Summa.
Confessions
Chapter 1. Deluded by an Insane Love, He, Though Foul and Dishonourable, Desires to Be Thought Elegant and Urbane.
I came to Carthage. A cauldron of shameful loves roared around me on every side. I was not yet in love. But I loved the idea of loving. From a hidden need I hated myself for needing too little. I searched for something to love because I loved loving itself. I hated safety. I hated any path without snares. A hunger gnawed at me from within. It came from lacking you as my inner food, my God. Yet this hunger did not make me hungry. I had no desire for food that does not spoil. This was not because I was full of such food. The emptier I was, the more I despised it. So my soul was sick. Covered with sores, it threw itself outward in misery. It craved to be scratched by contact with things that could be felt. But if those things had no soul, they certainly would not be loved. To love and be loved was sweet to me. It was sweeter still if I could also enjoy my lover's body. So I polluted the stream of friendship with the filth of lust. I clouded its brightness with the hell of desire. Yet though I was foul and dishonorable, I longed to appear elegant and sophisticated in my overflowing vanity. I even rushed into love because I wanted to be caught. My God, my mercy, with how much bitterness you sprinkled that sweetness! How good you are! I was loved in return. I secretly reached the bond of physical pleasure. I was bound with joyful chains of misery. I was beaten with red-hot iron rods of jealousy and suspicion and fear and anger and quarrels.
Chapter 2. In Public Spectacles He is Moved by an Empty Compassion. He is Attacked by a Troublesome Spiritual Disease.
Theatrical spectacles carried me away. They were full of images of my own miseries and fuel for my fire. Why does a person want to feel pain when watching sorrowful and tragic scenes that he himself would never want to endure? Yet the spectator wants to suffer pain from these scenes. That pain itself becomes his pleasure. What is this but wretched madness? A person is moved more deeply by these emotions the less healthy he is regarding such feelings. When he suffers himself, we call it misery. When he suffers with others, we usually call it compassion. But what kind of compassion exists in fictional and theatrical situations? The listener is not stirred to help anyone. He is only invited to feel pain. He favors the actor of these images more when he grieves more. If those human calamities, whether ancient or false, are performed in such a way that the spectator feels no pain, he leaves disgusted and critical. But if he does feel pain, he stays focused. He weeps with joy.
So then are sorrows themselves loved? Certainly every person wants to rejoice. Though no one wants to be miserable, people still want to be merciful. Since mercy cannot exist without sorrow, this alone explains why sorrows are loved. This too flows from that wellspring of friendship. But where does it go? Where does it flow? Why does it rush down into a torrent of boiling pitch? Why into those monstrous tides of foul lusts? Mercy itself is transformed and twisted when it turns away from heavenly serenity by its own choice and is hurled downward. Should mercy then be rejected? Not at all. So sorrows should sometimes be loved. But guard against impurity, my soul, under the protection of my God. Under God of our fathers, who is praiseworthy and exalted above all forever. Guard against impurity. I am not without mercy now. But back then in the theaters I rejoiced with lovers when they indulged themselves through shameful acts. They were only acting these things out in theatrical performance. When they lost each other, I grieved as if showing mercy. Yet both responses delighted me. Now I have greater mercy for someone who rejoices in shameful behavior than for someone who suffers loss of destructive pleasure and misses wretched happiness. This is certainly truer mercy. But in this mercy, sorrow brings no delight. Even though someone who grieves for the miserable is approved for doing charity's work, anyone who is truly merciful would prefer that nothing existed to grieve over. If there could be malicious benevolence—which cannot be—then someone who shows mercy truly and sincerely could desire that people be miserable so he could show mercy. Therefore some sorrow should be approved. None should be loved. This is what you do, Lord God, who love souls. You show mercy far more purely than we do and more incorruptibly. No sorrow wounds you. And who is sufficient for these things?
But I was wretched then and loved to grieve. I searched for something to cause me pain. When I watched another's suffering on stage—false and theatrical—the actor's performance pleased me most and drew me in most powerfully when it made me weep. What wonder is there in this? I was an unhappy beast wandering from your flock. I could not bear your guidance and was defiled by shameful disease. This is where my love of sorrows came from. I did not love these feelings so they might penetrate me deeply. I did not actually want to endure what I was watching. Instead I wanted only to be scratched on the surface by what I heard and what was fabricated. Yet even this scratching brought burning inflammation like clawing fingernails. It brought decay and horrible infection. Was such a life really life at all, my God?
