all right well greetings to you and welcome to this lecture on Augustine's confessions um have to admit this is going to be a bit of a longer one because there's a lot of material to get through here but we'll try to swiftly work through it so Augustine's confessions what are they what is this text all about that you've been reading so far let's take it a step at a time first of all these confessions are by Augustine of Hippo or often referred to as Saint Augustine because later he would become venerated within the Christian church has really probably one of the greatest theologians of the Christian Church historically um an incredible thinker an incredibly influential philosopher and theologian um and what we're seeing a bit of here in his confessions is not necessarily all of that Theology and all of that religious belief being played out although some of it is and how he thinks about his life that raises the question because I actually had a student ask me recently especially in a course like this why have we been reading so much stuff that talks about God and talks about religion um things like Torah and selections from the New Testament uh Augustine and they'll be more even to come and really the answer to that question is because that's what dominates how people think about the world in this era um so there's no specific banter agenda here um but that you know what people have thought for a long time to be some of the greatest works of this era especially now where we're coming out of the era of The Classical period the Greco-Roman era moving into the Medieval Era this is simply what people are thinking about it's what they're talking about and we have such a great example of that here in Augustine's confessions where he indeed is confessing this stuff as he's trying to think through it and trying to understand it so that's that's really the best reason I have to answer that question now Augustine himself born into ghast which is modern-day Algeria he studies in various places teaches in various places especially Milan and Carthage later in life he converts to Christianity and then after that becomes a Christian minister he even becomes the bishop of the churches um at the at hippo the geographical place of Hippo which is in current currently would be in Algeria or in modern day Algeria we should say probably Augustana is most known for his confessions with with what we're going to be talking about in this lecture and the confessions of Augustine what are they well they're really an autobiography of Select events right he's cherry picking some things in order to make some bigger point or in order to show the trajectory of his life in a particular way in order to make some ultimate point that he wants to make which is really unique for its time many scholars for instance think that this really is the first modern autobiography in some sense modern being in the way that we would often write them today or that some people write them today indeed it's it's even more so than just talking about the events of his life but he talks about his worldview his beliefs the way that he sees reality in a way that he understands it at those various points in his past life which leads to why he makes the decisions that he does why he lives his life in the way that he does a student one told me once told me after reading the confession said I think this guy has some emotional issues and and maybe he does and he probably would have agreed with you that at some point definitely there was all kinds of issues actually going on emotional uh and things probably more severe and serious than that but uh but it's compelling it's gripping it's entertaining for sure um many students often think that it's very relatable and applicable which is fascinating that something written in the fourth and fifth century could be related to us here on the 21st so anyway I hope you've enjoyed the text we'll go through it a bit and kind of the way I want to do it in this lecture is uh is really just do that to actually go through passages so I have the text in front of me and I'm going to read various passages and comment on them and try to make some links to some things because I think that that might be a good way to do this particular text just to go to the text instead of merely outlining various points and maybe one of the reasons is that that might be the best way to do this is because um because there's so much jumping around he'll talk about something and then he'll go and he'll uh in his prayer to God to confess some things about that and then kind of go back to talking about something that happened and then something else and so um you kind of need to get the big picture of all of that to get a sense of what he's doing here in his confessions well what exactly is he confessing right we call this his confessions or he called it his confessions what is he confessing well on one hand uh or we could say this that ultimately what he's confessing is his life and everything about his life the events of his life the desires that he's had the former beliefs that he's had the current beliefs and desires that he had right I mean it's it's uh it's a history or I should say really a historiography of his life of his history um that he's giving but on the other hand we can also say that what he's confessing then understood in terms of his life are the two main points of that that he's really trying to express here one of them being his sins because so much of what he writes about and remember he's writing this as a very mature adult and he's writing it about how his life began in infant hood and everything else up to his adulthood he's really talking about his past so when we talk about his sins that's really what he's talking about is his past because he thinks that and argues that his past indeed was full of these sins and thus his regrets and thus um that which he believes at the point in time in which he's writing was wrong and he repents of that so uh it's definitely his sins that he's confessing as he sees them but the other side of that coin is he's also confessing his faith and this is what you see him do when he goes back and forth all the time and talking about some sinful event or some event in which he did a bunch of bad stuff and then in the next paragraph It's A Prayer of repentance to God where he says I can't believe I did this but I did this because I didn't know you my back was turned towards you and uh and thus no wonder that I did the horrible things that I did so his sins and his faith it's back and forth that which he's confessing and by his faith right literally what we mean is uh his faith in terms of the current trust that he has in God at the moment of writing um uh so his faith being what he believes thus what he believes about himself and what he believes about God especially to whom well to God because the whole thing is written as a Treatise to God and and this is something that we're going to see even more of in later medieval thinkers he will write in this this kind of fashion maybe not as autobiographical or autobiographical as Augustine but on sound for instance will will do the same style of writing where his audience is God and he's doing this on film he's doing this as an exercise in order to try to understand his faith a little bit better or try to understand what he believes about the world a little bit better I don't know if that's exactly what Augustine's doing here I suppose to some extent we get the sense of that but uh but nonetheless uh something along those lines is what's going on well a summary of the entire work I think is the very first paragraph I mean if you get this first paragraph down to the confessions then what you what you have is a summary of what the entire work is let me just go ahead and read this and even in this we see um a sense of what Augusta believes about himself and what he believes about the world so notice this first paragraph Great Are You O Lord so already we get a sense of how he believes his role as an inferior to something that's greater that is the Lord and exceedingly worthy of praise your power is immense and your wisdom Beyond Reckoning and so we humans who are a due