Augustine: The Journey of Faith and Transformation
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"GODFREY: Well, we're back to talking about Augustine, we've seen the struggles of his youth, and then having trained himself as a great public speaker, a great rhetorician as he would have been known in the ancient world, able to argue a political or a legal case on either side of the issue, he sets off to make his fame and fortune in Italy, and at about the age of thirty arrives in Milan expecting a brilliant career, and he soon discovers that the word is out that there is a great preacher in Milan, and that great preacher is Ambrose." [00:00:00]
"And Ambrose has a profound effect on Augustine because Ambrose is able to show a certain sophistication to Christianity. He's able to show that not all Christians are uneducated, that not all Christians are unable to speak eloquently, and the power of Ambrose as a preacher begins to draw Augustine back towards considering Christianity, and beginning to think of Christianity as a viable option." [00:00:34]
"His great problem is that he doesn't feel that he can control his sexual desires, and therefore feels he can't really return to the church, and it's that struggle in his life that leads to the famous story of his conversion. He's sitting in a walled garden, and he hears, he's reading, interestingly enough, Saint Athanasius' life of Saint Anthony, the first great hermit in Egypt." [00:01:15]
"And so he's reading about this monastic life that Saint Anthony led, and he says, he begins to hear a voice, like a child playing just over the wall, repeating the words, 'Tolle lege, tolle lege, tolle lege,' Latin for 'take and read, take and read, take and read.' And he goes over and he picks up the book of Romans, and he reads Romans thirteen thirteen, 'Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.'" [00:01:49]
"And that's the moment when Augustine sees himself as converted. Now it's interesting when we go back and look at Augustine in point of fact, there are several conversions in Augustine, and this is important if we had time to talk about the whole history of conversion and reflection on conversion, he's first of all converted intellectually by the preaching of Ambrose." [00:02:21]
"And this famous story is what Augustine would have called his moral conversion -- he's changed morally in this moment. But he would have gone on to say there's yet a third critical conversion for him, and that's his baptism -- his sacramental conversion. And Augustine makes clear in his Confessions, his famous book of introspection, that he doesn't really regard himself as converted until he's baptized -- that's his moment of identification with the church, that's the moment at which he really changes." [00:02:48]
"One of his most important books is his little book The Confessions, and I commend you reading The Confessions. It's very readable, it's very engaging, it's very thoughtful as he talks about how God sought him. And right near the beginning, the second -- beginning of the second paragraph of the book he says one of the most famous statements that he made. He writes, 'For You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless til they rest in You.'" [00:04:55]
"That's one of his great observations, we are made to be in relationship with God, and we will never really be fulfilled until we're in a relationship with God, and in a sense he saw that as the great foundation for all the preaching, all the apologetic work of the church. People know they're not fulfilled. They may successfully blind themselves to recognizing it, but in the deepest sense, we are made for God, we are made -- in Latin it's really directional, we are made pointed toward God, and we're restless until we find rest in Him." [00:05:34]
"And so his confession is really the story of his restlessness until he finds God. And I want to talk just a little bit about one of the really remarkable statements in The Confession. In the Platonic tradition of the church, evil was seen as a failure to love properly. In other words, I choose evil because I love something inferior, and I neglect what should be my superior love." [00:06:10]
"So if I steal something, I steal it because I want it, I steal it because I want it for what is good about it, and I neglect that it belongs to somebody else, and that I should have loved my neighbor more than I loved, for example, the pear that I stole. And so evil is seen traditionally amongst the Platonists as a choice of an inferior love, and a neglect of a superior love, but evil is always loving something intrinsically good, just in a disordered way." [00:06:36]
"And for us as Protestants we're often inclined, especially as Calvinists, to say, 'That seems not fully to grasp how desperate evil really is, how bad evil really is.' And although Augustine at times will use this notion of evil as loving too much a lesser love, at one point when he thinks back on his youth, we begin to see how Biblical understanding breaks through to make a point on the part of Augustine beyond what he had really thought philosophically and theologically." [00:07:17]
