Ecclesiastical Reform in the 11th Century

The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell

Ch IX Ecclesiastical Reform in the 11th Century

The level of education rose enormously in the clergy and considerably in the aristocracy during this time. The Normans had kicked out the Saracens from Sicily and curbed the activities of the Scandinavians with their conquests in France and England. Unlike the brief Carolingian renaissance, the gains made in the 11th century had some sticking power.

The reforms were primarily against simony and concubinage.

Simony was a sin, but it also meant that the bishops were selected based on wealth and not merit. And, bishoprics costing a fortune, the newly purchased position was then exploited to recoup the lost income in the purchase.

Clerical celibacy had been admired but was not routine. The imposition of celibacy on the priests made it impossible for a priest to pass Church lands on to his children and further removed the priests from the laity by showing the celibate life of the priest to be greater than the married life of the commonfolk.

The reform of the Church began primarily with monastic reform. The reform of the Papacy was more the work of the Emperor.

Emperor Henry III (1039-1056) deposed the pope Gregory VI, who though a reformer, had acquired the papacy by simony. Henry III would go on to appoint four popes and after the death of Henry III the papacy, which had its moral authority restored by the Emperor declared independence and then superiority over the emperor and two hundred years of tug-a-war ensued.

During the reign of Henry IV the selection of the Pope was codified to essential be a position chosen by the Cardinals, freezing the Emperor out. It was during Henry IV's reign that the investiture crisis began.

The philosophical activity of the 11th century came entirely from monks connected with the reform movement. They including Peter Damian, Berengar of Tours, Lanfranc and Saint Anselm.

Saint Anselm is most famous for the ontological argument, but he also had a foundation in Augustine and Plato. Through neoplatonic arguments he derived another proof for God and proof for Trinity. (Plotinus also had an argument for a trinity, though not one the Christian orthodox could accept).

Anselm, like most of his predecessors were more Platonic in their Christianity. After Aquinas, Christian philosophers became more Aristotelian. Roscelin, a younger contemporary of Anselm, marks the beginning of the Aristotelian bent and scholastic philosophy.

Saint Benedict & Gregory the Great

The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell

Chapter VI Saint Benedict and Gregory the Great

In the chaos of the wars in the sixth and succeeding centuries it was the Church that preserved what was left of the Roman culture.

Monasticism began in Egypt and Syria in the fourth centuries. St. Anthony, the first of the hermits was born in Egypt in 250 AD. His rigorous asceticism was popular and attracted many copycats.

Monasticism sprang up in Syria around the same time and the Greek speaking world saw monastic organizations flourish because of St. Basil (circa 360 AD).

Monasticism began outside of the Church hierarchy and the work of St. Athanasius was what reconciled the clergy to the monks. St. Jerome promoted the movement and St. Augustine introduced it to Africa. St Martin of Tours set it up in Gaul and St. Patrick set everything up in Ireland. St. Columba founded the monastery of Iona in 566. 

"There seem to have been nuns before there were monks - as early as the middle of the third century. Some shut themselves up in tombs" (Russell, 377).

The Western tradition of monasticism owes much to St. Benedict, founder of the Benedictine Order. In 520 AD he founded the monastery at Monte Cassino. Benedict brought order to the ascetic way of life.

Benedict died in 543 and his monastery was sacked by the Lombards, but afterwards the monks returned and Monte Cassino became a place of scholarship that greatly aided the West in later years.

Benedict has been described as a miracle worker and that he wounded his body so he could cure the wounds of his soul.

"His fame being spread abroad, the monks of a certain monastery, whose abbot had lately died,
besought him to accept the succession. He did so, and insisted upon observance of strict virtue, so
that the monks, in a rage, decided to poison him with a glass of poisoned wine. He, however,
made the sign of the cross over the glass, whereupon it broke in pieces. So he returned to the
wilderness" (Russell, 379).

Benedict also faced an assassination attempt from a wicked priest. When the poisoned loaf he sent to Benedict was taken away by a crow at Benedict's command the priest sent seven naked women to tempt Benedict. For fear of the temptation being too much for the younger monks Benedict left the monastery. When news that the wicked priest had died a jubilant young monk went and told Benedict the news and said it was safe to come back. Benedict went back but mourned for the dead priest and imposed a penance on the monk who had gleefully related the news.

Gregory the Great, the powerful pope was born in Rome around 540 to a rich, noble family. After a bright start to a political career Gregory turned himself over to God and became a Benedictine monk.

"Gregory, owing partly to his personal qualities and partly to the prevailing anarchy, was able to assert successfully an authority which was admitted by ecclesiastics throughout the West, and even, to a lesser degree, in the East. He exerted this authority chiefly by means of letters to bishops and secular rulers in all parts of the Roman world" (Russell, 382).

Gregory also wrote Book of Pastoral Rule that gave practical advice to Bishops and elevated the papacy to authority and the church in authority over the state.

Gregory was hostile to secular learning and the Church retained that hostility until the 11th century under Pope Sylvester II.

Gregory wrote many letters that show him stern with both secular authorities and other bishops. However, he was much more deferential when dealing with the Emperor, even in dealing with Phocas who murdered his way to power in a brutal way.

Missionary work was crucial at the time of Gregory and much of the barbarian population of the West either converted from paganism or from Arian Christianity during the time. Gregory was particularly concerned with re-Christianizing England that had been nominally Christian under the empire but was lately overrun by pagan Angles and Saxons.

"The period we have been considering is peculiar in the fact that, though its great men are inferior
to those of many other epochs, their influence on future ages has been greater. Roman law,
monasticism, and the papacy owe their long and profound influence very largely to Justinian,
Benedict, and Gregory. The men of the sixth century, though less civilized than their predecessors,
were much more civilized than the men of the next four centuries, and they succeeded in framing
institutions that ultimately tamed the barbarians. It is noteworthy that, of the above three men, two
were aristocratic natives of Rome, and the third was Roman Emperor. Gregory is in a very real
sense the last of the Romans. His tone of command, while justified by his office, has its instinctive
basis in Roman aristocratic pride. After him, for many ages, the city of Rome ceased to produce
great men. But in its downfall it succeeded in fettering the souls of its conquerors: the reverence
which they felt for the Chair of Peter was an outcome of the awe which they felt for the throne of
the Caesars.

In the East, the course of history was different. Mahomet was born when Gregory was about thirty
years old." (Russell, 387).

St. Augustine's Philosophy and Theology

The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell

Ch. IV Saint Augustine's Philosophy and Theology

I. Pure Philosophy

"Saint Augustine, at most times, does not occupy himself with pure philosophy, but when he does he shows very great ability" (Russell, 352).

Book XI of Confessions is some of his best pure philosophy. Creation, out of nothing as was taught in the Old Testament, was totally foreign to Greek philosophy. Augustine sought to meld philosophy with the Scriptural account of Genesis.

This exercise led to Augustine asking why creation was created sooner. His answer was because there was no sooner. Time was created when the world was created. God is eternal and outside of time. There is only an eternal present for God.

Augustine concludes that time is purely subjective and exists only in the mind.

II. The City of God

The City of God was Augustine's response to the pagan's blaming Rome being sacked in 410 on the abandonment of the old Roman gods.