part of your creation long to praise you we who carry our mortality about With Us carry the evidence of our sin and with it the proof that you thwart the proud yet these humans do part are a due part of your creation long to praise you we who carry um all mortality about With Us carry the evidence of our sin and with it the proof that youth worked the proud I think already read that didn't I sorry about that yet these humans do part of your creation as they are still too long to praise you let me stop right there for a second so what he's saying so far is something that he believes about Humanity itself we could answer the question right what what is what does it mean to be a human person for Augustine which is the theme of our course right what is it to be a person and already we get a sense of what the mature older Augustine thinks and that is that the purpose of humanity indeed is to uh praise the superior is to praise the god and doing so in light of the evidence of human sin and depravity recognizing that that's the case so I guess for Augusta recognizing then that God is a solution to that depravity into that sin and that corruption and despite that sin and Corruption Humanity still wants to do that because that's how they're created but this all comes about because of how God did it I mean for Augustine it comes down to God himself being the Catalyst for this and this is what you get in the last line which makes another point about really what the confessions is all about as he puts it you arouse us so that praising you may bring us joy because you have made us and drawn us to yourself and our heart is unquiet or Restless until it rests in you really what Augustine is doing is his confessions is giving a long drawn-out explanation of his own life and what happened in it because he really believes that all of that was a process through which God Drew Augustine to himself that is to God and by doing that or in the process of doing that Augustine looks back on his life and realizes that his life indeed is one that was utterly Restless until it rested in God and Augustine then draws the conclusion that that is just part and parcel of The Human Condition what is it to be a human person for Augustine it is to be restless until people rest in their trust and faith in God so like so much of this text fascinating well uh just two slides here in this show because I want to look at all of these different texts all these different aspects of of these parts of the confession that I've picked for you to read and talk about and so let's dig right into them now the first vignette and well maybe I'll just call them there we'll call them vignettes that he gets at and and the book one and the very first part of the confessions is that of his infant Hood he's talking about his infant hood and for him it's interesting because as an older person as a mature person a grown a grown adult he looks back at his infant Hood as one that indeed characterizes this restlessness but the restlessness that he talks about as an infant was the restlessness for comfort and for food even as an infant which he talks about as being really the milk right of his mother so if you look at on page 43 of our text here of the confessions this is in book one in paragraph seven um he talks a little bit there at the end of paragraph seven where he says at that time I knew only how to suck and be deliciously comforted and how to cry when anything hurt my body but no more so he's talking about really intellectually and cognitively just the very basic stuff going on there I know how to eat and I know how to cry when I'm experiencing some kind of discomfort and that's it but then he says he goes on to talk about how that nonetheless at this period of his life he was definitely Rife with sin Rife with corruption Rife with pride and uh material wants in some sense so at the end of paragraph eight which would be the top of page 44 he says about three lines down from the top he says often I did not get my way either because people did not understand or because what I demanded might have harmed me and then I would throw a tantrum because my elders were not subject to me nor Free People willing to be my slaves so I would take revenge on them by bursting into tears right I've never thought about it that way but I guess whenever I cried as a kid that was Revenge because because of not getting my way I'm going to put you through this uh turmoil of disturbing the peace with these shrill cries I suppose he goes he goes on I have learned that babies behave like this from those I have been able to watch and they without knowing it have taught me more surely what I was like myself than did my nurses who knew me well so so much of this that he realizes about himself he gets from just realizing how people act how little people like infants Act and he thinks he's no different indeed what do infants do well they want to get what they want when they don't get what they want they're going to make you pay for it through their shrill crying so no doubt this would have applied to him as well as it applies to all the infants apparently that he is observing at this time in his life and so paragraph 11 on page 45. oh God hear me alas for the sins of humankind a human it is who here bewails them and you treat him mercifully because you made him though the sin that is in him is not of your making who is there to remind me of the sin of my infancy for sin there was no one is free from sin in your sight not even an infant whose span of Earthly life is but a single day fascinating well why would why would he think that uh that even as an infant he is sinning in this way generally um uh in our day it's it's the more popular view I suppose among sort of a a sort of a broad evangelicalism let's say um um which not necessarily endorsing I'm just saying all right that's that's what's common in the area in which we live and work here right is that well even is is that even if there's sins that people commit right they usually don't happen until they get to a certain age that makes them uh makes them such that they're accountable for that well he disagrees with that very vehemently right that's that type of view is not even on his radar at the bottom of page 45 there uh we're in paragraph 11 now what then was my sin at that age was it perhaps that I cried so greedily for those breasts certainly if I behave like that now greedy not for breasts of course but for food suitable to my age I should provoke derision and be very properly rebuked my behavior then was equally deserving of rebuke but since I would not have been able to understand anyone who scolded me neither custom nor Common Sense allowed any rebuke to be given so interesting he says no even then I was maybe too young to be scolded too young to be disciplined but not too young to be a sinner and that's pretty much what he's saying I I did Sin I did wrong I was exercising pride and desire and we're trying to manipulate people so that I could get what I wanted there and then he goes on in the middle of page 46. the only innocent feature in babies is the weakness of their frames the minds of infants are far from innocent I have watched and experience for myself the jealousy of a small child he could not even speak yet he glared with livid Fury and his fellow nursling uh what's going on there the jealousy of someone of another infant getting fed whereas he himself did it I mean and he sees this jealousy itself as Sin as corruption um so we're off to a we're off to a banging start here aren't we with these confessions right even in infant Hood he says my life was Restless because I'm uh this will make a little bit more sense later but I'll just go ahead and throw this out there now that he sees this as the beginning of his cultivation of a life of corruption a life of trying to attain so much stuff that at the end did not bring him really any comfort or peace in life but really just instigated him to try to grasp for something else and he goes on and on and on trying to do that on paragraph 19 of book ones this is on page 52. he talks about how this uh gets exercised as he gets a little bit older and he's forced to go to school and forced