Augustine continues speaking but his contemplation of mysteries stops for now. In light of who God is and who he is Augustine pleads upon God's mercy that he may speak with Him and he recounts how God's mercy has sustained him from birth until the present. It is upon God's mercy that we may address Him and it is upon God's mercy that we live.
This chapter sounds Calvinist but John Calvin wouldn't be around for another thousand years and he I have to wonder if he picked up this particular theme from Augustine. I don't know yet, my knowledge of Calvin, Augustine, and so much of the Patristic and Medieval theologians is very bad indeed.
One thing stood out to me as strange in this chapter. Augustine claims that it was God's mercy alone that sustained him and used the example of how his mother and nurses fed him breast milk but that it was not them feeding him but God feeding him by them. It seems that Augustine has such a high and all encompassing view of God's mercy that a mother's love for her infant becomes transparent. God's mercy shines through us all as if we were windows and it is not we who love but God who loves through us. I don't know of any Christians who hold to this viewpoint today. I have difficulty with it because it doesn't fit with us being image bearers of God, capable of loving. I suppose this isn't what Augustine is saying though, "that we do not love," but rather that when we do love it is God who is loving through us. It is a striking image, like the sun shining through a stained glass window. Even so I find it unsettling to, and I'm not sure what the right word is here, to assimilate or obliterate or nullify human agency in loving.
But even if we do not think in these terms and even though I find the theological ramifications unsettling, I am but a learner and a reflector. May the Lord indeed be merciful and shine through me his love. Whether this is an image, a figure of speech, or a reality, whether I have agency or not I will acknowledge the Lord as necessary and myself as needing to be a willing host for the Holy Spirit in order that I love rightly and fully.
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