Augustine opens up the book to point out that sacks of cities have occurred long before Christianity and the fact that some were saved by hiding in Christian churches that were respected by the Goths shows that rather than being a cause of the destruction, Christianity actually helped soften the blow that came to the city.

The Christians do not have to be troubled by the Sack of Rome because they have a sanctuary in the city of God.

"It is true that God has foreknowledge of our sins, but we do not sin because of His foreknowledge" (Russell, 357).

Augustine esteemed Plato as the best philosopher because he was not materialistic. He argued against the Stoic ban on all passions because Christians can be passionate and be virtuous, the cause of the passion is what is to be considered.

"Platonists are right about God, wrong about gods. They are also wrong in not acknowledging
the Incarnation" (Russell, 358).

There is much in the philosophers to be admired but the knowledge of God is obtained only through Christ.

Augustine was so against lust and sex because lust was required for sex and lust was independent of the will. The will was where virtue came from and thus something that can't be controlled by the will was not something to be praised. It had to be tolerated for necessity, but a truly virtuous life would be one without it and the emotions that are attached to it.

"St. Augustine holds that God divided mankind into the elect and the reprobate, not because of their merits or demerits, but arbitrarily. All alike deserve damnation, and therefore the reprobate have no ground of complaint" (Russell, 362).

"What was influential was the separation of Church and State, with the clear implication that the State could only be part of the City of God by being submissive towards the Church in all religious matters. This has been the doctrine of the Church ever since" (Russell, 362).

III. The Pelagian Controversy

Pelagius was a Welshman who taught free will, questioned the doctrine of original sin and believed that by acting virtuously comes by moral effort. Augustine disagreed with these and had them declared heretical.

Augustine taught that the original sin of Adam was passed down to generation upon generation so that everyone born was deserving of damnation. God chooses of his own free will to save some. No reason is given for why some are saved and others are not. "Damnation proves God's justice; salvation His mercy. Both equally display his Goodness" (Russell, 365).

Three Doctors of the Church

The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell

Chapter III: Three Doctors of the Church

There are four Doctors of the Western Church: St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, St. Augustine and Pope Gregory the Great. The first three were contemporaries while Pope Gregory belonged to a later date.

Ambrose, Augustine and Jerome flourished during the brief interval between the Catholic domination of the Roman Empire and the barbarian invasion of the West. These three men shaped the mold into which the Church was built for the Middle Ages more than anybody. "Speaking broadly, Saint
Ambrose determined the ecclesiastical conception of the relation of Church and State; Saint
Jerome gave the Western Church its Latin Bible and a great part of the impetus to monasticism;
while Saint Augustine fixed the theology of the Church until the Reformation, and, later, a great
part of the doctrines of Luther and Calvin" (Russell, 335).

Ambrose rose to power inside the Church by becoming somewhat of a surprise victor in the election to bishop at Milan, then the capital of the West. He acted as equal, sometimes superior to the Emperor, setting a precedent.

Ambrose wrote a letter to the young Emperor Valentinian II in A.D. 384 denouncing the idea of returning a pagan statue to the Roman Senate building. In the letter he showed that the religious considerations supersede the temporal ones.

Again Ambrose battled with the State this time refusing to give one of the churches of Milan to the Arians for use. Backed by the people, Ambrose emerged victorious. "Ambrose had demonstrated that there were matters in which the State must yield to the Church, and had thereby established a new principle which retains its importance to the present day" (Russell, 339).

Ambrose famously battled with Theodosius and won out. Again showing the power of the Emperor to be subservient to the power of the Church.

Jerome is most famous for producing the Latin Vulgate which though eventually accepted as authoritative had to initially fight against reluctance because of the work of Rabbis on the text.

Jerome was born in Stridon, near Aquileia and lived in Rome, lived as a hermit in the Syrian wilderness, traveled to Constantinople and returned to Rome where he began to work on his translation of the Bible.

Jerome found himself in quarrels often and left Rome in 386 to live in Bethlehem until his death in 420. Despite his exile away from Rome, he mourned the dying of the Roman world at the hands of the barbarians.

Augustine was born in 354 to a Christian mother and pagan father in Africa.

We know more about Augustine's early life than most others because of his Confessions. The book has had famous imitators, especially Rousseau and Tolstoy.

"Saint Augustine is in some ways similar to Tolstoy, to whom, however, he is superior in intellect. He was a passionate man, in youth very far from a pattern of virtue, but driven by an inner impulse to search for truth and righteousness. Like Tolstoy, he was obsessed, in his later years, by a sense of sin, which made his life stern and his philosophy inhuman. He combated heresies vigorously, but some of his own views, when repeated by Jansenius in the seventeenth century, were pronounced heretical. Until the Protestants took up his opinions, however, the Catholic Church had never impugned their
orthodoxy" (Russell, 345).

Augustine's obsession with sin seems morbid in modern readings, but was in line with what was seen as holiness in his age. Besides that he held that righteousness, the greatest of goods, was achieved through tribulation now that sin was in the world.

"It thus came about that Christian theology had two parts, one concerned with the Church, and one with the individual soul. In later times, the first of these was most emphasized by Catholics, and the second by Protestants, but in Saint Augustine both exist equally, without his having any sense of
disharmony. Those who are saved are those whom God has predestined to salvation; this is a
direct relation of the soul to God. But no one will be saved unless he has been baptized, and
thereby become a member of the Church; this makes the Church an intermediary between the soul
and God" (Russell, 346).

Augustine became a teacher of Rhetoric in Carthage then moved to Rome. With his move he became less convinced of the Manichean faith he had been originally attracted to. He became somewhat infatuated with the Skepticism of the Academy before meeting Ambrose in his move to Milan. It was at Milan with the confluence of his mother, a devout Catholic, Ambrose, the discovery of St. Paul and seeing the not-quite-there totality in Platonism that Augustine finally converts.

The Religious Development of the Jews

The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell

Book Two Catholic Philosophy

Introduction

The Middle Ages was dominated by the Church and thus intellectual thought was also dominated by churchmen.

There is a dualism present in the Middle Ages, the dualism of clergy and laity, of Latin & Teuton, of the kingdom of this world and the kingdom of God, of spirit of flesh and of Pope and Emperor.

The early part of the Middle Ages is dominated by Augustine and Plato. The latter part is dominated with St. Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle.

The misery of the Middle Ages "heightened the intensity of religious feeling". Nothing in the world which was full of death and war and strife was of value except for virtue because that steadfast virtue would lead to eternal bliss.

Part I. The Fathers

Ch. I The Religious Development of the Jews

"The Christian religion, as it was handed over by the late Roman Empire to the barbarians,
consisted of three elements: first, certain philosophical beliefs, derived mainly from Plato and
the Neoplatonists, but also in part from the Stoics; second, a conception of morals and history
derived from the Jews; and thirdly, certain theories, more especially as to salvation, which were
on the whole new in Christianity, though in part traceable to Orphism, and to kindred cults of
the Near East" (Russell, 308).

