St Augustine’s Confessions: On Soul, Mind, Memory, Stoicism, Salvation, and True Happiness, Book 10

Why should we reflect on Book 10 of St Augustine’s spiritual autobiography, his
Confessions, when he discusses how his conversion led to his salvation and changed
how he saw the world?
St Augustine is as much a scientist as he is a theologian, many scholars regard him a
precursor to today’s psychologists, as he tries to make sense of both the physical
and the divine worlds, and how they interact.
He takes a scientific interest in memory, wondering: Why are our memories so
undependable? Why do we forget?
How can an immortal soul reside in an imperfect mind and memories? Does the
immortal God reside in our imperfect memories? How can we objectively remember
our past emotions without becoming emotional?
How do the teachings of St Augustine differ from Stoicism?
How can we attain true happiness, true happiness in God?

Please, we welcome interesting questions in the
comments. Let us learn and reflect together!
At the end of our talk, we will discuss the sources
used for this video. Feel free to follow along in the
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St Augustine is my favorite Catholic saint because in every
major work he explicitly states that the foundation of the
Christian faith is the two-fold Love of God, and love of
neighbor, where we love our neighbors as ourselves

In Book 10 St Augustine prays to
God that “you want us not only
to Love you, but also to love our
neighbor,” and he repeats this in
other books of the Confessions.
St Augustine prays to God: “Give
me the grace to do as you
command, and command me to
do as you will!”
St Augustine Washes the Feet of Christ, Theodor Rombouts, 1636

Augustine prays to God to
find the “joy which truly
makes me happy.” He
teaches us in his further
prayer to God in Book 10
that “there is a joy that is
not given to those who do
not Love you, but only to
those who Love you for your
own sake. You yourself are
their joy.”
St Augustine,
Protector of His
Order, by Magni
Patris Aurelli
Agustini, 1628
The web link
below is a
museum site
that explains the
symbolism of
this painting.
https://artsandculture.google.com/story/YwXhn924xqwqsQ

We previously reflected on Books 1 and 2, on Augustine’s
Youth and Adolescence, where the original sin when Adam
and Eve bit from the apple was replayed when young
Augustine with his friends raided the peach orchard of a
neighbor.

We reflected on Books 3 through 5, where he describes his
youthful years spent in the Manichean heresy, turning his
back on the Christianity of his mother Monica.

We also reflected on the differences between Christianity,
where the Almighty God is the source of all goodness,
where evil is but a corruption of the good, and the
dualistic Manichean system, where good and evil are more
or less equal, and eternally battle for supremacy.

As the historian Henry Chadwick notes:
“Because man never wholly loses the
image of God stamped on him by creation,
damaged though it is, he is a divided self.
This division is not easily explained by the
Manichee hypothesis that man originates
in a conflicting pre-cosmic mix-up of light
and darkness. Among other reasons for
rejecting this is the fact that our wills are
seldom split between two simple choices,
one good, the other evil, but can be torn
apart in a dozen directions.”
Creation of Adam, by Lieven Mehus, 1691

Henry Chadwick continues: “Evil is an absence of god, as the Platonists say, not an
ultimate nature but a perversion of the will, so that even our best actions have
some intermingling of self-interest which lies beyond our power to eradicate.”
Fall and Expulsion from Garden of Eden, by Michelangelo, 1510

The historian Peter Brown notes that
the avoidance of confession is part
of the Manichean system, as he
quotes St Augustine from the
Confessions: “It had pleased my
pride to be free from a sense of
guilt, and when I had done anything
wrong” as a Manichean I did not
need “to confess that it was myself
who had done it.” As a Christian St
Augustine realized that confession
was needed to heal your soul.
St Augustine, British School, late 1500's

In these books St Augustine deeply grieves when his best friend
dies, but he sees his love as an imperfect love, because he did
not love his friend in God. Our close friends can never be our sole
source of happiness, only God can be the true source of
happiness.
Likewise, when he sails for Rome, he leaves his mother on the
docks of North Africa to escape her mother smother love, which
he also saw as an obsessive selfish love, she did not love her son
in God, or at least that is what St Augustine remembers.
Sometimes children seek independence when they mature, they
seek to evade their mother’s helicopter.

St Augustine and Monica, Time Magazine St Monica and St Augustine, by Giuseppe Riva, 1910

As St Augustine teaches us that we should love our friends
in God, he would agree with St John of the Cross that we
should only choose those close friends who enable us to
Love God more deeply.