to study various things one of the things he's forced to study are our languages um it's a good thing he says now he appreciates being able to read and write because after all what is he doing here in these confessions he's reading and writing right this is this is an exercise and the wonderful education that he has that started as a young child even though he didn't appreciate it then we're still in book one but on page 52 down at paragraph 20 he says even to this day I've been unable to make up my mind why I hated the Greek that was dined into me an early boy head um Greek is important especially for the kind of Theologian he he becomes because the New Testament texts are written in Greek so to really understand the original text themselves you got to know Greek so this is utterly crucial to him but what is it that he said that he loved he said he loved Latin instead well what was it in Latin that he goes on to talk about that he really loved as a boy that he could care less about the Greek and reading the New Testament reading the Bible who cares about that but it was the Latin that he loved why because Virgil's need was written in Latin and he talks about how that as a young kid he loved to read The Aeneid why uh well let's see what he says about this page 53 the second line from the top what other reason could there be for this then the sinful inane pride in my life well how did that get cashed out here Look Down Below in that paragraph on page 53 we're still on the top paragraph um far more useful than were those studies than others in which I was forced to memorize the wanderings of some fellow called Aeneas while forgetting my own waywardness and to weep over Dido who killed herself for love when all the while in my intense misery I put up with myself never a tear as I died away from you oh God who are my life what indeed is more pitiful in paragraph 21 now what indeed is more pitiful than a piteous person who has no pity what a sentence right for himself I could weep over the death of dido over the death Dido brought upon herself out of love for Aeneas yet I shed no tears over the death I brought upon myself by not loving you uh wow I mean who cares right he's a little kid so what he likes the story of the Aeneas uh or of the Aeneid and and loves the story about how Aeneas goes and founds Rome I mean it's something we've already talked about in this course because it's an incredibly important work but to understand uh sort of in a metaphorical sense how the Roman people thought about themselves how Empire thought about itself how they divide Define themselves as a superior Humanity because of their roots and the desires and the fates of the Gods themselves to create such a superior people and such an Empire and he's a fourth Century little kid who's living at really the end of the empire and um he loves it why we wouldn't rake this kid over the coals for liking that good grief in our year in our Century there's far worse fiction to be to be wrapped up in but as he looks back he sees the corruption and the sin and the evil and that being that his desires were to be wrapped up in things that did not exist Dido doesn't exist it's a work of fiction or she's a character in a work of fiction Aeneas is a character in a work of fiction and really in some way we can think of the Aeneid as a kind of propaganda in that way which we talked about already when we talked about the indeed it's a way to prop up the pride of what it is to be Roman maybe in a way that some things could prop up our pride uh so fictional accounts can prop up our pride for being American or Canadian or finish I don't know why I said that it just came to mind right there is a country named Finland um you know something along those lines I think is what he's getting at here there were far more useful things to do and yet his desires were for the fake for the phony that which propped up his pride but he's a little kid who cares well he doesn't give himself that pass um rather um he allowed his emotions and his desires to be wrapped up in this mythical story and he sees this as as a problem because of what he put off in order to wrap himself with that and what did he put off well more useful things to study and learn paragraph 22 which is on page 54 in that that middle paragraph short paragraph there he goes on to say sin I did then in Boyhood by preferring those frivolous Tales to much more useful attainments or rather by loving the one and Loathing the other that is loving things like The Aeneid and loathing arithmetic and good language skills already the jingle one and one makes two two and two make four right do you ever do something like that when you were learning uh arithmetic and first grade or second grade right that helpful thing helps us learn how to how to add numbers together so that we memorize them that's incredibly useful isn't it we might even say it's incredibly necessary for living a good life just being able to add one and one and two plus two but he says this was hateful to me whereas a wooden Horse full of armed men Troy a fire and the shade of creusa right creusa being aeneas's wife that died uh in the battle of Troy the the fall of Troy these were a spectacle on which I delighted to gaze and as empty as they were entertaining so they were enjoyable he loved to be entertained by these stories see the excitement of his imagination he says at that time was was thrilling but it all was so empty again why because it wasn't reality that one plus two equals that one plus one equals two is reality but that a horse full of armed men run into Troy and burn it down is not it's a fable so that farce of how to think of oneself as a Roman later in life he realizes what a waste of time it was doing that he goes on to talk even more about this frivolous study business as he talks about the waste of his intelligence then at this time in his life on page 57 we're at paragraph 27 now of book one and he goes allow me to say something my God about the intelligence which was your gift to me and the crazy Employments in which I frittered it away an exercise was set for me which was fraught with worrying implications for I hope to win praise and honor if I succeeded but if not I ran the risk of being caned if Augustine means by that what I think he means by that what he means by that is that which is a long way of putting it sorry for wasting your time with that of being beaten with a rod I mean that's what being caned is okay so high stakes here I was required to produce a speech made by Juno expressing her anger and grief at being unable to repulse the Trojan King from Italy but in Words which I had never heard Juno use so let me stop there that seems like a fun project I would love to do something like that in an English course I think right let's let me just uh do a little role playing here and um try to uh come up with this speech that Juno would give on this particular circumstance then he goes on we were obliged to follow the errant footsteps of poetic fantasies and to express and prose what the poet had said in verse that boy was a judge to be the best speaker who most convincingly suggested emotions of anger and grief and clothed them in apt words as befitted the Dignity of the person represented again I would think that this is a good fun exercise to do right to to pick good word choices and good language to express these emotions but he's thinking about it more deeply as he goes on and says what did it profit me profit Me O God my true life that my speech was acclaimed above those of my many peers and fellow students was it not all smoke and wind yeah was it in other words did it all just not vanish when a little breeze came by so no no substance to it no no uh nothing worth anything there that would stick around and actually be worth anything in the future was there no other material on which I could have exercised my intelligence in my tongue yes there was your praise oh lord your praise in the words of the scriptures would have supported the drooping Vine of my soul so what's going on here well what's going on here was that he's he he's complaining or he's looking back on his life and realizing that these exercises where all