Chapter 3. Not Even When at Church Does He Suppress His Desires. In the School of Rhetoric He Abhors the Acts of the Subverters.
Your faithful mercy was circling above me from afar. I melted away into countless sins. I followed a sinful curiosity that led me away from you. It brought me down to the deepest unfaithful places. It brought me to the deceptive services of demons. I sacrificed my evil deeds to them. In all these things you were beating me with your rod. I even dared to desire and pursue deadly business during your holy celebrations. I did this within the walls of your own church. You struck me with heavy punishments for this. But these were nothing compared to my guilt. O my God, you are my enormous mercy. You are my refuge from the terrible harm I was wandering through. I walked with a proud neck. I moved far away from you. I loved my own ways and not yours. I loved the freedom of a runaway.
There were also those studies that people called honorable. These drew my attention toward the contentious law courts so I might excel in them. The more fraudulent I became, the more praiseworthy I would be. Such is the blindness of men. They even boast about their blindness. I was now older and studying under a teacher of rhetoric. I rejoiced with pride and swelled with vanity. Yet I was far more restrained than others, as you know, Lord. I stayed completely away from the destruction caused by those called"The Wreckers."This sinister and diabolical name served as a badge of sophistication. I lived among them with shameless shame because I was not like them. I was with them and sometimes enjoyed their friendships. Yet I always recoiled from their deeds. These were acts of destruction. They would brazenly attack the modesty of strangers. They would upset these people for no reason and mock them. In this way they fed their malicious joy. Nothing resembles the acts of demons more than this behavior. What could they be called more truthfully than wreckers? They themselves were already wrecked and perverted first. Deceptive spirits secretly mocked them and led them astray. This happened through the very thing they loved to do to others. They loved to mock and deceive.
Chapter 4. In the Nineteenth Year of His Age (His Father Having Died Two Years Before) He is Led by the Hortensius Of Cicero to Philosophy, To God, and a Better Mode of Thinking.
Among these students I was learning the books of eloquence. I was weak in age then. I wanted to excel in this field for a damnable and empty purpose through the pleasures of human vanity. I had already reached a book by a certain Cicero following the usual order of learning. Almost everyone admires his language. His heart they do not admire so much. But that book of his contains an exhortation to philosophy. It is called the Hortensius. That book changed my feelings. It turned my prayers toward you, Lord. It made my wishes and desires different. Suddenly every vain hope became worthless to me. I began to long for the immortality of wisdom with incredible fire in my heart. I began to rise up so that I might return to you. I was not using that book to sharpen my tongue. That is what I seemed to be purchasing with my mother's payments when I was in my nineteenth year of age. My father had already died two years before. So I was not reading that book to sharpen my tongue. It was not the way Cicero spoke that persuaded me. It was what he spoke.
How I burned, my God, how I burned to fly back from earthly things to you. But I did not know what you were doing with me. Wisdom belongs to you. The love of wisdom has a Greek name: philosophy. Those writings set me on fire with this love. There are some who seduce others through philosophy. They color and disguise their errors with grand and flattering and honorable words. Almost all such people from those times and before are marked out in that book and exposed. There the life-giving warning of your Spirit is revealed through your good and faithful servant:"See to it that no one deceives you through philosophy and empty deception, according to human tradition, according to the basic principles of this world, and not according to Christ. For in him all the fullness of deity dwells bodily."At that time, as you know, light of my heart, these apostolic words were not yet known to me. Yet this one thing delighted me in that exhortation. I was stirred up by those words to love and seek and attain and hold and embrace firmly wisdom itself—not this school or that school, but wisdom, whatever it might be. I was set on fire and burned with desire. But this one thing restrained me in all that blazing passion: the name of Christ was not there. For according to your mercy, Lord, this name of my Savior your Son had soaked into my tender heart even with my mother's milk. It held me fast deep within. Whatever was without this name, however learned and polished and true it might be, could not capture me completely.