In Books 6 and 7: His mother Monica sails to Italy in another ship,
probably at least a few months later. St Augustine permits her to meddle
in his life by arranging his engagement to a rich Christian girl who was too
young to marry, coaxing him to put away his beloved concubine, mother
of his son Adeodatus, likely she was from a lower social class. Later, he
deeply regretted this decision. On his conversion, realizing that this too
was an imperfect love, that he and his mother was on the outskirts of
Babylon, he calls off the engagement, resolving to be celibate to devote
himself to Christian philosophy.
St Augustine’s study of NeoPlatonic philosophy, along with the sermons
of St Ambrose, leads him back to Christianity.

We reflected in Books 8 and 9 on St Augustine’s conversion
and baptism, his decision to turn his back on imperial
service and return to his native North Africa, and his
mother Monica’s death while waiting for the ship to bring
them back home.

St Augustine Is Drafted Into the Priesthood
St Augustine, by Gerard Seghers, 1600’s

When St Augustine landed in North Africa with his former
student Alypius, his brother, and a few other followers, he
intended to establish a small community of Christian
monastic philosophers in his small family estate at
Thagaste, being careful to avoid towns with a vacant
bishopric, for fear of being drafted into the clergy, as he
had already gained a reputation for his anti-Manichean
writings.

When he visited Hippo in North
Africa, as the historian Peter Brown
describes, Bishop “Valerius spoke
pointedly of the urgent needs of his
church” while Augustine was standing
among them, so the congregation
“pushed him forward to the raised
throne of the bishop and the benches
of the priests,” “and the bishop
accepted his forced agreement to
become a priest in the town.”
Consecration of St Augustine, by Jaume Huguet, 1475

Bishop Valerius bent canon law to name St Augustine as co-bishop,
granting him teaching authority. St Augustine was permitted to move his
small monastic philosopher community to the garden of the church,
though much of his time was spent teaching. Soon thereafter Valerius
passed away, and St Augustine was appointed Bishop of Hippo. The
Confessions and On Christian Doctrine were among the first works he
penned as a bishop.

Vision of St Augustine, (Christ Child?) by Filippo Lippi, 1460

Many students halt their study of St Augustine’s Confessions at his
baptism, but they miss the point that his conversion was a spiritual
struggle rather than an earthly event. His Confessions are not a book of
reminiscences, his Confessions are a therapy for the soul corrupted by
sin. St Augustine viewed his conversion to Manicheanism as a failure to
accept the Catholic Bible.

In particular, as Henry Chadwick notes, the Confessions and St
Augustine’s other works battling the Manichean heresy “set out to refute
their interpretation of Genesis and of St Paul, as his mind wrestled with
the grand questions of Platonic metaphysics in relation to Christian faith.”

Which means that the final three chapters of the
Confessions, which are a commentary on the Book of
Genesis, with an inquiry into the nature of TIME, are a
continuation of Augustine’s Confessions of faith, belief,
and repentance.

St Augustine Begins Book 10 With a Prayer
St Augustine begins Book 10 with this
prayer, “Let me know, for you are the
God who knows me; let me recognize
you as you have recognized me. You
are the power of my soul; come into it
and make it fit for yourself, so that you
may have it and hold it without stains
or wrinkles. This is my hope; this is
why I speak as I do; this is the hope
that brings me joy, when my joy is in
what is to save me.”
Four Fathers of Latin Church, by Workshop of Jacob Jordaens,
1600's, St Gregory, St Jerome, St Augustine & St Ambrose

St Augustine exhorts in his expositions of the
Psalms that “confession is understood in two
senses: of our sins, and of God’s praise.”
In one sense, the Confessions are a confession
of faith, a confession made with the
cooperation of God, as St Augustine prays:
“I make my confession, not in words and sounds
made by the tongue alone, but with the voice of
my soul and in my thoughts which cry aloud to
you. Your ear can hear them. For when I am
sinful; if I am displeased with myself, this is a
confession that I make to you; and when I am
good, if I do not claim the merit for myself, this
too is confession.” St Augustine, by Carlo Cignani, 1600’a

In another sense, God knows what
our Confession will be before we do:
“My confession is made both silently
in your sight, my God, and aloud as
well, because even though my
tongue utters no sound, my heart
cries to you. For whatever good I
may speak to men you have heard it
before in my heart, and whatever
good you hear in my heart, you have
first spoken to me yourself.”
St Augustine, by Rubens, 1638