that was concerned or all that was required was to merely give good Style or just say mere style and no substance so style over substance let's say as the as the saying goes that that was completely vacuous completely worthless at the time he didn't consider that to be the case but now he looks back on that as a complete waste of his time paragraph 28 at the bottom of page 57 the models proposed to me for imitation where people who would have been caught out and covered with confusion if they had related any of their doings Deeds not wrong on themselves in a barbaric accent or with grammatical blunders whereas to relate licentious deeds and correct and well-turned phrases in ample and Elegant Style would have won them praise and honor so even if the content of what they were saying in these speeches were things that would have been inappropriate would have been licentious would have for instance celebrated various forms of immorality or sin or evil would have won them praise and honor he says because all that mattered was the style let's let's put a good turn of phrase on these speeches and I think it should be and we'll see this a little bit later it should be noted now that that Augustine's academic career the career indeed especially that his parents had set out for him was one of rhetoric to be a rhetorician to be one who spoke well and give him and gave amazing speeches to persuade people um and to impress people that's a lot of what rhetoric was about um especially Pagan rhetoric in this area but now he looks back at this and he's he's ashamed of this look at paragraph 29 on page 58. Augustine says look upon all this O Lord God and as you look patiently consider how carefully human beings observe those orthographic conventions and syllabic quantities right so here he's talking about right particular issues in rhetoric how you say particular words or what orthographic right so so the writing an understanding of particular words works the conventions in that particular culture um the kinds of sentences themselves that would uh get people's attention and how you say it and how the syllables work kind of like that sentence I read earlier uh I won't go back to it but he talked about the pity that's expressed by the pitiest person right I mean this that sort of punctuation or punch from all those P's in that sentence is not coincidental right he's a rhetorician he knows how to get your attention in order to pick out the right kinds of words that will get your attention to say what he wants to say but back at this time in his life it wasn't about the substance of what he said but how he said it that's what he was praised for and he sees all that as just being absolute garbage those orthographic conventions and syllabic quantities which they have received from earlier orators while neglecting the Eternal rules directed to unending salvation which they have received from you in other words we're getting our priorities wrong and I did as this child in studying rhetoric he goes on a speaker who wishes to maintain and teach these long-standing conventions for instance they'll give greater offense to his fellow Men by pronouncing the word human without sounding the H I guess because apparently to say human without the H would would mean to uh uh what would be a big uh would be a big No-No to say Human Instead of human right it just sounds weird so you shouldn't do that but that would be a greater offense because its end of as it goes on it's in defiance of grammatical print discipline than if he human as he is flouts your commands by fellow by hating a fellow human in other words for these people hating other people was not that big a deal what was a bigger deal was not pronouncing human itself correctly and again this is where he's talking about the style over substance What mattered in these studies What mattered to me in in my life here was not how I treated people as much as how I pronounced the words correctly that was more important than whether or not I hate it or liked somebody so I better not mispronounce the word human but if in real life I mispronounced them or I dissed them or I disrespect them let's say I I completely disregard them and I hate them that's not as big a deal so he's confessing all of this this disorder it's a disordered understanding of the world that's cashing itself out in a disordered life well things get worse uh page 59. this sort of understanding of life in which he is front and center above everybody and everything else it's him and his studies and his career that matters more than anything else uh cashes itself out as a kid where he starts binge watching as what he calls it worthless shows on paragraph 30 he says my love for play and the Absurd anxiety with which I crave to gawk at worthless shows and imitate what I watched which is not good that's never good especially given what's mostly on television nowadays they didn't have TV then and he's already saying that the the shows that I watched I guess theater shows things like that were worthless and that's that was his Exemplar that was his model for how to live life and he goes on to say he even stole from his parents stole money from them so that he could pay other boys to let him play with them that's that's kind of sad isn't it but in doing that he says that he even had an agenda underlying that because once he started play with playing with them and play games with them he says I would often seek to dominate by fraudulent mean not the words he was he would cheat he would defraud those who he was playing with so that he could win at those games and if he found other people cheating doing the same thing that he was doing he'd call them out on it and punish him for it and so he asks in that paragraph the paragraph 30 and this is on the top of page 60. is this Boyhood innocence no Lord it is not hear me dear God it is not these same sins grow worse as we get older first it is offenses against pedagogues and teachers or cheating over nuts and balls and sparrows then later it is crimes against prefects and kings and fraud and gold in Estates and slaves just as a school boys canings are succeeded by heavier punishment in other words as he's saying what he seems to be saying is that the evil in people's lives from the time of children for their time they're adults um doesn't really change all that much in a sense it just gets more sophisticated so if I'm stealing you know some nuts some walnuts from a game that I'm playing with some kids because I'm a kid on the street and and fraudulently getting them and enjoying that is that Boyhood innocence no because that's just the beginning such that if it's cultivated even more uh later in life that same thing turns out to be things like mortgage fraud or or uh theft of people's pensions and retirement funds as he puts it as he sees it so sins out of immaturity he's confessing and then in book two we get uh well first of all we get one of these amazing sentences that I'm talking about that mentioned earlier that he was talking about right being able to use such great Style as being really important in his childhood studies of rhetoric and uh thankfully he uses that but with more substance now right in the confessions and we see one of those sentences here a few of those sentences here as he begins to confess in his adolescence adolescence this sex addiction that he that he struggled through and dealt with and well I really should even call it that he doesn't really talk about it as having dealt with it actually or struggled through it but as actually uh feeding it and cultivating it so book two paragraph one on page 62. this is near the bottom of that of that short first paragraph he says there was a time in adolescence when I was a fire to take my fill of hell I boldly thrust out rank luxuriant growth and various furative love affairs my beauty wasted away and I rotted in your sight intent on pleasing myself and winning favor in the eyes of men he'll go on to explain this a little bit more and break that down but basically what he'll what he'll do in this book is talk about how that this sex addiction was one in which he was having lots of sex with lots of different people such that he