The most important Jewish elements in Christianity according to Russell:
1. A sacred history that justifies the ways of God to man
2. The existence of a select few whom God especially loves, i.e. The Chosen People or the elect
3. A new concept of what is righteousness. Practical philanthropy as part of the Christian concept of virtue comes from the Jews.
4. The Law
5. The Messiah, the Christians simply moved the prosperity from a temporal plane to a heavenly one
6. The Kingdom of Heaven

Judaism became different from other contemporary religions when it became exclusive and monotheistic. "Jeremiah and Ezekiel, especially, seem to have invented the idea that all religions except one are false, and that the Lord punishes idolatry" (Russell, 310).

The captivity periods in Jewish history were understood to be a justification of the nationalistic and doomsday prophets of earlier times.

The Jews looked to God as a parental relationship and the Jews could be purified through God's punishment.

Judaism also moved from a sacrificial religion to a non-sacrificial one when the Temple was destroyed.

Isaiah greatly increased the belief in a Messiah, possibly as a result of Persian influence.

The Hellenization of Jews was difficult. Jerusalem fell in between the Seleucid and the Ptolemies. When in 175 B.C. the Seleucid king Antiochus IV sought to fully hellenize the Jews he was met with resistance. In 170 B.C. the Jews revolted. This is the history told in the First Book of Maccabees.

It was during this time that the Jews started to believe in an immortality in order to account for the good suffering and the belief that God would reward the good.

Some Jews living in the diaspora were hellenized, but the survival of Judaism is the result of brave Jews in Jerusalem who fought to preserve the original and uniqueness of their monotheistic faith.

The Jewish focus on the Law made them an intensely conservative group.

Both Jews and Christians think a lot about sin, but Christians thought of themselves as sinners while Jews mainly did not.

After the Roman destruction of the Temple in AD 70 the Jews of the Diaspora became increasingly important, especially the very Hellenized Jews of Alexandria.

Philo, a contemporary of Christ, is the perfect illustration of Greek influence on Jews. Philo was orthodox in his religion and a Platonist in his philosophy. He was very important to the early Christian Fathers.

Plotinus

The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell

Ch. XXX - Plotinus

Plotinus, founder of Neoplatonism lived from A.D. 204 - 270, possibly one of the worst times to live in the Roman Empire, full of war, pestilence and instability. His writings however, make no mention of it. Instead of studying the actual world and its miseries, he contemplated an eternal world of goodness and beauty.

"To all of them, Christians and pagans alike, the world of practical affairs seemed to offer no hope, and only the Other World seemed worthy of allegiance. To the Christian, the Other World was the Kingdom of Heaven, to be enjoyed after death; to the Platonist, it was the eternal world of ideas, the real world as opposed to that of illusory appearance. Christian theologians combined these points of view, and embodied much of the philosophy of Plotinus" (Russell, 284).

Plotinus is historically important as an influence in the Christianity of the Middle Ages and of Catholic theology. (Augustine noted that if Plotinus had been a little bit older or born in a different place he would have been called a Christian without too much change to his theories).

Plotinus is also important because he is an archetype for a melancholy optimist. His world was awful and rather than be dragged down by it he escaped it by contemplating happiness on a metaphysical level that is untouchable by the ravages of the real world surrounding him.

Plotinus also improved on Plato by clarifying him and his arguments against materialism are good.

Plotinus' works were edited and arranged by Porphyry who was more Pythagorean and thus, more supernatural than Plotinus. Neoplatonism took on the more supernatural angle of Porphyry in development.

Plotinus begins his metaphysical theory with The One, Spirit, and Soul. The One is similar to the God of Aristotle and is transcendent of everything. Spirit or nous is the image of the One. To know the One then one must study themselves and everything godlike in the Spirit.

Through divine possession and inspiration we can see not only the nous, but also the One. In contact with the One we cannot reason or express this vision in words, we can only do that after the fact.

Soul, lower than nous, is the author of all living things and the author of the created, visible world.

For Plotinus though, the visible world isn't evil. It is just less good than the world of nous.

Matter is created by Soul and matter has no independent reality. Soul desires to entire matter in something analogous to sexual desire. "When the soul leaves the body, it must enter another body if it has been sinful, for justice requires that it should be punished... Sin must be punished; but the punishment happens naturally, through the restless driving of the sinner's errors" (Russell, 292).

The goal of soul is to become one with nous, not in a destruction type of way. "Nous and the individual soul will be simultaneously two and one" (Russell, 293).

"The soul is neither matter nor the form of a material body, but Essence, and Essence is eternal. This view is implicit in Plato's argument that the soul is immortal because ideas are eternal; but it is only with Plotinus that it becomes explicit" (Russell, 293).

The soul desires to copy the creativity of the nous. The soul contemplates the inward realm of nous and seeks to produce something as akin to it as possible. Unfortunately, to create the soul joins itself to a body and cuts itself off from other souls and the nous.

Plotinus believed that the world was imperfect because it was copied from the forms. But, he does not think this is necessarily bad. The copy cannot be both a symbol of the real and the real itself. Therefore, the copy is good enough for us because it is the best copy that could be made.

Plotinus does have to deal with sin because he suggests against determinists and astrologers that sin is the result of free will.

Plotinus marks both a beginning and an end for Russell. He is an end of Greek thought and a beginning to Christendom.

Goodreads: Confessions

From Goodreads

Confessions
St. Augustine

I enjoy reading Augustine because I feel like I know where he's coming from. Even 1600 years removed from him I understand his issues because they're mine. The insecurity, the dependence, the strenght, the weakness, the manic highs and lows all seem to be presented by Augustine in a way that addresses me in my own heart, in spite of the cultural and time differences between us. While Augustine certainly can get speculative in some of his theology, I appreciate his approach to it. He grasps firm what the Scripture says and a lot less firm the speculation he does about it.

Hoping that I'm wrong.

Finished St. Augustine's Confessions today. I really enjoy that book. Something about it always draws me back in. I'm also reading Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. The moaning scene had me in stiches. I was laughing audibly to myself at that part. I've been thinking about looking into real estate as a profession. I don't know why. I'm not sure it's going to make me any happier or more fulfilled in my career. It might make me more secure and allow me to accomplish my goals though - to write a novel and to live in Europe. I really don't care what I do if it affords me this possibility, but the current situation does not look as if it will suffice. I am almost quite sure that I am merely infatuated with something new and wouldn't particularly love real estate. I could be wrong though and that's probably why I'm thinking about it. I'm hoping that I'm wrong.

Notes on Confessions Book XIII

Confessions
St. Augustine

Book XIII

Ch. 1

"I call thee into my soul, which thou didst prepare for thy reception by the desire which thou inspirest in it"

Ch. 2

From the fullness of Goodness in God comes creation.

"An unformed spiritual entity is more excellent than a formed corporeal entity; and the corporeal, even when unformed, is more excellent than if it were simply nothing at all"

"The true good of every created thing is always to cleave fast to thee"

Ch. 3

God is the only being that does not have a distinction in his being between living and living in blessedness, "thou art thyself thy own blessedness".

Ch. 4

God created out of his goodness and fullness, not because He lacked anything.

Ch. 5

Augustine argues the language of Genesis affirms the Trinity.

Ch. 6

Augustine wonders why the Spirit was introduced after the waters he was moving over.

Ch. 7

The Holy Spirit lifts us up to the inner heavens where our souls can find rest.

Ch. 8

Augustine confesses that his existence is woe apart from God.

Ch. 9

The Holy Spirit is how we enjoy God.