The Confessions also publicly confess his own
sins, to benefit his fellow Christians:
“When others read of those past sins of mine,
or hear about them, their hearts are stirred so
they no longer lie listless in despair crying, ‘I
cannot.’ Instead, their hearts are roused by
the love of your mercy and the joy of your
grace, by which each one of us, weak though
he be, is made strong, since by it he is made
conscious of his own weakness. And the good
are glad to hear of the past sins of others who
are now free of them. They are glad, not
because these sins are evil, but because what
was evil is now evil no more.”
St Augustine, by Antonio Rodríguez, 1691

St Augustine continues, “So, if I go on to
confess, not what I was, but what I am,
the good that comes of it is this. There is
joy in my heart when I confess to you, yet
there is fear as well; there is sorrow, and
yet hope. But I confess not only to you
but to the believers among men, all who
share my joy and all, who like me, are
doomed to die; all who are my fellows in
your kingdom and all who accompany
me on this pilgrimage, whether they
have gone before or are still to come or
are with me as I make my way through
life.”
Four Doctors of the Western Church, by Pier
Francesco Sacchi, 1516: L-R, St Augustine, Pope
Gregory I, St Jerome, St Ambrose

St Augustine Reflects on Soul and Memory

Many readers are puzzled by St Augustine’s detailed reflections on the
role of memory in Book 10 of the Confessions. St Augustine sees the
senses as gateways to the mind and the soul, and memory as an
imperfect recording of past experiences, but how can imperfect memory
access an immortal soul? What is the function of the soul, and imperfect
memory?
St Augustine had a prodigious memory, as did many ancient authors, he
could quote verse after verse from the Bible, stringing them together in
the Confessions. We must remember that in an ancient world where all
books had to be copied by hand, you tried to memorize each book as you
were reading it, because that may be the only time you could read it.
Memory was central to the concept of intelligence in the ancient world,
memory and mind were close cousins in the ancient world.

St. Augustine in His Study, painted 1502 by Vittore Carpaccio

St Augustine inquires in his prayer,
“What do I love when I love God? Who
is this Being who is so far above my
soul? If I am to reach him, it must be
through my soul. But I must go beyond
the power by which I am joined to my
body and by which I fill its frame with
life.” “God gave me this faculty when
he ordered my eyes not to hear but to
see and my ears not to see but to hear.
And to each of the other senses he
assigned its own place and its own
function, I, the soul, who am one
alone, exercise all these different
functions by means of the senses.” In the Memory Maze, by Marine Bartosh
https://artsandculture.google.com/story/YAWBuPx8YCSBLQ

St Augustine reflects on
memory: “So, I must also go
beyond this natural faculty of
mine, as I rise by stages
towards the God who made
me. The next stage is
memory, which is like a great
field or spacious place, a
storehouse for countless
images of all kinds which are
conveyed to it by the senses.”
"Through Time", by Vasilisa Lebedeva
https://artsandculture.google.com/story/YAWBuPx8YCSBLQ

In the first books of the Confessions St Augustine likewise ponders on
how infants acquire language and seeks to find insight into the original
sin of Adam in the behavior of infants and children. St Augustine is
pondering many insights confirmed by modern psychology, how our
memories are not mere tape recordings of past events, but how we
remember past events is affected by who we are, whether we genuinely
Love God and whether we love our neighbor as ourselves, in a selfless
rather than a selfish love. Just as this two-fold love influences whether
we judge rather than love our neighbor, so it also affects how we
remember past events in our lives, and lessons we learn from past events
and teachings.

St Augustine wonders, “We may know by
which of the senses these images were
recorded and laid up in memory, but who
can tell how the images themselves are
formed? Even when I am in darkness and in
silence I can, if I wish, picture colors in my
memory.” “All this goes on inside me, in the
vast cloisters of my memory. In it are the sky,
the earth, and the sea, ready at my
summons, together with everything that I
have ever perceived in them by my senses,
except the things which I have forgotten. In
it I meet myself as well. I remember myself
and what I have done, when and where I did
it, and the state of my mind at the time.”
Fond Memories, by Raimundo de Madrazo y
Garreta, around 1900

St Augustine connects memory to the soul:
“The power of my memory is prodigious,
my God. It is a vast, immeasurable
sanctuary. Who can plummet its depths?
And yet it is a faculty of my soul. Although
it is part of my nature, I cannot understand
all that I am. That means that the mind is
too narrow to contain itself entirely. But
where is that part of it which it does not
itself contain? Is it somewhere outside
itself and not within it? How can it be part
of it if it is not contained in it?”
The Gate of Memory, by Dante Gabriel
Rossetti, 1857. A prostitute looking at
dancing children while reminiscing her
own lost innocence.

