Summa.
Confessions
Chapter 1. He Regarded Not God Indeed Under the Form of a Human Body, But as a Corporeal Substance Diffused Through Space.
§1My wicked and shameful adolescence was now dead. I was entering young manhood. The older I became, the more disgraceful my emptiness grew. I could not think of anything as real unless it was the kind of thing usually seen with these eyes. I did not think of you in the form of a human body, God. From the moment I began to hear anything about wisdom, I always fled from that idea. I rejoiced to find this teaching in the faith of our spiritual mother, your Catholic Church. But I could not think what else you might be. I tried to think of you as a man. I tried to think of you as such a man who was the highest and only and true God. With all my heart I believed you were incorruptible and inviolable and unchangeable. Though I did not know from where or how, I saw clearly and was certain that what can be corrupted is worse than what cannot be. I unhesitatingly placed what cannot be violated above what can be violated. I knew that what suffers no change through transformation is better than what can be changed. My heart cried out violently against all my fantasies. With this single blow I tried to drive away the swarming crowd of unclean thoughts from the sight of my mind. They were scarcely pushed aside for the blink of an eye when they massed together again and were present. They rushed into my sight and clouded it. Though I no longer imagined you in the form of a human body, I was still forced to think of you as something physical spread through spaces and places. I imagined you either poured into the world or spread beyond the world through infinite space. I still thought of you as incorruptible and inviolable and unchangeable. I placed you above what is corruptible and violable and changeable. Whatever I stripped of such spatial dimensions seemed to me to be nothing at all. It seemed absolutely nothing, not even empty space. It was as if a body were removed from a place and the place remained emptied of every body. It remained empty of earthly and moist and airy and heavenly substance. Yet the place would still exist as an empty space like a spacious nothing.
§2I had grown thick of heart. I was not even visible to myself. I thought that anything that did not extend through some spaces was absolutely nothing. I thought that anything that did not spread out was nothing. I thought that anything that did not gather into a mass was nothing. I thought that anything that did not swell up was nothing. I thought that anything that could not take on such qualities was nothing. My heart moved through the same kinds of images that my eyes usually follow. I did not see that this very power by which I formed those images was not like them. Yet this power would not form the images unless it were something great. So I thought of you, life of my life, as something vast. I imagined you penetrating the whole mass of the world through infinite spaces everywhere. I imagined you extending beyond the world in every direction through immeasurable distances without end. The earth would contain you. Heaven would contain you. All things would contain you. They would be bounded within you. But you would be bounded nowhere. Just as the body of air above the earth does not block sunlight but lets it pass through completely - not by breaking apart or splitting but by being filled entirely - so I thought every body was permeable to you. I thought the bodies of heaven and air and sea could not resist you. I thought even the body of earth could not resist you. I thought you penetrated all parts both greatest and smallest to receive your presence. I thought you administered all things you created by secret inspiration both from within and from without. This is what I suspected because I could think of nothing else. But it was false. In that system the larger part of earth would contain a larger part of you. The smaller part would contain a smaller part. All things would be full of you in this way. An elephant's body would hold more of you than a sparrow's because it is bigger and occupies a larger space. You would make your parts present to the parts of the world in fragments. Great parts would go to great things. Small parts would go to small things. But you are not like this. You had not yet illuminated my darkness.
Chapter 2. The Disputation of Nebridius Against the Manichæans, on the Question Whether God Be Corruptible or Incorruptible.
§3Lord, I had more than enough evidence against those deceived deceivers. They were talkative men who had nothing real to say. Your word did not sound through them. The argument that Nebridius used to raise back in Carthage was enough to shake all of us who heard it. What could this mysterious nation of darkness do to you? The Manichees claim this dark force opposes you from some rival realm. But what if you had refused to fight against it? If they answer that it could have harmed you somehow, then you would be vulnerable and corruptible. But if they say it could do nothing to harm you, then there would be no reason to fight at all. Yet they claim you did fight. They say some portion of you, some member of yourself, some offspring from your very substance, became mixed with hostile powers. These powers were not created by you. Your divine essence became so corrupted and changed by them that it turned from blessedness to misery. It needed help to be rescued and purified. This corrupted essence, they claim, is the soul. Your word comes to serve this soul. Your word is free while the soul serves. Your word is pure while the soul is contaminated. Your word is whole while the soul is corrupted. But even your word becomes corruptible because it shares the same substance. So if they call you incorruptible—whatever you are, that is, your essential substance—then all their teachings are false and detestable. But if they call you corruptible, that itself is false and abominable from the first word. This argument was enough against people who should be completely vomited out from the pressure of the chest. They had no way to escape without committing horrible sacrilege of heart and tongue by thinking and speaking such things about you.