Ch. 10

"Let him who is able to understand this; and let him who is not ask of thee". Lord, I ask of thee. I don't understand this passage at all.

Ch. 11

What man can fully understand the Trinity? By analogy we can understand how a trinity exists in an unity, but the complete understanding of the Trinity is too much for man.

Ch. 12

When we became displeased with our darkness we turned to thee and there was light.

Ch. 13

We live by faith not by sight because we live by hope in the promise that one day we'll see face-to-face.

Ch. 14

The relapse into the darkness can occur in us but hope and pray and praise God in even the darkness of the night.

Ch. 15

The whole of Scriptures is like the skins God stretched for Adam and Eve after the fall. It is His words stretched over us to protect us and clothe us.

Ch. 16

I cannot satisfy myself; only God can satisfy me.

Everything God is He immutably is.

Ch. 17

When we help our neighbors physically we perform both a physical and spiritual task with both physical and spiritual results.

Ch. 18

By feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and sheltering the homeless we operate on a low level of fruitful action and can come to the joy of contemplation.

By God's eternal design He spreads the Heavenly blessing on earth in the proper seasons.

Ch. 19

Augustine encourages Christians into missionary work: be the light of the world you are!

Ch. 20

"O God, who dost refresh our easily wearied mortal senses that is our mental cognition a single thing may be figured and signified in many different ways by different bodily motions"

Augustine argues he sees the text of Genesis allegorically because it leads to the higher things of God. He notes that those who can't move past the text in its physical meaning still have a soul that has a higher life that profits from the spiritual text.

Ch. 21

Don't be overcome by pride, lust or morbid curiosity. These things are signs of a dead soul because the soul has sought things away from the wellspring of life.

Only wen man has become renewed in his mind by God can he walk in the image of God he was created in without any human guidance.

Ch. 22

Be not conformed to this world.

Ch. 23

Now as a Spiritual man it does not behoove him to judge the Scriptures, even if there are parts hard to understand. "Instead, we submit our understanding to it and believe with certainty that which is hidden from our sight is still rightly and truly spoken"

"Nor does a man, even though he is spiritual, judge the disordered state of society in this world. For what business of his is it to judge those who are without, since he cannot know which of them may later on come into the sweetness of thy grace, and which of them may continue in the perpetual bitterness of their impiety?" That's an interesting point...

 Ch. 24

Augustine takes, "be fruitful and multiply" on an allegorical level to mean to increase our fruitfulness of mind because even the beasts are fruitful and multiply physically.

Ch. 25

All men are liars. The truth they speak is only through God's truth.

Ch. 26

Paul was fed with joy and that is why he can be content in all situations.

Ch. 27

The uninstructed and the infidel require mysteries of initiation and great works of miracles. The instructed already accept God.

Ch. 28

The whole of creation, an amalgam of things called good by God, is called very good by God. The sum is greater than the parts.

Ch. 29

The things we see through God's spirit he sees the same way. But the temporal things we see in a way different than God because God does not see things in time.

Ch. 30

Augustine argues against the dualistic notion of a benevolent creator of all things spiritual and a malevolent creator of all things physical.

Ch. 31

What we see as good in creation we see as good because God has called it good.

Ch. 32

The imago dei is having the power of reason and understanding.

Ch. 33

Creation was made by God but made of God.

Ch. 34

In order to perfect the faithful God ordained that the faithful, "should themselves bring forth good things" for both this life and the next.

Ch. 35

Augustine prays for peace and rest.

Ch. 37

God exists outside of time but created everything that exists in time.

God takes the Sabbath and rests in us when He completes the work in us. 

Ch. 38

"We can see all those things which thou hast made because they are - but they are because thou seest them."

God has never ceased to do good.

Only by seeking truth in God will we find any truth.

Notes on Confessions Book XII

Confessions
St. Augustine

Book XII

Ch. 1

God promises the truth even in hard tasks.

Ch. 2

Earth is inferior to the heavens, the unseen, non-corporeal heavens.

Ch. 3

There was nothing before creation.

Ch. 4

The problem of religious language is written into Genesis. Our words are insufficient to explain pre-creation so we call it "void", or "abyss", or "formless".

Ch. 5

The mind struggles with the insufficiency of language to visualize pre-creation.

Ch. 6

The human mind does not have the context to imagine the true nothingness before creation.

Ch. 7

God created everything out of nothing.

Ch. 8

God made the unformed matter out of nothing. Then He shaped the matter into things.

Ch. 9

God's creations of intellectual substructures in which creation exists are not coeternal with God.

Ch. 10

"I was death to myself; in thee I have revived"

Ch. 11

God is eternal, alone has immortality, is unchangeable and, "thy will is not altered by temporal processes"

Only sin, which is an action that leads away from God is not from God.

Ch. 12

God did not leave everything formless.

Ch. 13

Augustine backs up his theories by interpreting the order of creation in Genesis.

Ch. 14

Augustine acknowledges that not everyone will buy his theory. Even believers might not conform to his theories on this.

Ch. 15

God is eternal. His will is eternal.

Ch. 16

God is the one supreme and true Good.

Augustine argues his point as being merited by conclusions flowing from premises other Christians must accept as valid.

Ch. 17

Augustine argues that the language of Genesis lends itself to a deeper philosophical meaning that is in line with his theories when viewed allegorically.

Ch. 18

Augustine argues that an allegorical understanding of Scripture is valid and profitable.

Augustine also notes that the truth in the Scriptures, while not relative, is reachable by various intellects and various perspectives and that it doesn't profit Christianity to argue about perspectives of the truth if those perspectives are of the truth indeed.

Ch. 19

Augustine asserts all things that exist are created by God and that is something all Christians agree on, even if they don't all believe Augustine's allegorical understanding of the phrase, "heaven and earth", meaning the things unseen, spiritual Creation and the visible, corporeal Creation.

Ch. 20

Augustine relates a number of interpretations of what is meant by, "in the beginning God created Heaven and Earth"

Ch. 21

Augustine relates an number of interpretations of the meaning of the phrase, "the earth was invisible and unformed and darkness was over the abyss"

Ch. 22

Augustine argues that the waters over which the spirit of the Lord hovered cannot be anything unmade; they were made by God though it isn't explicitly written in Genesis

Ch. 23

Augustine makes a distinction between asking what is the truth of the text and what Moses was trying to convey to his audience.

Ch. 24

Augustine argues that the truth of Scripture, "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" is clear and distinct. God created everything. He will firmly hold that truth. All other interpretations of the truth he will consider, but not hold firm as the interpretation is not as clear as the divine revelation.

Ch. 25

The theological arguments should not occur out of pride. When disagreements on interpretation happen, move beyond them and love thy neighbor.

Ch. 26

It's ok to have deeper meanings, further meanings within Scripture as long as they are true meanings.

Ch. 27

People understand more of the Scripture as they grow.

Ch. 28

Some see Scripture no longer as a nest as beginners do, but as a shady thicket harboring fruits deep inside it.

Ch. 29

Augustine explains matter comes before form in a non-sequential way in creation. Matter comes prior to form as a tune is formed simultaneously as the sounds that constitute it. The tune is prior to the sounds because it arranges the notes and the notes form the tune.