Memories are in the mind,
as St Augustine reflects:
“No one can pretend that
the memory does not
belong to the mind. We
might say that the
memory is a sort of
stomach for the mind, and
that joy and sadness is like
sweet and bitter food.”
But memories are imperfect and often fade, often “they sink back and recede back
into the more remote cells in my memory, so that I have to think them out again like
a fresh set of facts, if I am to know them.”
Old memories, by H.
Bullock Webster, 1881

St Augustine reflects, “My memory also contains
my feelings, not in the same way as they are
present to the mind when it experiences them,
but in a quite different way that is keeping with
the special powers of the memory. Even when I
am unhappy, I can remember times when I was
cheerful, and when I am cheerful, I can
remember past unhappiness. I can recall past
fears and yet not feel afraid, and when I
remember that I once wanted something, I
could do so without wishing to have it now.
Sometimes memory induces the opposite
feeling, for I can be glad to remember sorrow
that is over and done with and sorry to
remember happiness that has come to an end.”
Memories, by Frederic Leighton, 1883

St Augustine marvels at how our mind remembers
not only past events, but past emotions,
impressions and snapshots, and knowledge itself.
“The power of the memory is great, O Lord. It is
awe-inspiring in its profound and incalculable
complexity. Yet it is my mind: it is my self. What,
then, am I, my God? What is my nature? A life that is
ever varying, full of change, and of immense power.
The wide plains of my memory and its innumerable
caverns and hollows are full of countless things of all
kinds. Material things are there by means of their
images; knowledge is there of itself; emotions are
there in the form of ideas or impressions of some
kind, for the memory retains them even while the
mind does not experience them, although whatever
is in the memory must also be in the mind.”
Memory, by Daniel Chester French, 1909

“I must pass beyond memory to find you, my true God, my sure sweetness. But
where will the search lead me? Where am I to find you? If I find you beyond my
memory, it means that I have no memory of you. How am I to find you if I have no
memory of you?”
Is the soul limited by the
capacities of our mind and
memory? St Augustine
implores God, “So, I must
go beyond memory if I am
to reach the God who
made me different from the
beasts that walk on the
earth and wiser than the
birds that fly in the air.”
The Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man, by Jan Brueghel de Oude and Peter Paul Rubens, 1617

But yet memory is imperfect, as St
Augustine reflects: “When memory loses
something, and that is what happens
whenever we forget something and try to
remember it, where are we to look for it
except in the memory itself?” “Or could it
be that it had not entirely escaped our
memory, but part of it remained giving a
clue to the remainder, because their
memory, realizing that something was
missing and feeling crippled by the loss of
something to which it had grown
accustomed, kept demanding that the
missing part be restored?”
Alzheimer's or dissociative disorder or brain fog

St Augustine wonders how God can dwell in our
imperfect memory: “In which part of my memory
are you present, O Lord?” “I searched for you in
the part of my memory where the emotions of my
mind are stored, but here I did not find you,” “for
you are not the image of a material body, nor are
you an emotion such as is felt by living men when
they are glad or sorry, when they have sensations
of desire or fear, when they remember or forget, or
when they experience any other feeling.”
“Why do I ask what place is set aside in my
memory as your dwelling, as if there were
distinctions of place in the memory? Truly you do
dwell in it, because I remember you ever since I
first came to learn of you, and it is there that I find
you when I am reminded of you.”
Young Girl Reading, by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1769

Clearly St Augustine does not want to limit the soul by the
imperfections of our mind and memory. But in the last century
we are reminded that we indeed face limits to our mind and
memory, the best example is how our mental institutions were
emptied when doctors learned that schizophrenia could be
controlled by mediation. We also have several reflections on how
our elderly suffering from dementia are robbed not only of their
memories and their mind, but dementia also robs them of their
moral compass. Patients with advanced dementia cannot be held
responsible for their actions.

The Temptation of St Anthony, Joos van Craesbeeck, 1650
St Augustine: Can We Control Our Dreams?