Chapter 3. That the Cause of Evil is the Free Judgment of the Will.
§4But even then, though I declared our Lord God to be uncontaminable and unchangeable and in no way mutable, and firmly believed that you are the true God who made not only our souls but also our bodies—indeed not only our souls and bodies but all things and everything—still I could not grasp a clear and unraveled explanation for the cause of evil. Whatever that cause might be, I saw that it must be sought in such a way that I would not be forced to believe that the unchangeable God was changeable. Otherwise I would become the very thing I was seeking to understand. Therefore I searched for it with confidence. I was certain that what those people said was not true—those whom I fled from with my whole heart. I saw that in asking where evil comes from, they were filled with malice. They preferred to think that your substance suffered evil rather than admit that their own substance committed evil.
§5I was trying hard to see clearly what I was hearing. Free will causes us to do evil. Your righteous judgment causes us to suffer. But I could not see this clearly. So I tried to pull my mind's sharp focus up from the depths. But I sank back down again. I tried many times. I sank back down again and again. What lifted me toward your light was this. I knew I had a will just as surely as I knew I was alive. So when I wanted something or rejected something, I was absolutely certain that I was the one wanting or rejecting. No one else. Right there I was beginning to notice the cause of my sin. But what I did unwillingly seemed more like something happening to me than something I was doing. I judged this to be punishment, not guilt. Since I thought of you as just, I quickly admitted that this punishment was not unfair to me. But then I said again: Who made me? Was it not my God? He is not only good but goodness itself. So where does this come from in me? This wanting evil and rejecting good that makes me deserve punishment. Who put this in me? Who planted this seedling of bitterness in me? After all, I was made entirely by my most sweet God. If the devil is the source, then where did the devil himself come from? If the devil became a devil when his twisted will changed him from a good angel, then where did that evil will come from? The will that made him into a devil. After all, he was made as a complete angel by the most excellent Creator. These thoughts pressed me down again and choked me. But I was not dragged down to that hell of error. In that place no one confesses to you. There people think you cause evil rather than humans doing it.
Chapter 4. That God is Not Corruptible, Who, If He Were, Would Not Be God at All.
§6This is how I strived to discover other truths. I had already discovered that the incorruptible is better than the corruptible. Therefore I acknowledged that you are incorruptible, whatever you might be. No soul has ever been able to think of anything better than you. No soul ever will be able to think of anything better than you. You are the highest and best good. Since the incorruptible is most truly and certainly superior to the corruptible, I was already placing it higher. If you were not incorruptible, I could have reached something better than my God through thought. Therefore, wherever I saw that the incorruptible should be preferred to the corruptible, there I ought to seek you. From there I should observe where evil exists. That is, I should observe where corruption itself comes from. Your substance can in no way be violated by corruption. Corruption does not violate our God in any way whatsoever. It cannot happen by will. It cannot happen by necessity. It cannot happen by sudden chance. You are God. What you will for yourself is good. You yourself are that same good. But to be corrupted is not good. You are not forced against your will to do anything. Your will is not greater than your power. Your will would be greater than your power only if you yourself were greater than yourself. But God's will and power are God himself. What could be unexpected to you who know all things? No nature exists except because you know it. Why should we say many things about why the substance that is God cannot be corrupted? If God were corruptible, he would not be God.
Chapter 5. Questions Concerning the Origin of Evil in Regard to God, Who, Since He is the Chief Good, Cannot Be the Cause of Evil.