became more corrupt emotionally and psychologically and mentally and spiritually about this this is what he means by his Beauty wasting away um the pleasure that he enjoyed from it did not really uh lend itself to his benefit it didn't whatsoever did the opposite thus he rotted away in in this being so intent on his own self-pleasure and as he puts winning favor in the eyes of men because later on he'll talk about how they like to brag about it he loved to brag about his sexual encounters and brag about feeding his addiction of this so the sentence that I taught that I say is a really fascinating one and just really incredible style and remember this is being translated Okay so the English translation here is fantastic um but this is in book two a few lines down uh actually I think it looks like it's the third sentence in chat in in chapter two paragraph two of book two he says from the mud of my fleshly desires and my erupting puberty belched out murky clouds that obscured and darkened my heart until I could not distinguish the calm Light Of Love from the fog of lust wow what a sense the two swirled about together and dragged me young and weak as I was over the Cliffs of my desires and engulfed me in a whirlpool of sins so as he looks back on his sexual promiscuity as a child he definitely is not have a positive view of this um and as an adult he's trying to think about and figure out how this happened or why this happened and where God was in all of this and at the top of page 63 he says I was wandering away from you yet you let me go my way I was flung hither and thither I poured myself out frothed and floundered in the tumultuous sea of my fornications and you were silent um so at least we can take away from that is what Augustine is as he's thinking about this is that even during this point in his life I was not manipulating him in any way matter of fact he seems to think that God was absent in all of this and given what Augustine's theological views are and some other of his Works later on we could sort of see how that connection might take place given his belief that indeed that such sin and Corruption as he believes it to be as an adult now indeed sort of drowns out the voice and the calling of God as he has described it in those works um so he is enjoying the Embrace of all these sexual encounters and at the bottom of paragraph three on page 63 he says yet I'm I might have waited more contentively for your Embrace talking about God but going on paragraph four but I was far too impetuous poor Rich so I went with the flood tide of my nature and abandoned you I swept across all your laws but I did not Escape your chastisement For What Mortal can do that and several lines down at the bottom of that paragraph four where was I and how far was I exiled from the joys of your house in that 16th year of my bodily age so he's telling us this is going on when he's 16 years old he's quite active sexually at 16. when the frenzy of lust imposed its rule on me and I wholeheartedly yield it to it a lust it was licensed by disgraceful human custom but illicit before your laws so as he sees it in the culture in which he grew up in uh behaving that way at that age very promiscuously um just kind of expected it was licensed that's what people expect as 16 year olds to do is disgraceful but that whatever that's just what they do you can't really change that you can't really stop it so it was accepted in his culture but before God's law as he sees it it was illicit that is it was wrong it was it was illegal in a sense according to God's law Yeti says none of my family made any attempt to avert my ruin by arranging a marriage for me their only concern was that I should Excel that I should learn to excel in rhetoric and persuasive speech so it's interesting even as parents he says at the time didn't really care that he was so promiscuous because you know they don't want to get married because getting married might mean that he has to quit school right getting married might mean that oh he's gonna actually go out and get a job now instead of taking the time to build up his academic cred so that he can get a really good career as an orator later on so they just kind of look the other way right if he's going to enjoy illicit sex because he needs it or thinks he needs it well let's not get him married so that he can have this with one person in a more healthy way um let's uh let's just look the other way so that he can do what he thinks he has to do and and not be bogged down with the responsibilities that that marriage brings so page 65 now the paragraph six owing to the state of family finances in the 16th year of my life there was an interval of leisure for me during which being free from all schooling I began to spend time in my parents company The Thorn bushes of my lust shot up higher than my head right another another fascinating line and no hand was there to root them out and he goes on to talk about how that in light of his burgeoning sexuality his father saw him in the baths one day and was quite excited because he had saw apparently his uh his development had taken place as a 16 year old and that he was quite developed such that he could uh uh produce grandchildren and it made both his dad and his mother kind of happy about that or excited about this right this is something that uh would be great I mean he's not married and he's being promiscuous and yet they're still quite happy that hey he could do some grandchildren for us so it's very fascinating and he's talking about this because he thinks that you and I will will read this and be like this is kind of messed up in a way um even though it's the fourth fifth century he's thinking that yeah most people would think this is kind of messed up this is why he's not giving a whole lot of commentary about it to him it just would seem obvious to anybody reading this that that there's disorder here and that is the main theme of this whole confession in a sense that his life is disordered it's Restless everything is Twisted it's not said or right as he is as he is living his life in these days but he talks about the bottom of that paragraph how that his mother already has sort of begun as he puts it to build your temple and prepare for your holy indwelling that is his mother was thinking more about God and spiritual things and uh even though is not one that is really coming out to scold him or rebuke him on the way that he is living uh although she does to some extent I mean later on in in that uh paragraph seven he'll talk about how that the advice that she had given him was to uh was to not engage so much in his fornication and especially as he put it not to do that with somebody already married to somebody else right don't don't get caught up in that nest of troubles and problems but was not was not one to say you really don't need to do this but was more sort of a cautionary tale type of thing you know it's probably best if you don't do this sort of thing instead of just being really serious about it um and so how did he take it he says well I took her advice as just the sort of thing that women do that's what women say I don't don't take advantage of all these other women and take you know take their virginity take their sexuality use them for their bodies if I can put it that way I think that's kind of what he's getting at here that's what women say well but as he looks back on this he he realizes how Reckless he was and uses that term right in the middle of page 66 and paragraph seven he says but I was quite Reckless I rushed on headlong in such blindness that when I heard other use of my own age bragging about their immoralities I was ashamed to be less depraved than they were the more disgraceful their deeds the more credit they claimed and so I too became as lustful for the plaudits As for the lechery itself in other words got to wear that he loved bragging about how sexually promiscuous he had been and it goes on later and talks about that he pretended to obscenities that he had not committed I mean he actually made stuff up well I not only did this with this girl I did this with this other girl just making stuff up just to make himself seem more promiscuous