In addition to pondering memory, St Augustine also
ponders why dreams are so difficult to control. Many
monastics like St John Climacus in the Ladder of Divine
Ascent teach us that our self-discipline should even extend
to our dreams, which Saint Augustine suggests is
unrealistic.

St Augustine laments, “In my memory,
the image of things imprinted upon it by
my former habits still linger on,”
particularly his intimate memories.
“When I am awake, they impose
themselves upon me, though with little
strength. But when I dream, they not
only give me pleasure,” but I reenact
these intimate memories in my dreams.
“Surely it cannot be that when I am
asleep, I am not myself, O Lord my God?” Detail of painting ceiling by Marc
Chagall of Opéra Garnier in Paris

St Augustine asks, “During
sleep, where is my reason
which, when I am awake,
resists such suggestion?”
“Is my reason sealed off
when I close my eyes?”
“Why is it that even in
sleep I often resist the
attractions of these
images?” “Yet the
difference between
waking and sleeping is so
great that” I do not feel
responsible for the
actions in my dreams.
I and the Village, by Marc Chagall

But St Augustine does pray for pure
dreams: “More and more, O Lord, you
will increase your gifts in me, so that
my soul may follow me to you, freed
from the concupiscence which binds
it, and rebel no more against itself. By
your grace it will no longer commit in
sleep those shameful, unclean acts
inspired by sensual images, which lead
to the pollution of the body: it will not
consent to them.”
Fantasies for the Stage, by Marc Chagall

St Augustine and Stoicism, and Fasting
St Ambrose baptizes St Augustine, by Umbrian Master, 1510

Stoicism infused both ancient philosophy and the
teachings of the Church Fathers, including St Augustine,
who prays for the strength to endure our trials on earth:

St Augustine prays: “My sorrows are evil
and they are at strife with joys that are
good, and I cannot tell which will gain the
victory. Have pity on me, O God, in my
misery I do not hide my wounds from
you. I am sick, and you are the physician.
You are merciful: I have need of your
mercy, Is not our life on earth a period of
trial? For who would wish for hardship
and difficulty? You command us to
endure these troubles, not to love them.
No one loves what he endures, although
he may be glad to endure it.”
St Ambrose and St Augustine, by Michael
Wolgemut and workshop, 1498

St Augustine stoically laments:
“I become a prey to my habits,
which hold me fast. My tears
flow, but still I am held fast.
Such is the price we pay for the
burden of custom! In this state
I am fit to stay, unwilling
though I am; in that other
state, where I wish to stay, I am
not fit to be. I have double
cause for sorrow.”
St Augustine, Spanish School, 1600’s

How do the teachings of St Augustine differ
from Stoicism? Henry Chadwick observes:
“The ancient moralists often give the
impression that they expect a man to cultivate
cool reason to become virtually incapable of
being moved. Augustine knows that our
emotions are disordered. But the feelings are
not in themselves the cause of the disorder
which has deeper roots.” It is the emotions
that rule human nature. “The emotions do
not need to be repressed, but rather need to
be elevated and purified, as when a man’s
being is directed upwards towards his true
destiny in faith and obedience.”
St Augustine, by Sandro Botticelli, 1480

The stoics and monastics emphasize the
need for fasting to control the passions.
St Augustine reflects, “Every day I wage
war upon the body by fasting. Time and
time again I force my body to obey me,
but the pain which this causes me is
cancelled by the pleasure of eating and
drinking.” “I look upon food as a
medicine. But the snare of
concupiscence awaits in” when passing
from hunger to contentment, which
leads to “an ominous kind of
enjoyment.” Are we allured to pleasure
when we eat our fill?
St Augustine, 1600’s

St Augustine reflects on how men hear
what they want to hear: “Lord, you are
Truth, and you are everywhere present
where all seek counsel of you. You reply
to all at once, though the council each
seeks is different. The answer you give
is clear, but not all hear it clearly. All ask
you whatever they wish to ask, but the
answer they receive is not always what
they want to hear. The man who serves
you best is the one who is less intent on
hearing from you what he wills to hear
than on shaping his will according to
what he hears from you.”
St Ambrose & St Augustine, by Michael Wolgemut, 1498

Finding True Happiness in Two-Fold Love
Saint Ambrose vesting Saint Augustine, Umbrian Master, 1510

All men seek happiness. Where can you find true
happiness? Only in the two-fold Love of God and neighbor.