§7I was searching for the source of evil. But I was searching wrongly. In my very investigation I could not see the evil. I arranged before my mind's eye the whole creation. I included everything we can perceive in it. The earth and sea and air. The stars and trees and other mortal things. I also included what we cannot see in it. The firmament of heaven above. All the angels and all spiritual beings. But my imagination arranged even these spiritual beings as if they were bodies in various places. I made your creation into one great mass distinguished by types of bodies. Some were truly bodies. Others I had invented as spirits. I made this mass great. Not as great as it actually was, for I could not know that. But as great as I pleased. Finite on all sides certainly. But you, Lord, I thought of as surrounding and penetrating it on every side. Yet infinite throughout. As if there were sea everywhere. An infinite sea alone extending immensely in all directions. And it contained within itself some very large sponge. But finite nonetheless. That sponge would certainly be filled in every part of itself from the immense sea. So I thought your finite creation was filled with you who are infinite. And I said:"Behold God. And behold what God created. And God is good. Mightiest and by far most excellent above these things. But still good, he created good things. And behold how he surrounds and fills them."Where then is evil? And from where? And by what path did it creep in here? What is its root? And what is its seed? Or does it not exist at all? Why then do we fear and guard against what does not exist? Or if we fear in vain, certainly fear itself is evil. It goads and tortures the heart uselessly. And it is a worse evil because there is nothing we should fear, yet we fear. Therefore either there is evil which we fear, or this is evil because we fear. From where then does evil come, since God made all these things? Good made good things? The greater and supreme good made lesser good things. But still creator and created things are all good. From where is evil? Or was there some evil matter from which he made them? Did he form and order it but leave something in it which he did not convert to good? Why even this? Was he powerless to turn and change the whole so that no evil remained, when he is omnipotent? Finally, why did he want to make something from it? Why did he not rather by that same omnipotence cause it not to exist at all? Or truly could it exist against his will? Or if it was eternal, why did he allow it to be so for so long through infinite stretches of past time? Why did it please him so much later to make something from it? Or if he suddenly wanted to do something, would not the omnipotent rather do this? That it should not exist, and he alone should be the whole, true and supreme and infinite good? Or if it was not good that something good should not also be fashioned and created by him who was good, then with that evil matter removed and reduced to nothing, he himself would establish good matter from which to create all things. For he would not be omnipotent if he could not create something good unless he were helped by matter which he himself had not created. I was turning such thoughts in my wretched heart. It was heavy with most gnawing cares from fear of death. And I was not finding truth. Yet faith in your Christ, our Lord and Savior, stuck firmly in my heart in the Catholic Church. Formless still in many ways indeed. Fluctuating beyond the rule of doctrine. But nevertheless my soul did not abandon that faith. Rather it drank it in more and more each day.
Chapter 6. He Refutes the Divinations of the Astrologers, Deduced from the Constellations.
§8I had already rejected the false predictions of mathematicians and their wicked delusions. Let your mercies confess to you from the deepest parts of my soul, my God. For you are everything. Who else calls us back from the death of every error except the life that knows no death and the wisdom that illuminates needy minds while needing no light itself? By this wisdom the world is governed down to the flying leaves of trees. You arranged for my stubbornness. I had fought against Vindicianus, that sharp old man, and Nebridius, a young man of wonderful soul. Vindicianus strongly affirmed that there was no art for seeing the future. Nebridius said the same thing with some doubt but frequently. He said that human guesses often have the power of chance. By saying many things, people often speak of things that will happen. They don't know what they're saying but stumble upon truth by not staying silent. So you arranged for me a friend. He was not a lazy consulter of mathematicians nor well-versed in those writings. But as I said, he was a curious consulter who knew something he claimed to have heard from his father. He didn't know how much this would overturn belief in that art. This man was named Firminus. He was liberally educated and polished in speech. He consulted me as his dearest friend about some of his affairs. His worldly hopes had swelled regarding these matters. He asked what I thought according to what they call constellations. I had already begun to lean toward Nebridius's opinion about this matter. I wouldn't refuse to guess and say what occurred to my wavering mind. But I would add that I was almost persuaded that these things were ridiculous and empty. Then he told me his father had been most curious about such books. His father had a friend equally devoted to pursuing these things. With equal enthusiasm and collaboration, they breathed the fire of their hearts into these trifles. They even observed the moments when dumb animals were born at home. They noted the position of the sky at those times. From this they collected experiments for this supposed art. So he said he had heard from his father this story. When Firminus's mother was pregnant with him, a certain slave woman of his father's friend was also growing large with child at the same time. This could not escape the master's notice. He took care to know the births of his dogs with the most careful attention. It happened that one man counted the days and hours and smaller divisions of hours of his wife with the most careful observation. The other did the same for his slave woman. Both women gave birth at the same time. This forced the same constellations down to the same minutes for each child being born. One was born to the son, the other to the little slave. When the women began to give birth, both men informed each other what was happening in each one's house. They prepared messengers to send to each other. This way each would be announced as soon as what was being born had been born. They easily arranged for immediate announcement, as if in their own kingdoms. Those sent from each side met each other at such equal distances from their houses that neither was allowed to note any different position of stars or different particles of moments. Yet Firminus was born into an ample position among his people. He traveled the whiter paths of the world. He was increased with riches. He was elevated with honors. But that slave remained under the yoke of his condition with no relaxation. He served his masters. This was indicated by the very man who knew him.