and more immoral and more sexually open than any of his friends um well why didn't his family just help him right find someone to get married and settle down with and not play this crazy game top of page 67 which is in paragraph 8. he talks about his mother that her reluctance to arrange a marriage for me arose from the fear that if I were encumbered with a wife My Hope could be dashed not hope in you for the world to come to which she held herself but my hope of academic success that's what my family was more concerned about was worldly success than rather in healthy relationships for me so it goes on in that next paragraph he talks about what ended up was that the he achieves the result of straying into various disreputable amours and in the last sentence throughout these experiences a dark fog cut me off from your bright truth my God and my sin grew Sleek on my excesses so the sex addiction it's a big thing for him as he relates to or has he recounts his past life the next vignette is where he's confessing the pair incident now this is really fascinating I don't not spend too much time on this but the issue here is or what happened here was that him and some buddies go out into a field and they steal some pairs from a farmer off of his pear tree and he'll say that these pairs themselves and this is you know paragraph uh begins in paragraph nine anyway of book two which is on page 67 of the copy of the confessions that I I put on blackboard here at the app that I put on online here for you on our course website um he talks about how that the payers themselves weren't really all that good quality that he had she had better ones at home and that even though these pairs uh that weren't that great were still used to feed hungry people they just you know threw them to pigs at the end of the day because at the end of the day it wasn't about stealing pairs in other words there was no end goal here regarding uh something that could be achieved um to benefit oneself arguably arguably he could probably say that about his sex addiction that even though it was disordered and it was an addiction it was you know utterly just feeding this this insatiable desire he had for for sexual satisfaction that at least there was something he got out of it which was that satisfaction um which was that pleasure that's not what's going on anything like that and why he stole the pairs the reason why he says that he and his friends love stealing the pears was because they just loved the act of stealing itself and so on page 68 at the very top we derived pleasure from the Deeds simply because it was forbidden simply because they weren't supposed to do it that's why he wanted it and that's why it was so meaningful to him at that time and he goes on a few lines down from that on page 68. the malice was loathsome and I loved it I was in love with my own ruin in love with Decay not with the thing for which I was falling into Decay but with Decay itself for I was depraved in Soul so we see with this incident the disorder the restlessness it's taken up to another notch I mean it might say well well the crazy sex life that he had that's pretty bad uh as he's describing it well maybe so but even more so now he thinks this is worse because this is about being in love with the forbiddenness itself being in love with the illegality itself being in love with the evil itself taking food away from people literally and feeding it to animals that you know needs to be fed for to people and merely being able to do that to cause that gave him pleasure gave him satisfaction that's I think why he sees that as being worse or why he talks about that sort of as following up on the sex addiction stuff and maybe why too he doesn't talk so much about why his sex addiction was wrong he thinks that that's obvious but he'll give a little bit more commentary about this pair incident to explain why it's worse to some extent so on page 70 this is in paragraph 12 or chapter 12 however however your text puts it there on page 70 of our assigned text right in the middle he goes on to say about this so now Lord my God when I ask what it was that gave me pleasure in that theft I find nothing of fair seductive form at all I do not mean simply that it lacked the beauty to be found in Justice and Prudence or the beauty of the human mind and intelligence or that of our senses and bodily life or the beauty inherent in the Stars so lovely in their appointed places or in the earth and the Sea full of Young Life Born there to replace the things that die no I mean more my theft lacked even the Sham shadowy Beauty with which even Vice allures us so there was nothing alluring there as as what drunkenness as how drunken this for instance allured him or um or illicit sex Allure him nothing like that at all but he loved this all the more and goes on and talks about how that one of the reasons that made it so much more satisfying too was just being able to do it with other people paragraph 16 on page 72. he said what fruit did I ever reap from doing this stuff a couple lines down he goes it was nothing and by the very Act of committing it I became more wretched still and yet as I recall my state of mind at that time I would not have done it alone I most certainly would have not done it alone it follows them that I also love the camaraderie with my fellow thieves so it was it was it was a way in which you could bond with other people performing this kind of evil and then he goes on to say so it is not true to say that I love nothing other than the theft ah but it is true because that gang mentality too was a nothing and what does he mean by that now we're going to answer that here in a little bit several vignettes down we'll talk about his view of reality and evil and and sort of the punch line I'll give you now is that for him evil is not a thing evil is a nothing and so looking back on his life all that he accomplished or all of the evil and Corruption and wickedness that he accomplished he'll later talk about that as having no substance at all it was all just empty nothingness why because it lacked good and for Augustine um his view of evil is that evil itself indeed is the absence of good it's the deprivation of good to do evil is to take the good away from something or an element of good away from something so that's why he calls this stuff nothing so what was it in fact and then he asked a very interesting question here now on paragraph in paragraph seven I'm sorry 16 on page 72. about four lines from the bottom who can teach me except the one who illumines my heart and distinguishes between its Shadows what does that remind you of yes exactly you're right Plato's allegory of the cave that's exactly what that should remind you of and here we're starting to see where August is known as a neoplatonist in some extent right he he definitely uses much of the structure and the concepts and the vocabulary of Plato and Plato's students in order to explain so much about how he sees life so he's a platonist in that way he thinks that that vocabulary is helpful for explaining what he thinks about the world and so you see that here who can teach me he's kind of in a sense putting himself in the place of one of those prisoners whose back is turned to reality and whose face is facing the Shadows on the wall so who is the one that can illumine me who can actually you know bring reality or bring real light to my face and distinguish between reality and the Shadows on the wall in a sense that's what that's the language he's using there so so think of that picture there and later on he'll talk about who that is that that's that's God well he goes on to talk about some of these things as we now move on to the vignette of him confessing how futile his feelings were as he became more wrapped up in fiction we already saw where he talked about a little bit as a child being wrapped up in Virgil's a need but he'll go on and in book three now and talk about for instance look at the first very first line here of paragraph one so I arrived at Carthage where the den of scandalous love affairs raised cauldron like around me right so he goes to study and even better now he's he's away from home so he can really