St Augustine prays: “How do I
look for you, O Lord? For when I
look for you, you who are my
God, I am looking for a life of
blessed happiness. I shall look
for you, so that my soul may live.
For it is my soul that gives life to
my body, and it is you who gives
life to my soul. How am I to
search for this blessed life? For I
do not possess it until I can
rightly say, ‘This is all I want.
Happiness is here.’ Am I to seek
it in memory, as though I had
forgotten it but still remembered
that I had forgotten it?”
The Three Magi, Looking for the Christ Child, by Ioannis Permeniates

St Augustine continues, “Surely
happiness is what everyone wants, so
much so that there can be none who do
not want it. But if they desire it so much,
where did they learn what it was? If they
had learned to love it, where did they see
it? Certainly, happiness is in us, though
how it comes to be I cannot tell. Some
people are happy in the sense that they
have actually achieved a state of
happiness. Others are happy only in the
hope of achieving it.”
The Love Letter, by Federico Andreotti, around 1900

St Augustine reflects, “We cannot
therefore be certain that all men desire
true happiness, because there are some
who do not look for joy in you; and since
to rejoice in you is the only true
happiness, we must conclude that they do
not desire true happiness.” “True
happiness is to rejoice in the truth, for to
rejoice in the truth is to rejoice in you, O
God, who are the Truth, you, my God, my
true light, to whom I look for salvation.”
Ascension of Christ, by Giacomo Cavedone, 1640

St Augustine continues, “When they
love happiness, which is the same as
to rejoice in truth, they must love
truth also.” “Men love the truth when
it bathes them in its light: they hate it
when it proves them wrong. Because
they hate to be deceived themselves
but are glad if they can deceive
others. They love the truth when it is
revealed to them but hate it when it
reveals that they are wrong.”
Ascension of Christ, by Pietro Perugino, 1498

St Augustine: Further Temptations to Avoid
St Augustine warns that another trap is acquiring
knowledge that does not improve your soul,
“futile curiosity that masquerades under the
name of science and learning.” “This futile
curiosity can cause men to turn to sorcery to do
obtain knowledge for perverted purposes,” and
even religious notions that put God to the test,
“demanding signs and wonders from him not in
the hope of salvation but simply for the love of
the experience.” St Augustine cautions us against
the study of astrology and necromancy, including
seances, sacrilegious rites, and the theater. Today,
St Augustine would likely warn against
pornographic or gratuitously violent films that do
not improve the soul.
Scenes from the Life of St Augustine of Hippo, 1490,
Metropolitan Museum of Art

St Augustine warns against
another kind of temptation: “a
desire to be feared or loved by
other men, simply for the pleasure
that it gives me, though in such
pleasure there is no true joy. This
desire leads only to a life of misery
and despicable vainglory. It is for
this reason more than any other
that men neither love you nor fear
you in purity of heart.”
St Augustine in the Nuremberg Chronicles, 1493

St Augustine also warns us: “Deep in our inner
selves there’s another evil:” “self-complacency, the
vanity of those who are pleased with themselves,
although they either fail to please others or have
no wish to do so and even actively displease them.
But though they are pleasing to themselves, they
are gravely displeasing to you, because they
congratulate themselves not only upon qualities
which are not good, as though they were good, but
also upon good qualities received from you, as
though they were their own gifts to themselves;”
“or they know that they have received them by
your grace alone, but still they grudge your grace
to others and will not rejoice in it with them.”
St Augustine's Baptism, Benozzo
Gozzoli, 1465

Christ as Mediator for Man, & Word of God
What distinguishes Christianity
from NeoPlatonism, and
heresies like Manichaeism?
This curious Christ who is both
God and man. St Augustine
teaches us, “As man, Christ is
our mediator; but as the Word
of God, he is not an
intermediary between God and
man because he is equal with
God, and God with God, and
together with him one God.”
Michelangelo, The Last Judgement, Sistine Chapel, 1541

However, Peter Brown points out that
NeoPlatonism compels the philosopher
to yearn for enlightenment,
philosophical inquiry that compels the
philosopher to intense prayer as he
seeks unity with the One, “the Unknown
God so far above the human mind that
the philosopher could only increase his
knowledge of Him by committing himself
entirely to Him,” “seeking a direct
relationship with God.” Peter Brown
quotes the NeoPlatonic philosopher
Plotinus: “We invoke God Himself, not in
loud words, but in that way of prayer
which is always within our power,
leaning in soul towards Him by
aspiration, alone towards the alone.” Plato's Academy mosaic, Villa of Siminius Stephanus, Pompeii

