Aurelius Augustinius [St. Augustine]. The Confessions of St. Augustine. 395?; Translated by William Benham, Collier, 1909. The Harvard Classics.

The Confessions of St. Augustine is different from any book I have ever read. Unlike the Confessions of Rousseau or Confessions of a Justified Sinner, Augustine presents this book as an actual confession to God. It is not written in the second person like Bright Lights, Big City, but the second person is very common. The second person is God. The book is addressed to Him as the ultimate Father Confessor.

While the vast majority of the work focuses on sin, especially Augustine’s own sin, it does not deliver great details. He confesses that he had a long relationship with a “concubine,” and that as a boy he stole some things, but mostly it examines his sin nature and his motivation for sin. At the same time the book discusses the various belief systems he examined—he embraced the Manichaeans for a few years—and rejoices over the truth and salvation that he found through Jesus.

Although the Roman Catholic Church considers Augustine one of its doctors, he comes from a very different philosophical direction than Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas developed his theology by examining Aristotle and Aristotelian logic. Augustine considered Aristotle “vain” because he did not acknowledge the supernatural or see the moral law as God-given.

The attraction of the Manichaean system for Augustine was similar to that of certain views we hear today. The followers of Mani taught that the cosmos exemplified a struggle of good versus evil, with the evil being the material world and the good being he spiritual world. This is not unlike the Orientalist or New Age view of the material world being illusory and the spiritual realm being real; or again not unlike the Daoist concept of yin and yang, good and evil being two sides of the same coin. It even suggests the Mormon idea that Jesus and the devil are brothers. Like other adherents of such belief systems, Augustine found it satisfactory for a while because it explained good and evil.

He rejected Christianity in spite of his mother’s prayers and pleas for two reasons. One was the basic reason for many: He enjoyed sinning, especially concupiscence. (Although the root of concupiscence is Cupid, he points out that, as in I John 2:16, all “worldly” desires are sin: Cupid’s lust of the flesh, but also greed, and lust for power.) The other reason was that if there were a good creator God, then why does evil exist? That, of course, is a common philosophical objection to Christianity or Judaism today. It became known as Friday’s Question because Friday asks Robinson Crusoe virtually the same thing.

Eventually, he was persuaded or realized that Platonism, not Aristotelianism, had an answer. There was an ideal. Because we understand the moral law, even though we do not always keep it, we can see that there is an ideal Creator, one who is good. Augustine notes the similarity between the Platonic ideal and the opening verses of the Gospel of John:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. (John 1:1-4)

Once he overcame the philosophical objection, it would be only a matter of time when he would embrace the Gospel of Jesus. Jesus, as John goes on, “became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14) to save us from our sins and deliver us from that sin nature. Not only is God good, but He shares His goodness to all who follow Him and acknowledge His Son. To Augustine that included the gift of continency, the self-control needed to deal with those worldly temptations (189, cf. I Corinthians 7:6-7, Galatians 5:22-24).

As I read this, I was struck by two things from my own reading of other works. I realize that is no coincidence that Martin Luther was an Augustinian monk. Wittenberg was an Augustinian university. Most of the other universities in sixteenth century Europe were Thomist. Wittenberg was different.

We are told that many days Luther would spend three hours in confession. His confessor and other monks and priests at Wittenberg thought he was excessive, but he was searching for righteousness. But anyone who has read The Confessions of St. Augustine can see where that came from. This two hundred page book is one confession or analysis of personal sin followed by another and another and another. Luther was seeking righteousness just as Augustine was.

Augustine would hear a voice tell him “take and read,” and he picked up a Bible and turned to Romans 13:13-14, which spoke directly to him:

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.

He repented, the Holy Spirit changed him, and the rest is his history.

Luther also was converted by a verse in Romans. Now, in his case, he was a monk and took his vows seriously. If his confessors are to be believed, he did not have much sin to turn away from, but he still needed God’s assurance of salvation. He was also reading the Book of Romans, notably chapter 1 verses 16 and 17:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.” (Romans 1:16-17, cf. Habakkuk 2:4)

The righteous live by faith! It is not our own doing, but faith in the salvation that Jesus provided by dying on the cross! Luther would write that when he accepted this, he was born again. It was about five years after this experience that Luther’s questions about church teachings gained the attention of others, and the Reformation followed.

Luther noted in one of his writings the irony that the universities in his day taught Greek, not to read the New Testament in its original language, but to read Aristotle—and Aristotle was a pagan who only believed in the material world. In other words, he rejected the roots of Thomism for a reason similar to why Augustine saw Aristotle among the vain philosophers. (See, for example, To The Christian Nobility of the German Nation §25)

(As an aside, even today, scholarly Catholics are encouraged to read Aristotle to help them understand Aquinas. I was assured this was the case by an acquaintance who was a member of the Catholic lay order Opus Dei.)

Augustine also quotes and alludes to Scripture after Scripture. I give credit to the translation I read. Its language may be a bit dated, but it italicized nearly every Bible allusion and quotation. We begin to see how much Augustine relied on the Bible, even when describing his life before his conversion. We see a similar use of Scripture in much of Luther’s work as well.

Not only did The Confessions of St. Augustine remind me of Luther, it reminded me of one of the most famous fictional characters of all time—Prince Hamlet. Hamlet, after all, attended Wittenberg. He was trained in Augustinian theology. I suspect Shakespeare may have been familiar with The Confessions. We can be pretty well assured he knew Latin. He attended grammar school where Latin was taught from an early age. We know he knew Ovid. If they taught The Metamorphoses, they likely taught The Confessions as well.

So Hamlet expresses his depression in a manner similar to the way Augustine described his when he was going through a period of similar stress. Hamlet says, “Denmark’s a prison.” So Augustine writes, “My native country was a torment to me” (51). And as Hamlet finds little pleasure in distractions and entertainments so Augustine writes about his melancholy:

O madness, which knowest not how to love men, like men! O foolish man that I then was, enduring impatiently the lot of man! I fretted then, sighed, wept, was distracted; had neither rest nor counsel. For I bore about a shattered and bleeding soul, impatient of being borne by me, yet where to repose it, I found not. Not in calm groves, not in games and music, nor in fragrant spots, nor in curious banquetings, nor in the pleasures of the bed and the couch; nor (finally) in books or poesy found a repose. All things looked ghastly, yea the very light…(53)

He could be describing Hamlet’s madness as well as his own.

Yet like Augustine, Hamlet was spiritually aware. He understood that the devil or another spirit could be exploiting his grief and “abuses me to damn me.” We are indeed in a spiritual battle, sweet prince. Yes, “there is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.” God sees. He is the Omnipotent Word. He knows what is going on better than we do.

Augustine shares something of his battle and what he learned from it. Over the centuries he has spoken and still speaks to those who understand what is at stake. Some readers may want a more contemporary translation than the one quoted here, but don’t pass it up if you are concerned about the condition of your heart or soul—or if you want a little more insight into Hamlet.