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.