§9I heard this story and believed it. The man had told it just as it happened. All my resistance collapsed and fell away. I first tried to turn Firminus himself away from that curiosity. I told him this: if I had examined his star positions to make true predictions, I should have seen there that his parents held leading positions among their peers. I should have seen a noble family in their own city. I should have seen a free birth and respectable upbringing and a liberal education. But suppose that slave had consulted me about those same star positions. His positions were identical to Firminus's. Suppose he wanted me to give him true predictions too. Then I should have had to see there instead a most degraded family. I should have seen a slave's condition. I should have seen everything else far different from the first case and far removed from it. But how could this happen? How could I look at identical positions yet say different things if I spoke truly? And if I said identical things, I would speak falsely. From this one thing can be gathered with absolute certainty. When true things are spoken after examining star positions, they are not spoken by skill but by chance. When false things are spoken, it is not from lack of skill but from the deception of chance.
§10Having gained this insight, I pondered these matters within myself. I wanted to be ready for any of those same deluded people who pursue such profit. I was eager to attack them and refute them with mockery. I didn't want any of them to resist me by claiming that either Firminus or his father had told me lies. I focused my attention on people who are born as twins. Most twins are delivered from the womb one right after the other. The astrologers claim that even the tiny interval of time between their births has great power in nature. But this interval cannot be measured by human observation. It cannot be recorded at all in the charts that the astrologer must examine to make true predictions. Yet the predictions will not be true. The astrologer examines identical charts. He should have said identical things about Esau and Jacob. But identical things did not happen to both of them. Therefore he would speak falsely. If he spoke truly, he would not say identical things even though he examined identical charts. So he would speak truly not by skill but by chance. You, Lord, are the most just ruler of the universe. You work through hidden impulse on both those who consult astrologers and the astrologers themselves, though neither knows it. When anyone consults an astrologer, he hears what he ought to hear according to the hidden merits of souls. This comes from the abyss of your just judgment. Let no man say about this:"What is this?"or"Why is this?"Let him not say it. He is only human.
Chapter 7. He is Severely Exercised as to the Origin of Evil.
§11You had already freed me from those chains, my helper, and I was searching for the source of evil. There was no way out. But you did not let any waves of thought carry me away from the faith by which I believed. I believed that you exist. I believed that your substance is unchangeable. I believed that you care for humanity and judge it. I believed that in Christ your Son our Lord and through the holy Scriptures commended by your Catholic Church's authority, you had established the path of human salvation. This path leads to the life that will come after this death. With these truths safe and unshakably strengthened in my mind, I searched with burning intensity for the source of evil. What torments my heart endured in giving birth to understanding! What groans I uttered, my God! Your ears were there, though I did not know it. When I searched intensely in silence, my soul's silent anguish cried out loudly to your mercy. You knew what I was suffering. No human being knew. How little of this struggle reached my closest friends through my words! Could the whole tumult of my soul sound in their ears when neither time nor my mouth was sufficient to express it? Yet everything went into your hearing when I roared from my heart's groaning. My desire was before you, but the light of my eyes was not with me. The light was within. I was outside. It existed in no place. Yet I was straining toward things contained in places. I found no place there to rest. These things would not receive me so I could say"It is enough"and"It is well."They would not let me return to where it would be enough and well for me. I was superior to these material things but inferior to you. You are true joy for me when I submit to you. You had subjected to me what you created below me. This was the right balance and the middle region of my salvation. I should remain in your image. I should serve you and rule my body. But when I rose up proudly against you and ran against the Lord with the thick boss of my shield, even the lowest things were set above me. They pressed down on me. Nowhere was there relief or breathing space. They rushed at me from every direction in heaps and masses when I tried to see. When I tried to think, physical images blocked my way back. It was as if someone said"Where are you going, you unworthy and filthy one?"These obstacles had grown from my wound. You had humbled me like one wounded because I was proud. My swelling separated me from you. My face was so puffed up that it closed my eyes.
Chapter 8. By God's Assistance He by Degrees Arrives at the Truth.
§12You, Lord, remain forever. You do not stay angry with us forever. You have shown mercy to earth and ashes. It pleased you to reshape what was misshapen in me. You stirred me with inner goads. You made me restless until you became certain to me through inward sight. My swelling subsided under your hidden healing hand. The sharp and clouded vision of my mind was healed day by day. Your medicine was the bitter salve of my healing sorrows.
