Augustine, Confessions

lectures of 11/10 and 11/15 connected

The Authority of Augustine

The new Christianity of "authors"
----->the bishop with trans-local authority
----->How Augustine managed this

• Confessions -- mid 390's
• wide correspondence around Mediterranean world
• circulation of his books
• deliberate public self-presentation in controversy
• Retractations -- late in life
• Possidius' index of his works

How to read the Confessions
----->Trinity: three in God, image of God in man
----->1 Jn. 2.16: three temptations
----->Resultant structure of text

• Book 1: infancy and disarray
• Book 2: tempetations of the flesh; pear tree = Eden tree
• Book 3: temptations of the eyes/curiosity: spectacle and Manicheism
• Book 4: discouragement and ambition (after death of friend)
• Book 5: nadir -- the Academics and the impossibility of knowing anything
• Book 6: weaned away from careerism (drunken beggar)
• Book 7: weaned away from curiositas (books of the Platonists)
• Book 8: weaned away from temptations of the flesh (garden scene)
• Book 9: mystic vision/baptism/death/rebirth
• Book 10: TODAY: mysticism and temptation
• Book 11: TODAY+: creation and humility
• Book 12: TODAY+: the Word and human words
• Book 13: TODAY+: the spirit and life in the spirit

The implicit representation of self
1. display of externals in face-to-face aristocratic society
2. concern with internals through education and discipline, as means to the end: improving the display of externals
3. concern with internals for their own sake: last page of the Consolation and throughout Confessions -- God sees within, and that is where the drama of life now takes place. (Monks filthy without, seemly within)

Boundaries between good/evil: not identical with any earthly society

Hence, Augustine's City of God

paradoxes and dilemmas of late antique Christianity as actually lived

universal history, just war, two cities

place of scripture -- the "large screen TV" of late antiquity.
--------->example from Conf. 8.2.3 on the way the authoritative text permeates the perception of reality