Chapter 5. He Rejects the Sacred Scriptures as Too Simple, and as Not to Be Compared with the Dignity of Tully.
So I decided to focus my mind on the Holy Scriptures to see what they were like. I saw something not accessible to the proud and not laid bare to children. It appeared humble in approach but lofty in outcome and veiled in mysteries. I was not the kind of person who could enter into it or bow my neck to follow its steps. When I turned my attention to that Scripture, I did not feel as I speak now. It seemed to me unworthy to compare with Cicero's dignity. My pride recoiled from its restraint. My sharp mind could not penetrate its depths. Yet it was something that would grow with little ones. But I scorned to be a little child. Swollen with arrogance, I seemed great to myself.
Chapter 6. Deceived by His Own Fault, He Falls into the Errors of the Manichæans, Who Gloried in the True Knowledge of God and in a Thorough Examination of Things.
I fell among men who were proudly deluded. They were too fleshly and full of empty talk. In their mouths were the snares of the devil. There was birdlime made from mixing together the syllables of your name and of our Lord Jesus Christ and of the Paraclete our comforting Holy Spirit. These names never left their lips. But this was only in sound and the noise of the tongue. Their hearts were empty of truth. They kept saying"Truth"and"Truth."They spoke much of truth to me. But nowhere was it in them. They spoke falsely not only about you who are truly Truth. They also spoke falsely about these elements of this world which are your creation. Even when philosophers spoke truly about these things I should have passed beyond them out of love for you. You are my highest good Father. You are beauty of all beautiful things. O Truth, Truth! Even then the very marrow of my soul sighed deeply for you. They sounded your name to me frequently and in many ways with voice alone and in many huge books. These were the dishes on which they served me sun and moon instead of you when I was hungering for you. These are your beautiful works but still your works, not you. They are not even your first works. Your spiritual works come before these bodily ones even though these shine and are heavenly. But I hungered and thirsted not even for those first works but for you yourself, Truth. In you there is no change or shadow of turning. Yet they still set before me on those dishes splendid fantasies. It would have been better to love this sun which is at least true to these eyes than those falsehoods that deceive the mind through the eyes. Yet because I thought they were you I ate them. I did not eat eagerly because you did not taste in my mouth as you really are. You were not those empty figments. I was not nourished by them but rather drained. Food in dreams is very much like the food of those awake. Yet sleepers are not fed by it because they are sleeping. But those fantasies were not like you in any way as you have now spoken to me. They were bodily fantasies, false bodies. The true bodies we see are more certain than these false ones whether heavenly or earthly. We see these along with cattle and birds. They are more certain than when we imagine them. Again we imagine them more certainly than when from them we suspect other greater and infinite things which do not exist at all. I was then fed on such empty things. I was not fed. But you, my love, into whom I faint so that I may be strong—you are not these bodies that we see even though they are in heaven. You are not those we do not see there because you made these things. You do not even hold them among your highest creations. How far then you are from those fantasies of mine! Those were fantasies of bodies that do not exist at all. The mental images of bodies that do exist are more certain than these fantasies. Bodies themselves are more certain than mental images. Yet you are not even these bodies. You are not even soul which is the life of bodies. Therefore you are better life of bodies and more certain than bodies. But you are life of souls, life of lives, living in yourself. You do not change, life of my soul.
Where were you for me then? How far away you were! I wandered far from you like an exile. I was shut out even from the husks that fed the pigs. I was feeding the pigs with those husks. The stories of grammarians and poets were so much better than those deceptions! Verses and poetry and flying Medea were certainly more useful than the five elements painted in false colors. Those elements represented five caves of darkness. They do not exist at all. They kill anyone who believes in them. I can apply verses and poetry to real food for thought. I used to sing about Medea flying, but I never claimed it was true. When I heard others sing about it, I did not believe it. But those other things I believed! Woe! Woe! By what steps was I led down into the depths of hell! I was struggling and burning with lack of truth. I was seeking you, my God. I confess this to you now, for you had mercy on me even when I was not yet confessing. I was not seeking you through the understanding of the mind, by which you wanted me to surpass the beasts. Instead I was seeking you through the senses of the flesh. But you were more inward than my most inward part. You were higher than my highest part. I encountered that bold woman who lacked wisdom. She was the riddle from Solomon. She sat on her chair at the doorway. She said,"Gladly eat secret bread and drink sweet stolen water."She seduced me because she found me living outside myself in the eye of my flesh. She found me chewing over in my mind the very things I had devoured through that eye.