Chapter 9. He Compares the Doctrine of the Platonists Concerning the Λόγος With the Much More Excellent Doctrine of Christianity.
§13First, wanting to show me how you resist the proud but give grace to the humble, and how great your mercy has been demonstrated to humanity through the path of humility—that your Word became flesh and dwelt among men—you arranged for me to receive certain books of the Platonists through a man swollen with monstrous pride. These books had been translated from Greek into Latin. There I read—not in these exact words, but the same meaning urged by many complex arguments—that in the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God. The Word was God. This was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him. Without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life. Life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness. The darkness has not understood it. Though the human soul bears witness to the light, it is not itself the light. But the Word, God himself, is the true light that enlightens every person coming into this world. He was in the world. The world was made through him. The world did not know him. He came to his own. His own did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, he gave power to become children of God—to those believing in his name. This last part I did not read there.
§14I also read there that the Word is God. He was not born from flesh or blood or from a man's will or from the flesh's desire. He was born from God. But I did not read there that the Word became flesh and lived among us. I searched through those writings thoroughly. They say in various ways and many forms that the Son exists in the Father's form. He did not consider equality with God something to seize because he is naturally the same. But those books do not contain this truth. He emptied himself by taking the form of a servant. He was made in human likeness. He was found in appearance as a man. He humbled himself and became obedient to death. Even death on a cross. Therefore God raised him from the dead and gave him the name above every name. At Jesus' name every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. Every tongue will confess that Lord Jesus exists in God the Father's glory. This truth appears there. Before all time and above all time your only Son remains unchangeable and eternal with you. Souls receive from his fullness so they may be blessed. They are renewed by participating in wisdom that remains in itself so they may be wise. But this does not appear there. He died for the ungodly at the appointed time. You did not spare your only Son but handed him over for all of us. You have hidden these things from the wise and revealed them to little children. The weary and burdened come to him and he gives them rest. He is gentle and humble in heart. He guides the humble in justice and teaches the meek his ways. He sees our lowliness and our toil and forgives all our sins. But those who are lifted up on the high boots of superior doctrine do not hear him saying this. Learn from me because I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. Even though they know God they do not glorify him as Lord or give thanks. They become futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts are darkened. They claim to be wise but have become fools.
§15And so I read there that they had changed your unchangeable glory of incorruption into idols and various images. These were made in the likeness of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed beasts and serpents. This was truly Egyptian food by which Esau lost his birthright. For the firstborn people honored the head of a four-footed beast instead of you. Their heart had turned back to Egypt. They bowed their soul before the image of you.
Chapter 13. It is Meet to Praise the Creator for the Good Things Which are Made in Heaven and Earth.
§19I found these things there but did not consume them. It pleased you, Lord, to remove the reproach of diminishment from Jacob so that the elder would serve the younger. You called the nations into your inheritance. I had come to you from among the nations. I focused on the gold that you wanted your people to take from Egypt because it was yours wherever it was. You told the Athenians through your apostle that in you we live and move and have our being, as some of their own poets had said. Those books certainly came from that source. I did not focus on the idols of the Egyptians whom they served with your gold. These people exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator. From there I was warned to return to myself. I entered my innermost being with you as guide. I was able because you became my helper. I entered and saw with whatever eye my soul possessed, above that same eye of my soul, above my mind, an unchangeable light. This was not the common light visible to all flesh. It was not simply a greater version of the same kind, as if that ordinary light shone much more brightly and filled everything with its magnitude. It was not that at all. It was something else, something completely different from all these things. It was not above my mind the way oil floats above water or the way heaven stretches above earth. It was higher because it made me. I was lower because I was made by it. Whoever knows truth knows that light. Whoever knows that light knows eternity. Love knows it. O eternal truth and true love and beloved eternity! You are my God. I sigh for you day and night. When I first knew you, you lifted me up so I could see that what I saw exists and that I was not yet one who could truly see. You struck back at the weakness of my sight, blazing into me powerfully. I trembled with love and terror. I discovered I was far from you in a region of complete difference. It was as if I heard your voice from on high saying:"I am food for the mature. Grow up and you will eat me. You will not change me into yourself like bodily food. Instead you will be changed into me."I learned that you discipline man for his iniquity and make his soul waste away like a spider's web. I said:"Is truth nothing since it spreads through neither finite nor infinite spaces?"You