"And this is what he writes. He thinks back when he was a boy how he stole pears from a neighbor's tree. And he writes, 'Your law, oh Lord, punishes theft, and this law is so written in the hearts of men, that not even the breaking of it blots it out. For no thief bears calmly being stolen from.' How do you know that stealing is wrong? Because if anybody steals from you, you're annoyed." [00:07:41]
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"And Ambrose has a profound effect on Augustine because Ambrose is able to show a certain sophistication to Christianity. He's able to show that not all Christians are uneducated, that not all Christians are unable to speak eloquently, and the power of Ambrose as a preacher begins to draw Augustine back towards considering Christianity, and beginning to think of Christianity as a viable option." [00:00:34]
"His great problem is that he doesn't feel that he can control his sexual desires, and therefore feels he can't really return to the church, and it's that struggle in his life that leads to the famous story of his conversion. He's sitting in a walled garden, and he hears, he's reading, interestingly enough, Saint Athanasius' life of Saint Anthony, the first great hermit in Egypt." [00:01:15]
"And so he's reading about this monastic life that Saint Anthony led, and he says, he begins to hear a voice, like a child playing just over the wall, repeating the words, 'Tolle lege, tolle lege, tolle lege,' Latin for 'take and read, take and read, take and read.' And he goes over and he picks up the book of Romans, and he reads Romans thirteen thirteen, 'Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.'" [00:01:49]
"And that's the moment when Augustine sees himself as converted. Now it's interesting when we go back and look at Augustine in point of fact, there are several conversions in Augustine, and this is important if we had time to talk about the whole history of conversion and reflection on conversion, he's first of all converted intellectually by the preaching of Ambrose." [00:02:21]
"And this famous story is what Augustine would have called his moral conversion -- he's changed morally in this moment. But he would have gone on to say there's yet a third critical conversion for him, and that's his baptism -- his sacramental conversion. And Augustine makes clear in his Confessions, his famous book of introspection, that he doesn't really regard himself as converted until he's baptized -- that's his moment of identification with the church, that's the moment at which he really changes." [00:02:48]
"One of his most important books is his little book The Confessions, and I commend you reading The Confessions. It's very readable, it's very engaging, it's very thoughtful as he talks about how God sought him. And right near the beginning, the second -- beginning of the second paragraph of the book he says one of the most famous statements that he made. He writes, 'For You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless til they rest in You.'" [00:04:55]
"That's one of his great observations, we are made to be in relationship with God, and we will never really be fulfilled until we're in a relationship with God, and in a sense he saw that as the great foundation for all the preaching, all the apologetic work of the church. People know they're not fulfilled. They may successfully blind themselves to recognizing it, but in the deepest sense, we are made for God, we are made -- in Latin it's really directional, we are made pointed toward God, and we're restless until we find rest in Him." [00:05:34]
"And so his confession is really the story of his restlessness until he finds God. And I want to talk just a little bit about one of the really remarkable statements in The Confession. In the Platonic tradition of the church, evil was seen as a failure to love properly. In other words, I choose evil because I love something inferior, and I neglect what should be my superior love." [00:06:10]
"So if I steal something, I steal it because I want it, I steal it because I want it for what is good about it, and I neglect that it belongs to somebody else, and that I should have loved my neighbor more than I loved, for example, the pear that I stole. And so evil is seen traditionally amongst the Platonists as a choice of an inferior love, and a neglect of a superior love, but evil is always loving something intrinsically good, just in a disordered way." [00:06:36]
"And for us as Protestants we're often inclined, especially as Calvinists, to say, 'That seems not fully to grasp how desperate evil really is, how bad evil really is.' And although Augustine at times will use this notion of evil as loving too much a lesser love, at one point when he thinks back on his youth, we begin to see how Biblical understanding breaks through to make a point on the part of Augustine beyond what he had really thought philosophically and theologically." [00:07:17]
"And this is what he writes. He thinks back when he was a boy how he stole pears from a neighbor's tree. And he writes, 'Your law, oh Lord, punishes theft, and this law is so written in the hearts of men, that not even the breaking of it blots it out. For no thief bears calmly being stolen from.' How do you know that stealing is wrong? Because if anybody steals from you, you're annoyed." [00:07:41]
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