Chapter 7. He Attacks the Doctrine of the Manichæans Concerning Evil, God, and the Righteousness of the Patriarchs.
I knew nothing else about what truly exists. Sharp arguments moved me to support foolish deceivers when they asked me questions. Where does evil come from? Is God limited by bodily form? Does he have hair and fingernails? Should we consider righteous those men who have many wives at once? Should we approve of those who kill people and sacrifice animals? Ignorant of these matters, I was deeply troubled. I thought I was moving toward truth when I was actually retreating from it. I did not know that evil is nothing but the absence of good. Evil extends only to the point where good ceases to exist entirely. How could I see this truth? My eyes could see only as far as physical objects. My mind could see only as far as mental images. I did not know that God is spirit. He has no limbs stretching through length and width. He possesses no physical mass. Physical mass is always smaller in its parts than in its whole. Even if mass were infinite, any part bounded by definite space would be smaller than the infinite whole. Mass cannot be present everywhere at once. But spirit can be. God can be. I had no idea what within us makes us similar to God. I did not understand why Scripture rightly calls us made in the image of God.
I did not know true inner justice. This justice does not judge by custom but by the perfectly straight law of almighty God. By this law the customs of regions and times are shaped according to their regions and times. Yet the law itself exists everywhere and always. It is not one thing in one place and another thing elsewhere. It is not one way at one time and different at another time. According to this law Abraham was righteous. Isaac was righteous. Jacob was righteous. Moses was righteous. David was righteous. All those praised by God's mouth were righteous. But ignorant people judge these men as wicked. They judge by human standards. They measure all the customs of the human race by the small portion of their own custom. It is like someone who knows nothing about armor and what piece fits each body part. He wants his head covered with a shin guard and his foot shod with a helmet. Then he grumbles that nothing fits properly. Or suppose justice is proclaimed for one day starting from afternoon hours. Someone gets angry that he is not allowed to offer something for sale. This is because permission was granted in the morning. Or in one house someone sees a servant handling something with his hands. But the person who serves cups is not allowed to do this same thing. Or something happens behind the stalls that is forbidden in front of the table. The person gets indignant. Yet it is one dwelling and one household. The same thing is not granted everywhere to everyone. Such are those people who get indignant when they hear that in that age righteous people were permitted something that righteous people are not permitted in this age. God commanded one thing to those people and another thing to these people for reasons related to their times. Yet both groups served the same justice. Even in one person and in one day and in one building they see that one thing suits one part and another thing suits another part. They see that something was permitted long ago but is not permitted after an hour has passed. Something is allowed or commanded in that corner that is justly forbidden and punished in this corner. Is justice variable and changeable? No. But the times over which it presides do not move at the same pace. Times are times after all. But human beings whose life on earth is brief cannot connect the causes of earlier ages and other nations they have not experienced with those they have experienced. Their senses are not strong enough. However in one body or day or house they can easily see what suits which part, which moments, which sections or persons. In those distant matters they take offense. In these present matters they submit.
I didn't understand these things back then. I failed to pay attention. These truths struck my eyes from every direction. Yet I couldn't see them. I composed songs in verse. I wasn't allowed to place just any metrical foot anywhere I wanted. Different meters required different patterns. In any single line of poetry, the same foot couldn't go in every position. But the art of poetry itself didn't change from place to place. It contained all its rules at once. I failed to recognize something about justice. Good and holy people serve this justice. It possesses all its commands simultaneously in a way far more excellent and sublime. It never varies in any respect. Yet it doesn't distribute everything at once across different times. Instead it assigns and commands what belongs to each moment. I was blind when I criticized the faithful fathers of old. They not only used present circumstances as God commanded and inspired them. They also announced future events as God revealed them.
Chapter 8. He Argues Against the Same as to the Reason of Offences.