cried from far away:"No indeed! I Am Who I Am."I heard as one hears in the heart. There was no room for doubt at all. I could more easily doubt that I live than doubt that truth exists, truth that is seen and understood through the things that are made. I examined other things below you. I saw that they neither completely exist nor completely fail to exist. They exist because they come from you. They do not exist because they are not what you are. Only that truly exists which remains unchangeably. It is good for me to cling to God because if I do not remain in him, I cannot remain even in myself. He remains in himself and renews all things. You are my God because you need none of my good things. It became clear to me that things that become corrupted are good. If they were supremely good they could not be corrupted because they would be incorruptible. If they were not good at all there would be nothing in them to corrupt. Corruption causes harm. Unless it diminished good it would cause no harm. Either corruption causes no harm, which is impossible, or all things that become corrupted are deprived of good, which is absolutely certain. If they are deprived of all good they will cease to exist entirely. If they continue to exist and can no longer be corrupted, they will be better because they will remain incorruptibly. What could be more absurd than saying they become better by losing all good? Therefore if they are deprived of all good they will be nothing at all. As long as they exist they are good. Therefore whatever exists is good. The evil I was looking for does not have substance. If it had substance it would be good. It would either be incorruptible substance, which would certainly be a great good, or corruptible substance, which could not be corrupted unless it were good. So I saw and it was revealed to me that you made all good things. There are absolutely no substances that you did not make. Because you did not make all things equal, everything exists. Individual things are good and all things together are very good because our God made all things very good. There is absolutely no evil for you, not only for you but not for your whole creation either. Outside your creation there is nothing that can break in and corrupt the order you imposed on it. In some parts of creation certain things are considered evil because they do not suit other things. Yet these same things suit still others and are good. They are good in themselves. All these things that do not suit each other do suit the lower part of reality that we call earth. Earth has its own cloudy and windy sky that fits it properly. Let me never say these things should not exist! Even if I saw only these things, I would desire better ones, but I should praise you even for these alone. They show that you deserve praise: sea monsters and all the depths, fire and hail, snow and ice, stormy wind fulfilling your word, mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, beasts and all livestock, creeping things and flying birds, kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the earth, young men and maidens together, old men and children praise your name. When even the heavens praise you, praise you our God in the heights, all your angels, all your powers, sun and moon, all stars and light, heaven of heavens and the waters above the heavens praise your name, then I no longer desired better things because I was thinking of everything. With sounder judgment I considered that the higher things are better than the lower, but all things together are better than the higher things alone.
Chapter 14. Being Displeased with Some Part Of God's Creation, He Conceives of Two Original Substances.
§20There is no health in those who find fault with any part of your creation. I was like this when many things you had made displeased me. My soul did not dare to be displeased with my God. So it refused to accept that whatever displeased it belonged to you. From there it went into the belief of two substances. It found no rest. It spoke foreign ideas. Returning from that error, it made itself a God spread through infinite spaces of all places. It thought this God was you. It placed this God in its heart. Once again it became a temple of its own idol, which was hateful to you. But afterward you warmed the head of one who did not know. You closed my eyes so they would not see vanity. I ceased from myself a little. My madness fell asleep. I awakened in you. I saw you as infinite in a different way. This vision was not drawn from the flesh.
Chapter 15. Whatever Is, Owes Its Being to God.
§21I looked at other things and saw that they owe their existence to you because they simply are. All finite things exist in you. But not as if you were a place containing them. Rather, you are the one who holds all things together by the hand of truth. All things are true to the extent that they exist. There is no such thing as falsehood except when something is thought to exist that does not exist. I saw that things fit properly not only in their places but also in their times. You alone are eternal. You did not begin your work after countless ages had passed. All spans of time—both those that have gone by and those that will come—would neither depart nor arrive except through your working and your abiding.
Chapter 16. Evil Arises Not from a Substance, But from the Perversion of the Will.
§22I learned from experience that this is not surprising. Bread punishes an unhealthy palate, though it delights a healthy one. Light repels diseased eyes, though it charms clear ones. Your justice displeases the wicked. So do the viper and the worm, which you created as good things suited to the lower parts of your creation. The wicked themselves are suited to these lower parts, the more they differ from you. They become suited to the higher parts, the more they grow like you. I searched for what wickedness might be. I found no substance. Instead I found the perversity of a will twisted away from you, the highest substance, toward the lowest things. This will casts away its inner treasure and swells with outward pride.
Chapter 17. Above His Changeable Mind, He Discovers the Unchangeable Author of Truth.