get down and dirty with his illicit desires and so he does things haven't changed and about the middle of that paragraph he goes on to say that his Soul's Health was consequently poor it was covered with sores flung itself out of doors longing to soothe its misery by rubbing against sensible things yet these were soulless and so could not truly be loved a fascinating way of putting it he's really trying to satisfy his desires and he's doing it with sensible things that is with things he can touch taste here and smell right he sees indulging in all kinds of things in his life to fill the needs that he has but it's not working but he keeps on a few lines down from that here we are on page 75 so I polluted the stream of Friendship with my filthy desires and clouded its Purity with hellish lusts yet all the while be fouled and disgraced though I was my boundless vanity made me long to appear elegant sophisticated wow that there's another good way to think about what is it to be a human person maybe that's Universal what he's saying here is that uh even when we are uh feeling and seem to be pretty corrupt with things going on in life we do love to keep up appearances though don't we and that's what he's saying here as foul and as disgraceful as he was he wanted to appear to be elegant he wanted to appear to be smart and intelligent sophisticated and all of the above well at the time at Carthage he gets more uh intense into other kinds of fictions and shows in the theater and all of that and in paragraph two now book three and this is on page 76 he says that I was held Spellbound by theatrical shows full of images that mirrored my own wretched polite and further fueled the Fire Within Me why is it that one likes being moved to grief at the sight of sad or tragic events on stage when one would be unwilling to suffer the same things oneself it's a great question why is it that I love seeing people get blown up in action movies for instance and maybe I should admit that to you but nonetheless I like seeing people get blown up in action movies but I sure would not want that to happen to myself he goes on what incredible stupidity the more a person is buffeted by such passions in his own life the more he is moved by watching similar scenes on stage although his State of Mind is usually called Misery when he is undergoing them himself in Mercy but he shows compassion for others so Afflicted yeah it is kind of fascinating Gus never thought about it that way that you would say I'd be miserable if I was suffering this fate but yet I'm being a nice compassionate person if I'm showing Mercy to those who are undergoing this while they're doing it on the television screen let's say but how real is the mercy evoked by fictional dramas Augustine asks The Listener has not moved off for help but merely invited to feel sorrow and the more intensely he feels it the more highly he rates the actor in the play if these tragic human stories whether referring to events long past or fictional are played in such a way that they fail to move the spectator to sadness he walks out in disgust criticizing the performance but if you feel sad he stays on keenly attentive and enjoys a good cry so what he's saying is the way in which we generally approach these theatrical shows or performances or what have you right these fictional things is that they're good if they manipulate our emotions not as though we can really do anything about it because it's all fiction right somebody who's suffering from a horrible breakup in this show we or or a diagnosis let's say a horrible diagnosis or a tragedy in a movie or in a show uh it makes us sad it makes us our heart go out to them and yet even that's fake because I think what Augustine is implying here is that if we really were to be merciful and compassionate to somebody that would work itself out concretely we'd be able to actually exercise that by doing compassionate works and deeds for them by doing merciful Deeds for them but we can't it's a show so we find it to be good a wonderful and excellent performance if it merely makes us feel bad we have a good cry we move on he's sort of rhetorically noting just how nuts this is and again it's part of the the theme of his past life it's all disordered this is upside down it's twisted page 77 this is about the middle of paragraph three here at the near the top of page 77. he says I rejoiced with lovers on the stage who took sinful pleasure in one another even though their Adventures were only imaginary so they weren't really having relations let's say and part of a dramatic presentation and when they lost each other I grieved with them so maybe what he's getting at here is a sex scene in a theatrical performance where two people are cheating on their spouses let's say I'm trying to just make up an example here to express what I think he's getting at and is it illicit yes because right if you've taken vows to somebody you shouldn't cheat on them it's it's called adultery and most people think that that's something people should not do but yet right if they're truly in love we would say we'd be heartbroken if they were never able to be together again because they had such a connection and Augustine is finding our response to that and our beliefs about that and even in these fictional performances as being quite disordered as he puts it when they lost each other I grieved with them ostensibly merciful right because he's being compassionate for for the fact that they can't be together and we we don't want that for them we want them to be together even though by being together they are breaking vows and cheating on other people and going back on what they promise to those other people yet in both instances I found pleasure in my emotions well how does he understand that part of his life paragraph four down near the bottom of page 77 at that time I was truly miserable for I loved feeling sad and sought out whatever could cause me sadness when the theme of a play dealt with other people's tragedies false and Theatrical tragedies my dear it would please and attract me more powerfully the more it moved me to tears I was an unhappy Beast astray from your flock and resenting and resentful of your shepherding did it get worse yeah he goes on the bottom of page 77 when I listen to such doleful Tales being told they enabled me superficially to scrape away at my itching self with the result that these raking nails raised and then through stinking discharge from a festering wound was that life I led any life at all oh my God wow what a what imagery there that as he is throwing his life and his emotions and the meaning of life on all of this vacuous fiction and emptiness he Likens it to itching itching with desire and so that's the desire to scratch your itch in a sense physically that you do that so much that you cause your skin to be incredibly inflamed and thus infected and infected not just in a sort of way he would take some antibiotics to get rid of it but infected this to this extent that you draw sores upon your body the infection of which becomes putrid and stinking there's a lovely image so was he confessing all of that is empty and all of it is futile but there's a turning point and the Turning Point comes later as he is studying and he comes Upon A Treatise by Cicero the great stoic thinker and philosopher and orator and we start this uh this we're still in book three but in paragraph seven he talks about uh which is on 79 talks about finding this he says still young and immature I began in the company of these people to study tree disease on eloquence this was a discipline in which I longed to excel though my motive was the damnably proud desire to gratify my human vanity and the customary course of study I had discovered a book by an author called Cicero whose language is almost universally admired though not for a dinner spring and this book of his is called the hortensius and contains an exhortation of philosophy so in the hortensius for instance with Cicero right the point of the book the idea of the book is that it is drawing readers to think deeply about deep things and he says his interest was immediately sparked by this and he goes on to talk about this at