We reflected on how the later NeoPlatonist Dionysius
the Areopagite deeply influenced the Church Fathers,
including the

Michelangelo, The Last Judgement, Sistine Chapel, 1541
Church Fathers Profoundly
Influenced by Dionysus:
Eastern Church Fathers:
St Maximus the Confessor
Andrew of Crete
Mystical Theologians
Author, Cloud of Unknowing
Meister Eckhart
Western Church Fathers and
Theologians:
St Thomas Aquinas,
John Scotus Eriugena
Pope Gregory the Great
Albert the Great
St John of the Cross

St John of the Cross quotes Dionysius the Areopagite,
calling him St Denis, directly in his Dark Night of the Soul.

St Augustine praises God: “How great was
your love for us, good Father, for you did not
even spare your own son, but gave him up to
save us sinners! How great was your love for
us, when it was for us that Christ, who did not
see, in the rank of Godhead, a prize to be
coveted, accepted an obedience which
brought him to death, death on the cross! He
who alone was free among the dead, for he
was free to lay down his life and free to take it
up again, was for us both Victor and Victim in
your sight, and it was because he was the
Victim that he was also the Victor.”
Christ on the Cross, by Peter Paul Rubens, 1628

St Augustine continues, “In your sight
he was both Priest and Sacrifice, and
it was because he was the Sacrifice
that he was also the Priest. By being
your son, yet serving you, he freed us
from servitude and made us your
sons. Rightly do I place in him my firm
hope that you will cure all my ills
through him who sits at your right
hand and pleads for us: otherwise, I
should despair.”
Christ on the Cross with Two Maries
and St John, by El Greco, 1610

St Augustine prays, “Lord, I cast all my troubles
on you and from now on I shall contemplate the
wonders of your law. You know how weak I am
and how inadequate is my knowledge: teach me
and heal my frailty. Your only Son, in whom the
whole treasury of wisdom and knowledge is
stored up, has redeemed me with his blood.
Save me from the scorn of my enemies, for the
price of my redemption is always in my
thoughts. I eat it and drink it and minister it to
others; and as one of the poor I long to be filled
with it, to be one of those who eat and have
their fill. And those who look for the Lord will
cry out in praise of him.” Christ Carrying the Cross, Decani
monastery, Kosovo, 1500's

Conclusion
Conversion of St Augustine, by Fra Angelico, 1435
St Augustine prays,
“There can be no hope
for me except in your
great mercy.” “Oh love
ever burning, never
quenched! Oh charity,
my God, set me on fire
with your love! You
command me to be
continent. Give me the
grace to do as you
command, and command
me to do what you will.”

St Augustine fondly remembers his
conversion: “I have learned to love you
late, Beauty at once so ancient and so
new! I have learned to love you late!”
“You called me; you cried aloud to me;
you broke my barrier of deafness. You
shone upon me; your radiance enveloped
me; you put my blindness to flight. You
shed your fragrance about me; I drew
breath and now I grasp of your sweet
odor. I tasted you, and now I hunger and
thirst for you. You touched me, and I am
inflamed with the love of your peace.” Triumph of St Augustine, by Claudio Coello, 1664

St Augustine was an excellent orator and writer, but the Confessions is the most
beautifully crafted and closely edited of his works, and there are many translations.
Although the Nicene Fathers is an outdated translation, we always consult it for the
excepts from his Retractions as well as the interesting translator prefaces.
We also consulted both Peter Brown’s and Henry Chadwick’s Biographies on St
Augustine for their summaries on the Confessions, which gave us additional insights
to how his criticisms and disappointments of the Manichean religion of which he
was an acolyte for so many years shaped the Confessions.
Please view the first video on the Confessions for more comments on my sources.
During this reading I was less puzzled by the last books of the Confessions, so I did
not need to consult Gary Willis’ excellent alternate translation.

To find the source of any direct
quotes in this blog, please type in
the phrase to the search box in
my blog to see the referenced
footnote.
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St Augustine’s Confessions: On Soul, Mind, Memory, Stoicism, Salvation, and True Happiness, Book 10

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St Augustine’s Confessions: On Soul, Mind, Memory, Stoicism, Salvation, and True Happiness, Book 10