Ch. 30

Truth should bring concord, not discord.

The Scriptures were written primarily to minister for the light of truth and to increase the fruitfulness of the readers.

Ch. 31

Augustine argues that Moses knew the deep truths of what he wrote because it was revealed through him.

He also mentions he prefers to give credence to multiple interpretations so as not to exclude any bit of truth.

Ch. 32

Augustine prays for truth and to not be deceived in his understanding of the Truth

Notes on Confessions Book XI

Confessions
St. Augustine

Book 11

Ch. 1

Why confess? It is God's will we confess. "For love of thy love", Augustine confesses.

Ch. 2

"Let thy Scriptures be my chaste delight. Let me not be deceived in them, nor deceive others from them"

God sought us that we could seek him.

Ch. 3

Augustine prayers for understanding.

Ch. 4

Things exist because God exists. Things are good because the Creator is good.

Ch. 5

Augustine questions how God created anything and everything.

Ch. 6

God created what he created out of nothing.

Ch. 7

Everything God spoke into existence He did so eternally. It was not sequential.

Ch. 8

God is the beginning and the beginning is immutable.

Ch. 9

Through hope in God is one saved.

Wisdom, God's creation, shines through everything because it is through wisdom all things were made.

Ch. 10

The Will of God comes before creation. The Will of God pertains to the essence of God.

Ch. 11

The eternal and the temporal are "incommensurable".

In the eternal everything is simultaneously present.

Ch. 12

Augustine admits it is better to say, "I don't know" then to mock someone trying to learn the answers to hard questions.

Ch. 13

God wasn't doing nothing before creation because time is a part of creation. There was no "before" creation. Thus, one can't ask, "what was God doing before creation?"

Ch. 14

"There was no time, therefore, when thou hadst not made anything, because thou hadst made time itself"

Ch. 15

The present has no extension; it is at once only before becoming past. It is anticipated as future but only exists immediately as present.

Ch. 16

Yet, we compare lengths of time and have understanding when we do the comparison.

We measure the passage of time by perception.

Ch. 17

There must be past and future times because we have memories and men can foretell the future.

Ch. 18

But if times past or times future exist they must exist somewhere in the present. If the future things existed in the future they'd exist as "not yet" and therefore, not exist. If past things exist in the past they exist as having passed away and therefore, don't exist. Yet times future and times past exist and they exist in the present.

Ch. 19

What about prophecy? How does God teach men of future things if they don't exist in the present?

Ch. 20

There isn't really a past or a future, but a time present of past things, a time present of things present and a time present of things future: memory, direct experience and expectation.

" There are but few things about which we speak properly-- and many more about which we speak improperly--though we understand one another’s meaning" This is an interesting thought on language.

Ch. 21

We measure time and understand that we measure something that exists. But if the time we measure comes from the future, the not yet, it can't be measured because not yet isn't existence and non existence cannot be measured. Same for the past.

Ch. 22

We communicate things about time to one another in commonplace and ordinary language to understanding ears, but still the meanings of these things lies hidden deeply.

Ch. 23

Time is a sort of extension.

Ch. 24

Time is not the motion of a body.

Ch. 25

Augustine calls on God to enlighten him.

Ch. 26

"Time is nothing other than extendedness; but extendedness of what I do not know"

Ch. 27

Look up T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, especially "Burnt Norton". Maybe he'll make it clearer...

Ch. 28

What is measured of time is measured by our attention of it. The not yet becomes the passed away through our current experience of it.

Ch. 29

Life is but a stretching out and through the mediation of Christ one is no longer stretched out but pulled together and stretched forth to the eternal things.

Ch. 30

God does not merely know all things past and future like its a familiar tune. It's much more mysterious than that.

Ch. 31

"Let him who understands this confess to thee; and let him who does not understand also confess to thee!"

I confess. I confess.

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.

Notes on Confessions Book IX

Confessions
St. Augustine

Book IX

Ch. 1

God loosed Augustine's bonds and he thanked God for it.

God removed the corruption from Augustine's heart. Now he did not will to do his own will anymore and began to will to do what God willed.

"How sweet did it suddenly become to me to be without the sweetness of trifles! And it was now a joy to put away what I formerly feared to lose. For thou didst cast them away from me"

Ch. 2

Augustine stays on teaching until the scheduled break before resigning his post. He explains a few reasons for not leaving immediately after conversion.

Ch. 3

Augustine's friends Verecundus and Nebridius eventually convert to Catholic Christianity from their various pagan and heretical standpoints. But, both die after conversion and Augustine thanks God for their salvation.

Ch. 4

God leveled the mountains and hills of Augustine's mind, straightened his crookedness and smoothed his rough ways.

Augustine read, "Be angry, and sin not". He was relieved that he could be angry with his past ways and not sin because of them.

In God there is, "rest and oblivion to all distress".

Ch. 5

Augustine resigns formally from his post in Milan and informs everyone, including St. Ambrose. Ambrose suggests that Augustine read Isaiah on account of it predicting the gospels the most but, unlearned in the ways of God, Augustine couldn't finish it initially because he didn't fully understand it.

Ch. 6

Augustine, Alypius and Adeodatus, Augustine's fifteen year old son by his mistress were baptized together into the faith and "The anxiety about our past life left us".

Ch. 7

This is how singing hymns came about throughout the Christian world: "This was the time that the custom began, after the manner of the Eastern Church, that hymns and psalms should be sung, so that the people would not be worn out with the tedium of lamentation. This custom, retained from then till now, has been imitated by many, indeed, by almost all thy congregations throughout the rest of the world." The translator notes, "This was apparently the first introduction into the West of antiphonal chanting, which was already widespread in the East. Ambrose brought it in; Gregory brought it to perfection."

Ch. 8

Augustine, having decided to leave Milan to return to Africa leaves with his family and friends. Along the way his mother, Monica, passes away.

Augustine tells a story about how her mother was shamed by a little servant girl taunting her as a child to break a bad habit. He notes that the flattery of friends often leads individuals astray but the stinging words of an enemy will humble a person to stop doing that sin. He also notes that this is God's work in using others to train his children.

Ch. 9

Augustine praises God for the attributes he worked into his mom. He praises his mother's patience and meekness, her ability as a teacher, her mercy, her peacemaking and her long-suffering. She even through prayer and patience won over Augustine's father, an unfaithful and angry man to the Lord and after his conversion, he was faithless no more.

Ch. 10

Augustine and Monica, in her last week alive, praised God and his creation, moving from the outer world to the inner before they contemplated on Wisdom itself. He claims that the Israelites were forever fed by the Wisdom of God (allegorical understanding of the OT) and that the Wisdom was God. "Wisdom is not made, but is as she has been and forever shall be"

After all their praise Monica stated that she had prayed to see Augustine's salvation and now that God had answered that prayer abundantly as not only was her son saved, but that he had devoted himself to God, she wasn't sure what was left for her here in this life.

Ch. 11

Monica died in Ostia, on the voyage home to Africa. When she was dying she stated she did not care where she was buried because it was just her body and that when the time came for the Resurrection God would know where she was lying.

Ch. 12

Augustine stopped himself from crying at Monica's death. "This is the way those who die unhappy or are altogether dead are usually mourned. But she neither died unhappy nor did she altogether die".