the bottom of paragraph seven he says my interest in the book was not aroused by its usefulness in the honing of my verbal skills which was supposed to be the object of the studies I was now pursuing in my 19th year at my mother's expense since my father had died two years earlier so stop right there for a second so he's 19 years old right now he's continuing on this academic academic career of being an orator of being a rhetorician of being able to say really fancy words in ways that persuade people and make them appreciate his ability to do this we already saw a little bit of a little bit of that earlier he's 19 he's still doing that his his academics has always been concerned about how to be the best stylistically but now for the first time in his life he's actually found substance he's found substance over Style so he goes on no it was not merely as an instrument for sharpening my tongue that I used that book for I had won me over not by its style but by what it actually had to say that indeed is its substance and what was that substance he goes on to talk about it that substance was philosophy it was wisdom which is what the word philosophy like literally means right philosophy is the combination of two Greek words Philo and Sophia which means love of wisdom in Greek and so this is a turning point and for him he thinks that this particular discovery of Cicero now has him thinking or gives him some type of Paradigm or structure for thinking about the uh deeper things in life and how important that they are and so he starts thinking more about God starts thinking more about his mother's religion as immature as it is her Christian faith nonetheless is thinking about really what the purpose of life is and what the point of life is he's been filling it with all kinds of uh mere Shadows right to use Plato's language he's been filling it with all kinds of uh gratification of desires but it's not actually bringing him any true contentment and satisfaction in his life but now he's starting to think more seriously about reality itself well despite that it's just a beginning he still goes on now to talk about even further the disorder in his life and how that these things just sort of keep up keep on ramping up to the next level and that's that's sort of the the way he's presenting all of this stuff all of these confessions of past events was that things just keep getting worse and worse and worse if the sex addiction is not bad enough or stealing pairs just because I can even worse or completely being wrapped up in in theater shows and in fiction assuming that that's reality and just uh making that my reality to live in this la la land that doesn't exist right even worse and this is this is what he's getting at he has a turning point but he's still pretty disordered and still pretty corrupt as he sees it and for him it's really uh exemplified in his inability to grieve a friend's death a friend that he had at the ghast when he returns there which is his hometown and so on page 96 this we are in book four now and on page 96 at paragraph seven that is where he starts talking about this so he says now at the same period when I first began to teach in the town where I was born I had a friend who shared my interest and was exceedingly dear to me so as a guy that he'd grown up with um it's a guy they went to school with um it's a guy that had grown up in the faith like he did to some extent um but had lured him away um both sort of spiritually as well as intellectually he would say and they just had experience so much I mean they were like you know two peas in a pod to use that much overused phrase but that's what they were his friend comes down with a fever and he dies and Augustine is devastated on paragraph nine which is on page 97 Augustine says as a result of his death black grief closed over my heart and wherever I looked I saw only death my native land was a torment to me and my father's house was unbelievable misery everything I had shared with my friend turned into hideous anguish without him few lines down I had become a great Enigma to myself and I questioned my soul demanding why it was sorrowful and why it was so disquieted me or why it so disquieted me but it had no answer so how does he find any sort of resolution to this on page 98 which would be the bottom of paragraph nine he says that really weeping alone is what did it weeping alone brought me Solace and took my friend's place as the only comfort of my soul like wow what a what an admission that the only thing that brought him any kind of joy and we really wouldn't even call it Joy I mean he doesn't call it that I guess he just calls it Comfort the only thing that brought him any kind of respite from this grief was just the Weeping itself the physical expulsion of the tears and of the cries and of the muscles and in doing this right and just uh if you can imagine just having an absolutely hard cry that brought him calm and comfort we might say yeah here's where the emotional issues are coming to play and Augustine would say yeah exactly exactly paragraph 11 verse 98 or sorry page paragraph 11 page 98. I was miserable and miserable too as everyone whose mind is Chained by friendship with Mortal things and is torn apart by their loss and then becomes aware of the misery that it was you know even it aware of the misery that it was and even before it lost them this was my condition at the time I wept very bitterly and I found Repose in the bitterness in other words he found satisfaction in the bitterness just like you found satisfaction and stealing for stealing's sake and found satisfaction in uh in unreal fiction and found satisfaction and using people uh sexually he found satisfaction here and barely being bitter and hating the world for what happened and the death of his friend Miserable as I was I held even this miserable life dearer than my friend this is where things are really getting ramped up now he's not only just enjoying the bitterness but now the bitterness the miserable life of being bitter at the world itself brings more Comfort to him now than having the good friendship that he had with his friend before his friend died wow for although I might wish to change it I would have been even less willing to lose it than I was to lose him he just loved being ticked off and bitter at the world he found more joy and comfort in that than he did even in the friendship which the loss of which spurred the bitterness on so I guess in a sense to him the bitterness itself became or put differently his friend's death became a blessing because it brought about the bitterness that he loved at that time top of page 99 I believe that the more I loved him the more I hated death which had taken him from me I hated it as a hideous enemy and I feared it and pictured it as ready to devour all human beings since it had been able to make a way with him yes this was my state of mind I remember it well it's so disordered chapter 12 here on page 99 woe to the madness which thinks to cherish human beings as though more than human which and apparently is that's how he looks back on what happened at that point in his life um incredible what an incredible confession well let's keep moving on he can't grieve his friend's death because he enjoys the grief more than what the grief is supposed to do The Grieving itself is supposed to to help you cope but he loved not actually being able to cope well why well as he will go on and put it um it's because and here's where he starts using a bunch of Plato language again because as he puts it he was not confronted with the truth he was not confronted with the light page 108 we're still on book four and this is going to be paragraph 25 on page 108. about the middle of that of that paragraph here on the page such was the condition of my mind at this time I did not realize that it needed to be open to the radiance of another light in order to become a partaker in the truth for it is not itself the essence of Truth in other words it seems like he's implying that um that the things that he thought was true was was the sort of things that he just came to discover on his own or sort of figure out on his own by himself he didn't realize