Augustine's Confessions Book 1: Chapter 4 - Reflections

For the last three chapters Augustine has opened a dialogue with God where he has contemplated the mysteries involved in dialogue with God. So far it has been a worshipful and contemplative introduction directed from Augustine upward to God.

In chapter 4 he is contemplating who God is according to his attributes.

What art Thou then, my God? what, but the Lord God? For who is Lord but the Lord? or who is God save our God? Most highest, most good, most potent, most omnipotent; most merciful, yet most just; most hidden, yet most present; most beautiful, yet most strong, stable, yet incomprehensible; unchangeable, yet all-changing; never new, never old; all-renewing, and bringing age upon the proud, and they know it not; ever working, ever at rest; still gathering, yet nothing lacking; supporting, filling, and overspreading; creating, nourishing, and maturing; seeking, yet having all things. Thou lovest, without passion; art jealous, without anxiety; repentest, yet grievest not; art angry, yet serene; changest Thy works, Thy purpose unchanged; receivest again what Thou findest, yet didst never lose; never in need, yet rejoicing in gains; never covetous, yet exacting usury. Thou receivest over and above, that Thou mayest owe; and who hath aught that is not Thine? Thou payest debts, owing nothing; remittest debts, losing nothing. And what had I now said, my God, my life, my holy joy? or what saith any man when he speaks of Thee? Yet woe to him that speaketh not, since mute are even the most eloquent.

The list seems to be full of contradictory statements but they are not proper logical contradictions, they are paradoxes that articulate the tensions that come with trying to describe the one who transcends our language and our understandings. I have to wonder at the language used as it is an old translation. What does it mean to love and yet be without passion in this translation? On the surface I would disagree and say that God can not be without passion and that Augustine has missed the mark. But what does 'passion' even mean in a translation full of thee's, thy's, and thou's? What word was used in the original work and what context and history did it have? I knowest naught.

I wonder if this is a philosophical attempt at understanding God. Philosophical but lead by faith maybe?

Let me try to work through some of these.

Most merciful yet most just. The tension of God's mercy and justice is at the heart of Evangelicalism even to this day. God would be wholly in the right to just wipe us all out in an instant, and he will judge the entire world at the end of time. If he were purely just then we would be all doomed to destruction. But he is merciful, not willing that any should perish and has provided a way for us to redeem us from our sins by coming into the world incarnate as Jesus and paying the penalty for our sins on the cross, the Son suffering separation from the Father so that all who believe upon him will be saved and counted as righteous even though their hearts and actions are still sinful. God's judgements are wholly just and he is right in all that he does and we see divine justice and divine mercy at the cross of Christ.

Most hidden yet most present. Who can see God or his actions in the world? Who can prove them? The unbelieving heart can not detect God and even to the believing heart he hides himself. This tradition of 'the Hidden God' has carried on today through the likes of John of The Cross and C.S. Lewis as 'The Dark Night of the Soul', a time when God intentionally hides himself from us so that we learn to stand on our own two feet and begin walking in the footsteps of Christ to become more like Him. Yet, even though hidden, he is always present for in him all things live and move and have their being. He sees all, he knows our hearts, he is constantly providing, constantly holding all things together, intimately close to us and we can not prove or disprove it, only believe upon what we have seen and heard and experienced.

Each of these pairings could have volumes of dissertations to plum their depths. Indeed, the theological and scholarly legacy of Western Christianity is largely in debt to Augustine's theology and volumes have been produced throughout history and will continue to be produced exploring and attempting to articulate how deep and wide and great is our God.

Augustine's Confessions Book 1: Chapter 3 - Reflections

Augustine continues his questions. How is it that anything could contain God and yet we know that He fills all things. Does God overflow them? Where does God overflow to if he is not fully contained by anything? If God fulls all things then he is not 'brought down' when he fills us but we are uplifted. That's an amazing thought. We often think that God is up high and that it is a bother to bring himself down to us but he's already here and we have the opportunity to be uplifted, filled with his Spirit in a special way. This is, of course, standard Christian theology now, but it is still revolutionary to many who don't know it or know it and don't understand it.

Augustine's Confessions Book 1: Chapter 2 - Reflections

Augustine contemplates another mystery. When we call upon God we call him into us. How is it that we can contain him? What capacity do we that God could come into? What capacity could the entirety of the heavens and earth have to contain God for that matter? Or is it that, as Paul spoke to the Athenians, that all things move and have their being in God. All things created have a capacity for God else they would not exist at all. But if this is the case then where exactly do we call God from?

He does not answer these questions so much as pose them to himself in an act of worship. There is something incredible revealed in this mystery. We begin to see how very small we are and how very large God is, the God who fills the heavens and the earth yet will come into us in a special way if we ask it of Him. In God's largeness and transcendence there is intimacy and closeness.