Augustine relates that he finally wept when he contemplated the life Monica led for God and he wept before God in solace.

Ch. 13

Augustine praises his mother's character, noting that all these praises are really praising God for the work He did in her. He also prays for her soul and the forgiveness of her sins. He notes also that he believes that God has long since done this but that this was a verbal offering.

It's an interesting take on Saints if you want to read into that.

Notes on Confessions Book VIII

Confessions
St. Augustine

Ch. 1

In order to fully embrace Christ Augustine's heart, "had to be purged of the old leaven".

Something held Augustine back. That something was temporal (the idea of marriage) and it left him at unease.

Ch. 2

Augustine visits Simplicianus, the mentor of Ambrose.

Simplicianus thanks God that Augustine had received philosophical instruction from the Platonists and not other philosophers. The Platonists' teachings lead to the path that leads to God.

Simplicianus relates the conversion of the Roman philosopher, Victorinus. This conversion had a powerful impact on Augustine.

Ch. 3

The Lord rejoices more in the repentance of the one than in the just of the ninety-nine who do not need repentance.

"The greater the peril of the battle, the more joy of the triumph".

Ch. 4

"For when many rejoice together the joy of each one is fuller, in that they warm one another, catch fire from each other; moreover, those who are well-known influence many toward salvation and take the lead with many to follow them".

Ch. 5

Victorinus gave up teaching when Emperor Julian made it illegal for Christians to teach literature or rhetoric. Augustine claimed that Victorinus was not so much brave in this act as he now had a reason for giving his full time to God.

"For out of the perverse will came lust, and the service of lust ended in habit, and habit, not resisted became necessity"

Habit became Augustine's enemy: "because I had willingly come to be what I unwillingly found myself to be"

"The law of sins is the tyranny of habit, by which the mind is drawn and held, even against its will"

Ch. 6

Augustine meets Ponticianus, who relates to him the life of St. Anthony and introduces Augustine to Monastic Christianity.

Ch. 7

The search for God and truth is worth more than all the kingdoms of this world.

Augustine still struggled to convert wholly for both love of earthly pleasures (though he knew by now that they eternal ones were far superior) and because he was fighting against habit.

Ch. 8

Augustine became frustrated that even through 10 years of striving he had not achieved the peace that less educated men and women had attained by following Christ.

The distance to God is not great. It is at hand. One only needs the will to go and be unwavering in that will.

Ch. 9

Augustine had two will fighting in him and could not fully commit because of it.

Ch. 10

Two wills does not mean a good will and an evil will. That is a false, Manichean doctrine.

When the goods of heaven attract man from above and the earthly goods pull from below then the man without a single will, will find himself in torment of the soul. His will is partial and incomplete and moved only by custom or habit.

Ch. 11

"I hesitated to die to death and live to life. And the worse way, to which I was habituated, was stronger in me than the better, which I had not tried.

Ch. 12

In his deepest sorrow Augustine read Romans 13:13. Alypius was with him and read further on through Romans 14:1. Both were converted fully in that moment and went and told Monica. She rejoiced in God's answering her prayers for Augustine's salvation

Notes on Confessions Book VII

Confessions
St. Augustine

Book Seven

Ch. 1

Augustine struggles to move from a materialistic view of the world to get to a perfect God.

Ch. 2

Augustine struggles with how to understand the Incarnation with an adherence to materialism. It can't be done though because it would inevitably limit God to some extent, which is impossible.

Ch. 3

Augustine struggles with the problem of Evil. If God made the angels and an angel can fall to become the devil then is God the author of evil? No, that is self-evidently false.

Ch. 4

Augustine is convinced that God is incorruptible. He comes to this by a sort of ontological argument. Thus, from God's incorruptible nature he defines evil as a corruption of nature.

Ch. 5

Augustine still struggles with the problem of evil but the faith of Jesus Christ at the heart of Catholic Christianity began to take root in his heart.

Ch. 6

Augustine argues against astrology and reduces it from an art to a mere game of chance.

Ch. 7

Pride separated Augustine from God.

Ch. 8

The Lord is compassionate and heals the broken man.

Ch. 9

Augustine studied the Platonists and while he found wisdom in them he didn't find the gospel message, the Truth.

Ch. 10

Augustine came to the Truth about God's being through a mystical experience. Augustine asked a question, what is truth? God answered, "I AM" and Augustine understood that God is Truth and Truth is real.

Ch. 11

All things not God are both real and unreal. They are real insofar as they are created God. They are unreal insofar as they are not God.

Ch. 12

All things, insofar as they exist are good. They cannot be all-evil because then they would not exist. Evil then is a corruption resulting in the privation of a good in something.

Ch. 13

Augustine states it is above our station to critique the things that exist because while we can pray that our surroundings be better the very fact of having surroundings at all should move us to thank God.

Ch. 14

"There is no health in those who find fault with any part of thy creation". That's a strong statement, but one that bears true.

Once Augustine stopped critiquing creation he became contented in it and no longer struggled with these material distractions.

Ch. 15

God exists outside of time.

Ch. 16

"And I asked what wickedness was, and I found that it was no substance, but a perversion of the will bent aside from thee, O God, the supreme substance, toward these lower things, casting away its inmost treasure and becoming bloated with external good"

Ch. 17

Augustine struggled with having mentally arrived at the truth and now bending his will to it.

Ch. 18

It took the mediation of Christ to truly connect Augustine to God. Try as he could, he could not reach God through mental activity.

One must forsake pride, lowering it, so that love may be heightened in order for one to throw one's self upon God and be lifted up.

Ch. 19

Augustine struggled then with Christological heresies. He and Alypius each embraced opposite ends of the nature of Christ that were heretical, focusing too much on either the human nature or the divine nature in Jesus before both finally being converted to the Catholic faith.

Ch. 20

Augustine followed the Platonists in searching for the incorporeal Truth. It led him to note that the invisible things of God were made visible to him by Creation.

The Platonists sort of primed the pump for Augustine to study Scripture.

Ch. 21

Augustine found he now enjoyed the Scriptures, especially the writings of Paul.

In reading Paul he found the truth he read in the Platonists had been elevated with the exaltation of God's Grace.

Augustine seems to have held the Platonists as being on the right track but insufficient because of their lack of Christ.

Notes on Confessions Book VI

Confessions
St. Augustine

Book VI

Ch.1

Augustine's mother, Monica, is portrayed as a devout Christian, unsurprised by God answering her prayers yet still devoted to praying for the final salvation of her son.

Ch. 2

Again Monica is shown to be a devout Christian, giving up a custom that involved her venerating the saints (as she had learned in North Africa). She gave it up because Ambrose had forbidden it, for fear it would lead other, living saints into sin (drunkenness) and that it appeared to close to other pagan traditions.

Ch. 3

Augustine learns that some of his mistrust of Christian theology stemmed from his own misconceptions of what Christian's believed, not the true faith in Christ.

Ch. 4

Ambrose preached the spirit of Christianity, invoking 2 Corinthians 3:6, "The letter kills, but the spirit gives live".

Augustine uses an analogy of a bad and good physician to illuminate the status of his soul at this post-Manichean, pre-Catholic experience: It was as if having been to a bad physician (Manichean teaching) he was afraid of the cure (faith) lest he believe again in error. Thus, having had the experience of the bad physician he was hesitant to place his fate in the hands of a good physician (Christianity) and thus, refusing to accept the cure (faith in Jesus).

