There was a lot in Confessions that I have to think about and digest. Augustine must have been a brilliant man, firing on all cylinders. Confessions is full of rhetoric, poetry, and prayer woven together and each of these strands requires intentional thought to process. I wonder if I caught even half of what he was saying between my barely readable translation and the complexity of his thoughts. My brother is currently doing his thesis on Augustine and often brings up that he was not writing as a philosopher, which I don't fully understand either.
Here are a few things that stuck out to me on my first read-through.
God's truth is big enough to contain many worldly truths
When God speaks he speaks truly and he speaks outside of time. We who live within time and have the Spirit of God living within us will read the words of the Bible or hear God's speech in a sermon or delivered specifically to our minds within our times and circumstances. Some traditions will understand the Bible to say one thing, and other traditions will take the same passages and say they mean something else. It is possible that both are correct. Augustine cautions us from saying "your interpretation of what Moses revelation is wrong, my interpretation is correct!" Moses, great prophet and chosen of God that he was, may have had either mine or your understanding or a different one altogether according to his time and experience or God could have given him a full revelation where he comprehended both and many other understandings beyond his time that are all true. We should therefore approach the Scriptures, and each other, with humility.
Interactions between The Trinity outside of time and us His time-bound creations
In the last chapter he talked about how when God gives us a vision we see as God sees, outside of time. When we speak by the power of the Holy Spirit we speak as God speaks, outside of time because it is actually God speaking through us. Something about this concept caught me off guard, it was visceral.
Weaving analogy and poetry in his interpretation of Scripture
There were a few times when he was explaining a theological truth that he related to Scripture, not just as a footnote, but as a poetic commentary on another part of Scripture. These passages are beautiful and I wish I could one day know the Scriptures well enough to do likewise.
His mother's story
He spends a long time talking about Monica, his mother, and her incredible faith and ceaseless prayers that probably saved his soul. The story is like that of the prodigal son where in his youth Augustine delighted in doing evil and had become a notorious and relentless debater fully given over to his passions and base desires. His mother followed him and continuously cried allowed before The Lord that He would save her son. Augustine sneaked away and traveled to Rome by ship and she came after him. The Lord had confirmed to her that her prayers would be answered but like Hannah before The Lord in the temple or the persistent widow she would not stop petitioning The Lord to save her son. The Lord heard her, and did save him and all the talents and intelligence he had used for evil and for himself were put in their proper usage to give glory to God and he became such a beacon of light in his time that he feared to travel lest the cities all make him their bishop. The amount of joy and relief Monica must have felt at having heard that he son had finally found Jesus and that his heart had been transformed...