Is it ever wrong anywhere or at any time to love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself? Therefore, crimes against nature must be detested and punished everywhere and always. These were the kinds of crimes committed by the people of Sodom. If all nations committed such acts, they would be held guilty of the same crime under divine law. God did not make human beings to use themselves in that way. The very partnership that we ought to have with God is violated when the same nature that he created is polluted by perverted lust. However, crimes against human customs must be avoided according to the variety of those customs. No citizen or foreigner should violate any agreement established by the custom or law of a city or nation through personal desire. Every part that does not fit with its whole is shameful. But when God commands something contrary to the custom or agreement of any people, it must be done even if it has never been done there before. If it has been neglected, it must be restored. If it was never established, it must be established. A king is allowed to command something in the city he rules that neither anyone before him nor he himself had ever commanded. It is not contrary to the welfare of the city to obey him. In fact, it is contrary to the city's welfare not to obey him. The general agreement of human society is to obey its kings. How much more must we serve God without hesitation in whatever he commands! God is the ruler of all his creation. Just as in the authorities of human society the greater power is set over the lesser for the purpose of obedience, so God is over all.
The same pattern appears in crimes where the desire is to harm others. This happens through insult or through injury. Both forms arise from various motives. Some seek revenge like an enemy against his foe. Others pursue gain beyond what they deserve like a robber against a traveler. Still others try to avoid harm like those who fear someone. Some act from envy like the miserable person envying the happy one. Others who have prospered fear being equaled by someone or resent having an equal. Some find pleasure simply in another's suffering like spectators at gladiator games or mockers or those who ridicule anyone. These are the sources of wickedness. They spring from the lust for dominating and for spectacle and for sensation. Sometimes one drives them. Sometimes two do. Sometimes all three work together. Life becomes evil when it opposes the three and the seven. This means opposing your ten-stringed psaltery. This means opposing your ten commandments, O God most high and most sweet. But what crimes can touch you who cannot be corrupted? What offenses can harm you who cannot be injured? Yet you punish what people commit against themselves. Even when they sin against you they act wickedly against their own souls. Iniquity lies to itself. This happens when they corrupt and pervert the nature you made and ordered. It happens when they use permitted things without restraint. It happens when they burn with passion for forbidden things in ways that go against nature. Some are found guilty when they rage against you in mind and word. They kick against the goad. Others break the boundaries of human society. They boldly delight in private schemes and divisions based on whatever pleases or offends them. These things happen when you are abandoned. You are the fountain of life. You are the one true creator and ruler of all things. When you are left behind, people love their private pride in some false particular thing. Therefore we return to you through humble devotion. You cleanse us from evil habits. You show mercy to those who confess their sins. You hear the groans of prisoners. You release us from chains we made for ourselves. This happens when we no longer raise against you the horns of false freedom. This false freedom comes from greed for having more and results in losing everything. It comes from loving what is our own more than loving you who are the good of all.
Chapter 9. That the Judgment of God and Men as to Human Acts of Violence, is Different.
But amid these shameful acts and crimes and so many injustices, there are sins of those making progress. Those who judge well both criticize these sins by the standard of perfection and praise them for their promise of fruit. They are like the green shoots of a growing crop. Some deeds appear similar to shameful acts or crimes but are not sins. They do not offend you, Lord our God, nor harm human fellowship. People gather certain things for proper use according to the times. It remains uncertain whether they act from greed for possession. Established authority punishes certain acts with the purpose of correction. It remains uncertain whether they act from the desire to harm. Therefore many deeds that would seem wrong to humans have been approved by your testimony. Many deeds praised by humans are condemned with you as witness. Often the appearance of the deed differs from the doer's heart. The hidden moment of time also matters. When you suddenly command something unusual and unexpected, it must be done. This remains true even if you once forbade this thing. This remains true even though you hide the reason for your command for a time. This remains true even though it goes against some agreement of human society. Who would doubt this must be done when that human society is just because it serves you? But blessed are those who know that you have commanded it. Everything done by those who serve you happens for a purpose. It either provides what the present moment requires or announces what is to come.
Chapter 10. He Reproves the Triflings of the Manichæans as to the Fruits of the Earth.