 Ch. 5

Augustine gradually accepted the Catholic faith, choosing to listen more to the pious believers who felt assured of things rather than the faithless who asked blasphemous questions for the sake of being blasphemous.

At this point Augustine begins his transformation and changes his view on the Holy Scriptures he once reviled. "Thus, since we are too weak by unaided reason to find out truth, and since, because of this, we need the authority of the Holy Writings, I had now begun to believe that thou wouldst not, under any circumstances, have given such eminent authority to those Scriptures throughout all lands if it had not been that through them thy will may be believed in and that thou mightest be sought"

Ch. 6

Augustine thanks God for not letting anything but God himself grow sweet in Augustine's acquisitions. Thus, he was forced to continue pursuing God.

Augustine relates an experience he had with a beggar. The beggar was happy, probably because he was full and drunk. Augustine at the moment of seeing him was miserable, wracked with struggles. He notes though, if one were to ask him whether he would prefer to be happy or miserable he would choose to be happy. Yet, if one were to ask him whether he would prefer to be himself or the beggar he would choose to be himself. Of course, he notes, that the drunkard would sober up and no longer be happy, but he had attained the momentary happiness by begging and in all of Augustine's struggles he had not achieved happiness. Was all his searching in vain? Was all his searching done from a standpoint of vanity?

Ch. 7

God uses the things we do both wittingly and unwittingly towards his ends.

Ch. 8

This chapter deals with how Alypius, a younger friend/contemporary of Augustine's became obsessed with the Gladiatorial games. It's a good section to look at on how one can slip into sin or even into addiction.

Ch. 9

This chapter deals with how Alypius was falsely accused of theft and how God brought about him being proven innocent with no witnesses.

Ch. 10

Alypius and Nebridius joined Augustine in Milan and all three sought the truth but were miserable because they sought it apart from God. They sought the beauty and truth of the created things not the creator.

Ch. 11

If life perished with the body then God would not have gone to such extremes to save the souls of men.

Ch. 12

Augustine argues with Alypius stating that he doesn't want to be celibate. Even though Alypius was correct, the lust in Augustine was too strong to be denounced and abandoned. He wanted to be married to satisfy his lust and give his lust a presentable veneer.

Ch. 13

Monica agreed that Augustine should be married but she didn't get the same conviction from God about it as she had received regarding her son's eventual conversion. She offered motherly advice but nothing forceful or strong, stating, "For she always said that she could distinguish, by a certain feeling impossible to describe, between thy revelation and the dreams of her own soul.

Ch. 14

Augustine tried to get his buddies up to about a group of ten to form a commune to study and learn the truth. This never made it past the planning stages.

Ch. 15

Augustine loses his mistress and mother of his child to prepare for a marriage. It grieved him and he soon took another mistress to satiate his lust.

Ch. 16

"Woe to the audacious soul which hoped that by forsaking thee it would find some better thing!"

Notes on Confessions Book V

Confessions
St. Augustine

Book V

Ch. 1

The Lord sees into all hearts, even the hard and closed ones. He will soften and heal those hearts according to His will.

Ch. 2

The wicked flee God's gentleness to collide with His justice.

"Thou art near even to those who go farthest from thee"

"Thou art the Lord, who canst remake what thou didst make and can comfort them"

Ch. 3

Religious men ask, "what is the source of the intelligence by which they investigate?" The prideful discover many true things about creation without learning the Truth of the Creator.

Ch. 4

God isn't pleased by the man who knows a lot but doesn't know Him.

Ch. 5

Augustine attacks Mani for presuming to teach what he does not know. He condemns Mani for impersonating the Holy Spirit falsely.

Ch. 6

An eloquence, when unfettered from truth, is like a gaudy chalice with a drink that doesn't quench the thirst.

Ch. 7

Augustine's interaction with the Manichean Bishop, Faustus, and Faustus' inability to help Augustine understand why Manicheism was preferable to other belief systems served as the final breaking point between Augustine and Manicheism.

Ch. 8

Augustine leaves Carthage and heads for Rome.

Augustine points out that his mother's prayers were not answered in the way she hoped for (he still left Carthage for Rome). God did not let her temporary request undermine His work and end goal for Augustine.

Ch. 9

The fetter of original sin is that we all die in Adam. But we can be forgiven in Christ.

Ch. 10

Sin was all the more uncurable because Augustine would not confess it.

Augustine even rejected the true faith because of his dualistic leanings. That dualism caused him many numerous problems.

Ch. 11
The dualism and belief in a great evil that makes God finite allowed him to twist and to fall prey to twisted theology.

Ch. 12

Rome did not turn out to be the paradise that Augustine had hoped for.

Ch. 13

Augustine goes to Milan and meets Ambrose. He is attracted to Ambrose because of his nature, even if Augustine was unwilling as of yet to hear Ambrose's message.

Ch. 14

Ambrose's teachings slowly changed Augustine.

Augustine joined the Catholic faith because the philosophers, in all their wisdom, could not offer the cure, they had not the salvation of Christ.

Notes on Confessions Book IV

Confessions
St. Augustine

Book IV

Ch. 1

Augustine confesses his past sins so he can make a sacrificial offer.

He asks what is he without God, "For what am I to myself without thee but a guide to my own downfall?"

Ch. 2

"I knew not how to love thee because I knew not how to conceive of anything beyond corporeal splendors".

Ch. 3.

Augustine argues against astrology because it tries to take the blame rightly placed on individual men and transfer it to the heavens and the celestial bodies.

He condemns astrological predictions coming true, through the voice of an old wise man, as the combination of chance and the workings of the human mind to turn those events caused by chance to fit the prediction.

Ch. 4

"There is no true friendship save between those thou dost bind together and who cleave to thee by that love which is, 'shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who is given us'"

Augustine turned a friend away from God to his superstitions. Yet, God still followed the two men and saved the man who had fallen away from him before his death.

God is both, at once, the God of vengeance and a Fountain of Mercies

Ch. 5

Dealing with grief is easier with God than without.

Ch. 6

"Every soul is wretched that is fettered in the friendship of mortal things".

Augustine is so overcome with grief at the loss of his friend that he is falling apart. This extra passion and the violence it is causing his soul occurs because he does not know God, who can balance him.

Ch. 7

Grief without God: "All things looked gloomy even the very light itself". He found solace in weeping but when his soul no longer wept it was weighed down.

Grief with God: the weeping provides some relief but in the end one's soul is not weighed down, having been "raised up to thee, O Lord, for thee to lighten and lift it"

"Thus my error was my god"

Ch. 8

Time does strange things in the mind

Ch. 9

The only thing we cannot lose is God. Even if we lose him by rejecting Him we still find Him in the end, when we are punished for that rejection. Where can a man go to hide from God?

Ch. 10

"Wherever the soul of men turns itself, unless toward thee, it is enmeshed in sorrows"

The physical aspect of creation is good for what it was designed to do; but it cannot supersede the eternal. It cannot appoint its beginning or its end.

Ch. 11

"Do not let the tumult of your vanity deafen the ear of your heart"

The things of this earth perish. The things of God do not. Why then should my soul long for the perishable?