§23I was amazed that I now loved you for yourself, not some phantom of you. I did not persist in enjoying my God. Instead I was swept up to you by your beauty. Then I was torn away from you by my own weight. I crashed down into these lower things with groaning. This weight was the habit of the flesh. But the memory of you stayed with me. I had no doubt whatsoever that you existed for me to cling to. But I was not yet fit to cling to you. The body that decays weighs down the soul. Our earthly dwelling oppresses the mind that thinks about many things. I was absolutely certain of this truth. Your invisible qualities have been clearly seen since the creation of the world. They are understood from what has been made. Your eternal power and divine nature are visible too. I was searching for the source of my approval of beauty in bodies, whether heavenly or earthly. I wanted to know what was available to me when I made sound judgments about changeable things. I would say"This should be this way"and"That should not be that way."While searching for the source of such judgments, I discovered something. Above my changeable mind was the unchangeable and true eternity of truth. And so I climbed step by step. From bodies I went to the soul that senses through the body. From there I went to the soul's inner power. The bodily senses report external things to this power, as far as beasts are able. From there I went again to the reasoning faculty. To this faculty is referred the judging of what is received from the bodily senses. This faculty also discovered that it was changeable in me. So it lifted itself up to its own understanding. It drew thought away from habit. It withdrew from the contradicting crowds of fantasies. It sought to find the light by which it was sprinkled. Without any doubt it cried out that the unchangeable must be preferred to the changeable. From this came its knowledge of the unchangeable itself. Unless it knew the unchangeable in some way, it could never with certainty prefer it to the changeable. And it arrived at that which truly is, in a flash of trembling sight. Then indeed I saw your invisible qualities through the things that have been made, understood by the mind. But I could not fix my gaze steadily. I was beaten back by weakness and returned to my usual state. I carried with me only a loving memory. I was like someone who had caught the scent of food they desired but could not yet eat.
Chapter 18. Jesus Christ, the Mediator, is the Only Way of Safety.
§24I searched for a way to gain the strength I needed to enjoy you. I could not find it until I embraced the mediator between God and humanity. This mediator is the man Christ Jesus, who is God blessed above all things forever. He called out to me saying,"I am the way, the truth, and the life."He mixed spiritual food with flesh because I was too weak to take it in pure form. The Word became flesh so that your wisdom, through which you created all things, might become milk for our infancy. I did not grasp my Lord Jesus in humility as a humble person. I did not understand what his weakness was meant to teach. Your Word is eternal truth. It towers above the higher parts of your creation and lifts up those beneath toward itself. But in the lower realms it built for itself a humble house from our clay. Through this house it would humble those who needed to be brought low. It would draw them to itself. It would heal their pride and nourish their love. The divine plan prevented them from advancing further in self-confidence. Instead they would be weakened when they saw divinity made weak before their very feet. This weakness came from sharing in our coat of skin. Exhausted, they would prostrate themselves before this weak divinity. Then that same divinity, rising up, would lift them up.
Chapter 19. He Does Not Yet Fully Understand the Saying of John, that The Word Was Made Flesh.
§25I had a different understanding. I thought of my Lord Christ only as a man of exceptional wisdom. No one could equal him. He was born miraculously from a virgin. He served as an example of despising temporal things to gain immortality. Through divine care for us, he seemed to have earned such great teaching authority. I could not even suspect what mystery was contained in"THE WORD BECAME FLESH."I knew only what was written about him in the records. He ate and drank. He slept and walked. He rejoiced and grieved. He spoke. That flesh was united to your Word along with a human soul and mind. Anyone who knows the unchangeability of your Word understands this. I already knew this as much as I could. I had no doubt about it whatsoever. Moving body parts by will, then not moving them—this belongs to a changeable soul and mind. Being affected by some emotion, then not being affected—this too shows changeability. Speaking wise sayings through signs, then remaining silent—all of this reveals the nature of a mutable soul and mind. If these things written about him were false, then everything would be endangered by lies. No salvation through faith would remain for humanity in those Scriptures. Since these things were written truthfully, I recognized the complete man in Christ. Not just a human body. Not just a soul with a body but without a mind. The complete man. Yet I thought he surpassed others not as the person of Truth itself, but through some great excellence of human nature. I believed he excelled through more perfect participation in wisdom. Alypius thought Catholics believed that God was clothed in flesh in such a way that Christ had only God and flesh. He did not think a human soul existed in him. He did not believe a human mind was proclaimed to be in him. He was firmly convinced that the deeds recorded about Christ could not happen without a living and rational creature. This made him slower to move toward the Christian faith. Later he learned that this was the error of the Apollinarist heretics. He rejoiced and aligned himself with the Catholic faith. I confess that I learned much later how Catholic truth differs from Photinian falsehood in the matter of"the Word became flesh."The refutation of heretics makes your Church's beliefs stand out clearly. It shows what sound doctrine contains."There must be heresies so that those who are approved may become manifest among the weak."
