather than making it public? It can encourage others to hear of someone freed from past sins.

Ch. 4

Augustine hopes his confessions can be an example for others, to aspire to what he has achieved through God and to avoid what he failed in through himself.

Augustine asks God to continue the work He begun in him to completion.

Ch. 5

Hope comes from understanding that what we see now we see dimly and that we will see face-to-face one day.

Ch. 6

Augustine claims nothing made is God but that God made all. He knows this rationally by listening to the created universe. Their order proclaims that he who made the orderliness is God.

Ch. 7

One does not reach toward God through the senses, not even through the soul which uses the sense.

One reaches God through that which God gives.

Ch. 8

Augustine talks about the immense power of memory and what marvels it can do.

Ch. 9

Memory takes in things, other than sense perceptions, like learning.

Ch. 10

Augustine gives a defense of innate ideas by showing that he knew things prior and separate to the senses detecting them because they were already in his memory.

Ch. 11

Memories of learning need to be recalled often or they will slip back into the recesses of the mind from where they will have to be recalled again.

Ch. 12

Numbers as a concept are innate.

Ch. 13

The memory can also store things that are taught to it, even if the teaching is wrong.

Ch. 14

The mind is one thing, the body is another.

There are four basic emotions of the mind: desire, joy, fear and sadness.

These emotions of the mind are innate concepts.

Ch. 15

"I name memory and I know what I name. But where do I know it, except in the memory itself? Is it also present to itself by its image, and not by itself?"

Ch. 16

Forgetfulness is a privation of the memory. It must be innate because if it were learned then recalling forgetfulness would cause the mind to forget and then where would the person be? In order to understand what it means to forget one must know forgetfulness. If forgetfulness is known only through experience then it would be unknowable. But, Augustine (and us) obviously know what forgetfulness is. Therefore, it must be innate.

Ch. 17

To reach God to where he can be reached Augustine must move beyond memory.

But if Augustine reaches God beyond memory, how will he remember that he reached Him?

Ch. 18

What is lost is retained in the mind. This is how we recognize that which we have lost.

Ch. 19

A lost thing that we have not remembered was missing cannot even be searched for. How would we know to look for something if we didn't know it was missing.

Ch. 20

Happiness is an innate concept.

A concept that is understood outside of language is something that is "held in the memory" for Augustine.

Ch. 21

There is no physical sense data that we perceive of a happy life in other persons.

The memory of joy is similar to happiness. All men seek it and find it in their own ways.

Ch. 22

"Forbid it, O Lord, put it far from the heart of thy servant, who confesses to thee--far be it from me to think I am happy because of any and all the joy I have. For there is a joy not granted to the wicked but only to those who worship thee thankfully--and this joy thou thyself art. The happy life is this--to rejoice to thee, in thee, and for thee. This it is and there is no other. But those who think there is another follow after other joys, and not the true one. But their will is still not moved except by some image or shadow of joy"

I quoted the whole chapter, but it's short, clearer and more to the point then my notes would have been.

Ch. 23

"A happy life is joy in the truth"

Even those who purposely deceive others do not wish to be deceived. They want the truth. They love the truth.

All men love the truth, those that don't seek it out though they love it and want it only don't do so because they are more enthralled with the physical which only leads to misery and not to happiness.

"Thus, thus, truly thus: the human mind so blind and sick, so base and illmannered, desires to lie hidden, but does not wish that anything should be hidden from it. And yet the opposite is what happens--the mind itself is not hidden from the truth, but the truth is hidden from it. Yet even so, for all its wretchedness, it still prefers to rejoice in truth rather than in known falsehoods. It will, then, be happy only when without other distractions it comes to rejoice in that single Truth through which all things else are true"

Ch. 24

Augustine has found many innate things in his memory, but not God.

Ch. 25

God is immutable, yet he has decided to dwell in the minds of men. Augustine, now that he knows God, finds him in his memory but cannot find where it has come from.

Ch. 26

All hear from God, but not all hear clearly.

Better is the man who wills to hear what God is saying than he who hears what he wants to hear when God speaks.

Ch. 27

God was with Augustine when Augustine was not with God.

God chased away Augustine's blindness.

"Thou didst touch me, and I burned for thy peace".

Ch. 28

Augustine will have real life when he is wholly filled by God.

Augustine is sick; God is the doctor. Augustine needs mercy. God is merciful.

"In adversity, I desire prosperity; in prosperity, I fear adversity. What middle place is there then, between these two, where human life is not an ordeal?"

Ch. 29

Augustine's whole hope is in God alone.

"For he loves thee too little who loves along with thee anything else that he does not love for thy sake"

Ch. 30

It is by God that Augustine's diseases of the soul are healed.

Augustine is confident God will perfect Augustine, "when death is swallowed up in victory"

Ch. 31

Augustine prays for strength to overcome gluttony and to eat for health and not to excess.

This chapter makes Augustine really seem like he was prone to excesses and that he knew it. I think this might be a bit why I like Augustine. I understand this tendency. His words, though far superior to mine, reflect my thoughts and prayers on these types of subjects.

Ch. 32

"Our sole hope, our sole confidence, our only assured promise, is thy mercy"

Ch. 33

Augustine recommends a middle road with singing in church. The words of the Psalms must be cherished more than the melodies of which they are sung (in Augustine's time).

Augustine gives a tacit approval for church music because it allows the weaker minds attending church to find a place to come to God.

Ch. 34

Augustine prays that the beautiful things he sees, those things that God has made, do not possess his soul in the way he wants God to.

Augustine wants to rely on God rather than his sight.

Ch. 35

Curiosity and knowledge too can be a temptation like the senses if they become loved in a way that ought to be reserved for God.

Knowledge for the sake of knowing is not a good thing. Knowing something to praise God for it is good. But, a curious mind will slip into this temptation often and the only hope is in God's mercy.

Ch. 36

It was God who overcame Augustine's pride and placed the yoke upon him. Now under God's yoke he relates how light the burden is.

Men who take pleasure in being esteemed by other men or praised by other men are vain. Those who are praised are worse off if they don't accept that what is praiseworthy in them is a gift from God than those doing the praising that have not received that gift from God.

Ch. 37

Temptations are daily things for men.

To be liked and to avoid being admonished by other men is a natural thing to do. Again the only hope is in the mercy of God that this doesn't become so habitual that it interferes with the true life in God.

Ch. 38

Vanity is a constant struggle with pride. One must be on guard against both vigilantly.

Ch. 39

Envying another man's grace from God is something a proud man does, something a vain man does and is a sin.

Ch. 40

Truth instructs what to desire and what to avoid.

In all his searching Augustine notes, "I still do not find a secure place for my soul save in thee".

Ch. 41

Augustine had to give up all lies to attain God because the Truth cannot be joined to a lie"

Ch. 42

"But a mediator between God and man ought to have something in him like God and something in him like man, lest in being like man he should be far from God, or if only like God he should be far from man, and so should not be a mediator.

The devil tries to play this mediator role if we would allow him, but the only thing he truly shares with man is sin and the wages of sin is death".

Ch. 43

The true mediator is Jesus Christ.

Jesus was mortal as men are mortal and righteous as God is righteous. The reward of righteousness is life and peace.

For us sinners God became both the victor and the victim, becoming the victor by being the victim.

The diseases of the soul are great, but the medicine of Christ is greater.