Augustine's Confessions Book 1: Chapter 1 - Reflections

I have undertaken a project, to read Augustine's Confessions slowly and to reflect upon each chapter without rushing forward. At work I often listen to audio books or music depending on the nature of my work. I enjoyed listening through the Chronicles of Narnia from The Magician's Nephew to The Last Battle and found it an enriching experience.

I attempted go through Confessions in the same way but not even two lines in I had to stop. Augustine's Confessions are a wholly different genre than Lewis's Chronicles and I knew it would be impossible to do the writings of this great saint justice without giving it my full attention and thought. To this end I intend to read a chapter a day and reflect, if I am able, here.


Augustine begins in worship and contemplating a great mystery. It has been too long for me to remember my professors talking about Confessions but one thing that sticks out to me like a memory half remembered is that this book is not about Augustine. It is not an autobiography. He literally begins in worship of God. "Great are you O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is your power and your wisdom infinite."

He contemplates a mystery that I have often wondered at as has every theologian great and small I should think. How is it that anyone can praise the Lord, we, so small, just a particle in creation praise God with knowledge of our sins? Can we praise God because he has enabled us? Do we praise him to come to know him or do we show that we know him because we praise him? When someone calls upon the Lord without first knowing the Lord, are they actually calling upon him. Can someone call upon the Lord to come to know him?

We know these questions by a name in this time, the predestination versus freewill debate or Calvinism versus Arminianism.

He resolves to seek the Lord according to his faith which he acknowledges as given by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

My attempt to explain what he so eloquently writes in just a few lines is cumbersome. This introduction is full of worship and wonder. It encourages me because while my thoughts aren't quite so well collected, I do sometimes pray in a similar manner. I believe it is born of the Spirit.

Open my mind Lord to understand. Open my heart Lord to listen and obey. Enable me to praise you and through you to know you and in knowing so doing your will and participating in your Kingdom, Oh Lord my God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Thoughts on the Ascension: Where did Jesus Go?

Had a random thought pop into my head the other day. It was a clip from an apologetics debate I witnessed some seven or eight years ago (yeesh has it really been that long?!). It was 'The Great Debate' between Dr. William Lane Craig and a less well known Atheist on the existence of God. While I don't remember Dr. Craig's opponent I remember one of his points. The Biblical account of Jesus' ascension was problematic because assuming that he did ascend, where did he go? Up up and up he went but how far up? Did he leave the atmosphere? How did he continue to breathe or not freeze or get blasted by the sun's radiation? At the time my only thought was that he royally missed the point of the whole thing. But after almost a decade the point has come back to me now and I see it anew.

Where exactly did Jesus go? To heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father, obviously. But why ascend? Heaven isn't in the clouds, it is a spiritual place, not somewhere you can get to in a rocket ship. It's a whole other plane of existence, why go up when any direction or no direction at all would suffice? I mean, he could have opened a door and walked into heaven, he could have vanished in a puff of fire and smoke, he could have taken the disciples with him in an instant and then once they had seen him there he could have brought them back in an instant. Why ascend when ascension isn't functionally necessary?

I find it interesting that another person also ascended into heaven, Elijah on a chariot of fire. That must have been a sight to see. And I think this is important on a few points.

Ascending was not the means by which Jesus or Elijah got to heaven. You can go up and up and up as far as you like to the end of the universe but you will not reach heaven that way. Ascension is a sign for us down here, a miraculous and wondrous sign. Most people naturally equate the heavens (the sky) with Heaven (God's specific realm). The connection is natural to anyone who has looked up at night and witnessed the glory of the stars and the wonder therein. Even though God's realm isn't physically in the sky the symbolism is universal. Dead things get buried in the earth, God's holy ones are taken up into heaven like Enoch and Elijah and Jesus and all even those in stories from other faiths.

Consider also that in a very real way God's ways are higher than our ways and we are fallen creatures in a fallen world. Mankind looks up to see God and God by his grace raises us up, up from the dead, up from our sin, up from our knees, up out of the mud and mire, up to be with Him.

Consider also the language of the Psalms when Yahweh rides upon the clouds and sends lightnings and winds from the corners of the earth. There are also the visions of God by the patriarchs, Moses and the prophets, God is always above them on the mountain, in the sky, in heaven with angels ascending and descending a ladder between heaven and earth! The imagery is everywhere in the Bible and it resonates with those who know it.

It was the symbol and the sign for which Jesus ascended. The disciples were not astronomers or scientists, but ancient fishermen and tax collectors. It would have done no good to instill within them a knowledge of modern astronomy, that misses the point. To them, what they saw, was Jesus ascending until a cloud hid him and then angels confirming that he had gone up into Heaven. Symbol, sign, reality, it all blended together and even though heaven is not actually 'up there' in a physical sense, it really didn't matter. Jesus was taken up, just like Elijah was, and from this ascension we know that we also will ascend at Jesus' return. It is the symbol of hope and the sign of The Father's resounding 'YES' that Jesus is The Son and that He will indeed restore and save all who put their faith in Him.

They saw with their own eyes Jesus ascending into heaven and their lives bore the imprint of this event forever after.