Chapter 20. He Rejoices that He Proceeded from Plato to the Holy Scriptures, and Not the Reverse.
§26After I read those books of the Platonists, they prompted me to seek incorporeal truth. Through them I caught sight of your invisible realities, understood through the things you made. Yet I felt myself repelled and sensed what the darkness of my soul prevented me from contemplating. I was certain that you exist and are infinite, though you do not spread yourself through finite or infinite spaces. I knew truly that you are the one who is always the same, never different in any part or through any motion. I understood that all other things come from you, proven by this most solid evidence: they exist. I was indeed certain about these truths, but too weak to enjoy you. I chattered away as if I were an expert. Had I not sought your way in Christ our Savior, I would have been not an expert but one about to perish. I had already begun wanting to appear wise, full of my own punishment. I did not weep. Instead, knowledge puffed me up. Where was that love which builds up, founded on the humility which is Christ Jesus? When would those books teach me such love? I believe you wanted me to encounter those books before I considered your Scriptures. This would imprint on my memory how they affected me. Later, when your books had made me gentle and your healing fingers touched my wounds, I could discern the difference between presumption and confession. I could distinguish between those who see where they should go but not how to get there, and the way that leads to the blessed homeland—not just to be seen but to be inhabited. If I had first been instructed by your holy Scriptures and grown sweet in their familiarity, then later stumbled upon those volumes, perhaps they would have torn me away from the foundation of piety. Or if I had remained in the healthy disposition I had absorbed, I might have thought that same disposition could be conceived from those books alone, if someone had studied only them.
Chapter 21. What He Found in the Sacred Books Which are Not to Be Found in Plato.
§27So I eagerly seized the revered pen of your Spirit, especially the apostle Paul. Those questions in which Paul once seemed to contradict himself disappeared. The questions where his words seemed inconsistent with the testimonies of the Law and the Prophets vanished. A single face of pure eloquence appeared to me. I learned to rejoice with trembling. I began reading. I discovered that everything true I had read elsewhere was spoken here with the endorsement of your grace. The one who sees should not boast as if he had not received what he sees. He should not boast even in his ability to see. What does he have that he did not receive? Let him not only be reminded to see you, who are always the same. Let him also be healed so that he may hold onto you. The one who cannot see from far away should still walk the path by which he may come and see and hold. Even if a man delights in God's law according to his inner man, what will he do about another law in his members? This law fights against the law of his mind. It leads him captive under the law of sin that exists in his members. You are righteous, Lord. But we have sinned and acted wickedly and behaved impiously. Your hand weighs heavy upon us. We have been justly handed over to the ancient sinner who rules over death. He persuaded our will to resemble his will, by which he did not stand in your truth. What will wretched man do? Who will free him from this body of death? Only your grace through Jesus Christ our Lord will free him. You gave birth to him as coeternal with yourself. You created him in the beginning of your ways. The prince of this world found nothing in him worthy of death, yet killed him. The record of debt that stood against us was canceled. Those other writings do not contain this. Those pages do not have the face of this devotion. They lack the tears of confession, your sacrifice, the crushed spirit, the broken and humbled heart. They lack the salvation of the people, the bride city, the pledge of the Holy Spirit, the cup of our redemption. No one there sings:"Will not my soul be subject to God? From him comes my salvation. He himself is my God and my savior, my protector. I will not be moved again."No one there hears the one calling:"Come to me, all who labor."They disdain to learn from him that he is gentle and humble in heart. You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to little children. It is one thing to see the homeland of peace from a wild mountaintop but not find the path to it. It is another thing to attempt the journey in vain through pathless places while fugitive deserters lie in ambush with their prince, the lion and dragon. But it is entirely different to hold the way that leads there. This way is fortified by the court of the heavenly Emperor. Those who deserted the heavenly army do not commit robbery there. They avoid that way as if it were punishment. These truths penetrated my heart in wondrous ways when I read the least of your apostles. I had contemplated your works and trembled.