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.