I was ignorant of these truths. I mocked your holy servants and prophets. But what was I accomplishing by mocking them except ensuring that you would mock me in return? Step by step I was led into such foolishness that I believed a fig weeps when it is plucked. I believed its mother tree sheds milky tears. Yet if some holy person ate that fig—plucked by another's crime, not his own—he would digest it in his bowels. He would breathe out angels from it through sighs and belches during prayer. Indeed, he would breathe out particles of God himself. These particles of the supreme and true God had been trapped in that fruit. Only the teeth and stomach of the holy elect could set them free. In my wretchedness I believed we should show more mercy to the fruits of the earth than to human beings. Yet humans were the very reason those fruits existed. If anyone who was not a Manichaean asked for food while hungry, giving him even a morsel seemed like condemning it to death by execution.
Chapter 11. He Refers to the Tears, and the Memorable Dream Concerning Her Son, Granted by God to His Mother.
You sent down your hand from on high. You rescued my soul from this deep darkness. My mother, your faithful servant, wept for me to you more than mothers weep over their children's bodily deaths. She saw my death through the faith and spirit she had received from you. You heard her, Lord. You heard her. You did not despise her tears as they flowed and watered the ground beneath her eyes in every place where she prayed. You heard her. Where else could that dream have come from by which you comforted her? The dream that made her agree to let me live with her and share the same table in her house. She had begun to refuse this. She turned away from me and hated the blasphemies of my error. In the dream she saw herself standing on a wooden ruler. A radiant young man came toward her. He was joyful and smiling at her while she was grieving and consumed with sorrow. He asked her the reasons for her sadness and daily tears. He asked to teach her, not to learn from her, as is customary. She answered that she was lamenting my ruin. He told her to be at peace. He instructed her to look carefully and see that where she was, there I was also. When she looked closely, she saw me standing next to her on the same ruler. How could this be unless your ears were turned toward her heart? O good Almighty One, you care for each of us as if you cared for that one alone. You care for all of us as if we were each individual.
Here's what happened when my mother told me about her vision. I tried to convince her that it meant she would join me in my beliefs rather than the other way around. Without any hesitation she said"No. The voice didn't tell me 'Where he is, you will be also.' It said 'Where you are, he will be also.'"I confess to you Lord that I remember this clearly. I have often spoken of how your answer through my sleeping mother affected me more than the dream itself. She was not confused by an interpretation that seemed so plausible yet was completely wrong. She saw instantly what needed to be seen. I certainly had not seen it before she spoke. Nearly nine years followed after that. I rolled around in the deep mud and darkness of falsehood. I often tried to climb out but only crashed down harder each time. Meanwhile that widow remained chaste and devout and sober. She was the kind of woman you love. Hope made her more eager but did not make her weep and groan any less. At every hour of prayer she never stopped lamenting to you about me. Her prayers entered into your sight. Yet still you let me keep rolling and getting wrapped up in that darkness.
Chapter 12. The Excellent Answer of the Bishop When Referred to by His Mother as to the Conversion of Her Son.
You gave another response in the meantime, which I remember. I pass over many things because I hurry toward those things that press me more urgently to confess to you. Many things I do not remember. You gave another response through your priest, a certain bishop raised in the Church and well-trained in your Books. When that woman asked him to speak with me and refute my errors and unteach me evil things and teach me good ones (for he did this whenever he found suitable people), he refused. This was wise, as I realized later. He answered that I was still unteachable because I was puffed up with the novelty of that heresy. I had already troubled many ignorant people with trivial questions, as she had told him."But leave him there,"he said."Just pray to the Lord for him. By reading he will discover what that error is and how great its impiety is."At the same time he told how he too had been given as a small child to the Manicheans by his deceived mother. He had not only read nearly all their books but had even written some of them. It became clear to him, with no one arguing against him or convincing him, that this sect must be fled. So he fled it. When he had said these things, she would not be satisfied but pressed him more with pleading and abundant weeping that he would see me and discuss things with me. He was now annoyed with weariness."Go away from me,"he said."Live well. It cannot be that the son of these tears should perish."She received this response as if it had sounded from heaven. She often recalled it in her conversations with me.