Elders' Blog

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Reading Old Books - Augustine's Confessions Book II

Now I’m officially behind. I read Book II on vacation, with the intention of posting my summary on time the day after I returned. But returning with one week until Christmas was more difficult than I expected, and the business of things overwhelmed my good intentions.

So from here, we’ll make an allowance for New Years, and plan on Book III for January 15, 2010. This should give us plenty of time to settle back into a routine after the Holidays.

Book II is a recounting of part of Augustine calls his “shameful past”, specifically his 16th year. Augustine was in transition. Previously he had been studying in Madaura, but at 16 his father was assembling funds to send him to Carthage for further study. So a period of leisure intervened in his life. The old expression that “idle hands are the Devil’s tools” seemed true for this period of Augustine’s life.

During this time the “brambles of lust grew up over my head”, which I’m sure we will see more of as Augustine continues. His mother did not push marriage as a solution for this, fearing that marriage would hinder his literary aspirations, which she hoped would help him find God.

The other major event recounted by Augustine from this time was an incident where he and some friends stole pears from a neighbor’s orchard. They stole for the fun of stealing, and Augustine spends most of this chapter examining his heart in this incident. He says that his “evil was loathsome, and I loved it”. The beauty of things in this world creates in us a desire for sin, “seeing that the lower things are good, we abandon the things that are higher and more excellent – you, O Lord”. This is the heart of idolatry, and Augustine confesses that “thus the soul is unfaithful to you” when we seek to find outside of God things found only in Him.

Yet as he writes this, Augustine can be unafraid before God because He has made his sins melt away.

I was struck throughout this chapter by Augustine’s sense of God’s presence and work even while he was descending into sin. When he had gone beyond the limits of God’s law, he says that he did not escape the lash, but that God was striking him in His mercy over his illicit pleasures. He recognized that God spoke to him throughout this time through his Godly mother.

This is the lesson I take away from this: Augustine does not look back on this time fondly, but on the other side of grace it gives him a stronger desire to know and follow God the remainder of his days. I need that same sense of God’s grace, that my past sins would not discourage me, but rather that God’s grace to me would spur me on.

Please join the discussion by adding your thoughts in the comments section of the blog.

Posted by David Fenton on Dec 29, 11:57 AM

2 Comments

Book II fits right in with Stephen’s blog on Prov. 10:23. He asks, “Do we find more pleasure in what is right than in what is wrong?”

In “Confessions” Augustine speaks of his friends bragging about their depravity. He says, “The greater the sin the more they gloried in it,” Augustine fell right in step with his friends.

I find it hard to listen when others, especially believers, bring up their past life of depravity as if they too glory in it. Maybe I’m sensitive to this because I have been guilty of the same, and have been convicted by God, and now I glory more when I feel more shame than glory. More importantly, I glory in God’s forgiveness.

I realize there is a place for relating past events in our testimony; just today I had the opportunity to use a “minor indiscretion” on my part as an opening to speak gospel words to another. I guess the test is whether or not we are retelling for the glory of God and the furtherance of His kingdom.

Thanks for the reprieve on book III.

Posted by Walt Crooker Dec 30, 07:07 PM

Great thoughts, guys. Both of you mention the importance of reflecting on and even telling others where we were before God saved us, but only when it is done for the glory of God. I think that’s right. The Bible does point us to where we were before salvation — and it does this in order to magnify the extent of God’s grace and to make us humble and understanding of where others are now. For instance, Deuteronomy 10.19 says: ‘Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.’ In the New Testament, passages like 1 Corinthians 6.9-11 (‘and such were some of you’) and Titus 3.1-7 do the same thing.

Posted by Stephen Witmer Jan 2, 08:54 AM

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