Even if we could perceive the whole of time and space in God's creation it would pale in comparison to God, the creator.

Ch. 12

If the physical creation pleases you, thank God for it. If another's soul pleases you, thank God for it. In essence, whatever your bent is (physical or spiritual), thank God for the gifts he gives that please you.

God is to be found wherever truth is.

Do not love the gift from God more than God the giver.

Ch. 13

Augustine's aesthetics formed a springboard for him towards finding God.

Ch. 14

Love and admiration of another without anchoring in God can be a selfish thing. Augustine loved and admired the orator in a way that he wanted to be loved and admired.

Love of another can stem from the other's popularity too. Augustine loved that orator because others loved him.

He then asked an interesting question: If others had not loved the orator then I would not have loved the orator. Yet, the orator's qualities would still be the same only the audience reactions would have changed. If this is the case, should one be loved and admired for the sake of their works, if their works are so susceptible to the tastes of the crowd?

Ch. 15

Evil is not a substance at all.

Like the emotions that stir up violent acts, the errors in our thinking contaminate the life of a rational soul.

All the knowledge and skill in learning is worth nothing if one errs by not understanding that all their knowledge flows from God.

"For our stability, when it is in thee, is stability indeed; but when it is in ourselves, then it is all unstable"

"And we need not fear that we shall find no place to return to because we fall away from it. For, in our absence, our home - which is thy eternity - does not fall away.

Notes on Confessions Book III

Confessions
St. Augustine

Book III

Ch. 1

In loving for the sake of loving, some pleasure is to be found because love was created by God. But love, not rooted in God, is unsatisfying.

Love, when abstracted for its own sake, opens man to the scourging of jealousy, fear, anger and strife.

Augustine polluted the spring of friendship with lust. (The notion here of polluting at the spring of friendship is interesting. It denotes that all the water coming forth from the spring is polluted. Later in the chapter he uses another water analogy, the rivers are flowing but he questions where they wind up).

Ch. 2

What kind of compassion is it that arises from viewing fictitious and unreal sufferings? Without considering God in this compassion we pervert it, turn it into pity and seek to achieve some sort of feeling from the sorrows of others. It is not compassion at all, but selfish.

Augustine sought out the sorrowful plays because the sorrow captured his imagination. Apart from God, being in his own sorrowful place because of it, it was obvious why Augustine sought it out. In seeking out the imagined sorrows of the stage, he didn't have to dig deeper into his own sorrow, which stemmed from his ignoring of God.

Ch. 3

Even in this state God's mercy hovered over Augustine from afar.

The wreckers (a group of intellectuals who mocked others with their eloquence) became wreckers because they were wrecked themselves. It's a "hurt people hurt people" kind of thing.

Ch. 4

Augustine was struck by Cicero's Hortensius. It was through this lost book that a sudden realization came over Augustine. He was struck by the substance and not the style of Cicero. Now, Augustine would seek wisdom for its own sake and not for the glory that studying would bring him.

Ch. 5

After Cicero, Augustine read the Scriptures and was nonplussed. He regarded them as beneath him and stylistically inferior to the Roman writers.

Ch. 6

He tried the Manicheans but the dishes they served him did not satisfy his hunger.

The spirit is before the material: "For thy spiritual works came before these material creations, celestial and shining though they are".

God had mercy on Augustine before he confessed his sins.

Ch. 7

Evil is nothing but a privation of good. Evil has no being.

To judge the patriarchs for their "sins" or "follies" is to judge men whom God called righteous as unrighteous. They apply a human standard to something that is divine. That they judge this way is not surprising because they do not know God; they do not know the divine. "It is as if a man in an armory, not knowing what piece goes on what part of the body, should put a greave on his head and a helmet on his shin and then complain because they did not fit."

Augustine then makes some interesting points on men being upset with the Scriptures because men whom God had called righteous were allowed to do something that they are now no longer permitted to do. "Or as if, on some holiday when afternoon business was forbidden, one were to grumble at not being allowed to go on selling as it had been lawful for him to do in the forenoon." Some of Augustine's arguments could be used to favor a very stratified society and likely has been some of the foundation stones for aristocratic thinking. But, his point in showing it is that God is just in all his actions towards man. He also takes on the idea that this makes justice a relative concept. He answers this by saying that, no, justice is not variable but the times over which she presides are.

Ch. 8

"The fellowship that should be between God and us is violated whenever that nature is polluted by perverted lust".

God is the greatest authority of all and to be obeyed over all.

When men sin against God they also sin against their own souls.

This is arrogance or a false sense of freedom: to love our own good more than God, the common good of all.

Ch. 9

There are also sins committed by men who are making progress towards God. These men are to be censored for their sins but not condemned, because, "they show the hope of bearing fruit, like the green shoot of the growing corn"

Ch. 10

Augustine condemns Manichean teaching as it focuses on the created things rather than who the things were created for and for whom the things were created by.

Ch. 11

Augustine's mother saw by the light of faith that Augustine was dead.

Ch. 12

Augustine admits that deep in his Manichean thought he was unteachable and taken in by the novelty of heresy. She even implored a bishop to talk with him but the bishop refused. When Monica persisted and wept the bishop exclaimed that, a man who is surrounded by so many tears can not perish. Monica took these exclamations as a word from God

Notes on Confessions Book II

Confessions
St. Augustine

Book II

Ch. 1

Dig into the past to face your corruptions, not for the love of those corruptions, but for the love of God.

Corruption can seem good in one's eyes, but it is not seen so by God.

Ch. 2

Both the good (pure affection) and the bad (unholy desire) boiled up in Augustine making it impossible to distinguish the good from the bad.

"For thy omnipotence is not far from us even when we are far from thee"

I should've sought pleasures free from God's discontent. Where to find such pleasures? Only in God.

Ch. 3

Augustine admits he took as much pleasure in being praised for his sin than in committing the sin itself.

Ch. 4

Augustine stole for the sake of stealing, sinned for sin's sake.

"It was foul, and I loved it. I loved my own undoing. I loved my error - not that for which I erred but the error itself".

Ch. 5

But sin for sin's sake still requires some motive.

Ch. 6

 The pears he stole weren't even that tasty. He enjoyed the sweetness of the theft more than the sweetness of the fruit. What made the theft so sweet?

All the vices of man are searching for ends outside of God. Lust replaces love as men seek satisfaction from love from something that cannot satisfy in the way God can. Vices are corrupt forms of going after a need in something other than God. Rightly done the need would have been satisfied in God.

"Thus the soul commits fornication when she is turned from thee and seeks apart from thee what she cannot find pure and untainted until she returns to thee"

Even in sin the sinner is imitating God - setting themselves up as the ultimate law unto themselves.

Augustine wrestles with why he stole the pears. Was he trying to set up a counterfeit liberty? Trying to become omnipotent himself?

Ch. 7

God melts sin away like it's ice. All the sins Augustine confesses are forgiven.

Ch. 8

Augustine loves the sin of theft because of the companionship he got in the act.

Ch. 9

The friendship that brings about sin is a corrupt version of friendship.

Ch. 10

"I fell away from thee, O my God, and in my youth I wandered too far from thee, my true support. And I became to myself a wasteland".