(Augustine, Confessions. part 25)

[217] John 14:6.
[218] An interesting reminder that the Apollinarian heresy was
condemned but not extinct.
[219] It is worth remembering that both Augustine and Alypius were
catechumens and had presumably been receiving doctrinal
instruction in preparation for their eventual baptism and full
membership in the Catholic Church. That their ideas on the
incarnation, at this stage, were in such confusion raises an
interesting problem.
[220] Cf. Augustine's The Christian Combat as an example of "the
refutation of heretics."
[221] Cf. 1 Cor. 11:19.
[222] Non peritus, sed periturus essem.
[223] Cf. 1 Cor. 3:11f.
[224] Rom. 7:22, 23.
[225] Rom. 7:24, 25.
[226] Cf. Prov. 8:22 and Col. 1:15.  Augustine is here identifying
the figure of Wisdom in Proverbs with the figure of the Logos in
the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel.  In the Arian controversy both
these references to God's Wisdom and Word as "created" caused
great difficulty for the orthodox, for the Arians triumphantly
appealed to them as proof that Jesus Christ was a "creature" of
God.  But Augustine was a Chalcedonian before Chalcedon, and there
is no doubt that he is here quoting familiar Scripture and filling
it with the interpretation achieved by the long struggle of the
Church to affirm the coeternity and consubstantiality of Jesus
Christ and God the Father.
[227] Cf. Ps. 62:1, 2, 5, 6.
[228] Cf. Ps. 91:13.
[229] A figure that compares the dangers of the solitary traveler
in a bandit-infested land and the safety of an imperial convoy on
a main highway to the capital city.
[230] Cf. 1 Cor. 15:9.
[231] Ps. 35:10.
[232] Cf. Ps. 116:16, 17.
[233] Cf. Ps. 8:1.
[234] 1 Cor. 13:12.
[235] Matt. 19:12.
[236] Rom. 1:21.
[237] Job 28:28.
[238] Prov. 3:7.
[239] Rom. 1:22.
[240] Col. 2:8.
[241] Virgil, Aeneid, VIII, 698.
[242] Ps. 144:5.
[243] Luke 15:4.
[244] Cf. Luke, ch. 15.
[245] 1 Cor. 1:27.
[246] A garbled reference to the story of the conversion of
Sergius Paulus, proconsul of Cyprus, in Acts 13:4-12.
[247] 2 Tim. 2:21.
[248] Gal. 5:17.
[249] The text here is a typical example of Augustine's love of
wordplay and assonance, as a conscious literary device: tuae
caritati me dedere quam meae cupiditati cedere; sed illud
placebat et vincebat, hoc libebat et vinciebat.
[250] Eph. 5:14.
[251] Rom. 7:22-25.
[252] The last obstacles that remained.  His intellectual
difficulties had been cleared away and the intention to become a
Christian had become strong.  But incontinence and immersion in
his career were too firmly fixed in habit to be overcome by an act
of conscious resolution.
[253] Treves, an important imperial town on the Moselle; the
emperor referred to here was probably Gratian.  Cf. E.A. Freeman,
"Augusta Trevororum," in the British Quarterly Review (1875), 62,
pp. 1-45.
[254] Agentes in rebus, government agents whose duties ranged from
postal inspection and tax collection to espionage and secret
police work.  They were ubiquitous and generally dreaded by the
populace; cf. J.S. Reid, "Reorganization of the Empire," in
Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. I, pp. 36-38.
[255] The inner circle of imperial advisers; usually rather
informally appointed and usually with precarious tenure.
[256] Cf. Luke 14:28-33.
[257] Eph. 5:8.
[258] Cf. Ps. 34:5.
[259] Cf. Ps. 6:3; 79:8.
[260] This is the famous Tolle, lege; tolle, lege.
[261] Doubtless from Ponticianus, in their earlier conversation.
[262] Matt. 19:21.
[263] Rom. 13:13.
[264] Note the parallels here to the conversion of Anthony and the
agentes in rebus.
[265] Rom. 14:1.
[266] Eph. 3:20.
[267] Ps. 116:16, 17.
[268] An imperial holiday season, from late August to the middle
of October.
[269] Cf. Ps. 46:10.
[270] His subsequent baptism; see below, Ch. VI.
[271] Luke 14:14.
[272] Ps. 125:3.
[273] The heresy of Docetism, one of the earliest and most
persistent of all Christological errors.
[274] Cf. Ps. 27:8.
[275] The group included Monica, Adeodatus (Augustine's fifteen-
year-old son), Navigius (Augustine's brother), Rusticus and
Fastidianus (relatives), Alypius, Trygetius, and Licentius (former
pupils).
[276] A somewhat oblique acknowledgment of the fact that none of
the Cassiciacum dialogues has any distinctive or substantial
Christian content  This has often been pointed to as evidence that
Augustine's conversion thus far had brought him no farther than to
a kind of Christian Platonism; cf. P. Alfaric, L'Evolution
intellectuelle de Saint Augustin (Paris, 1918).
[277] The dialogues written during this stay at Cassiciacum:
Contra Academicos, De beata vita, De ordine, Soliloquia.  See, in
this series, Vol. VI, pp. 17-63, for an English translation of the
Soliloquies.
[278] Cf. Epistles II and III.
[279] A symbolic reference to the "cedars of Lebanon"; cf. Isa.
2:12-14; Ps. 29:5.
[280] There is perhaps a remote connection here with Luke 10:18-
20.
[281] Ever since the time of Ignatius of Antioch who referred to
the Eucharist as "the medicine of immortality," this had been a
popular metaphor to refer to the sacraments; cf. Ignatius,
Ephesians 20:2.
[282] Here follows (8-11) a brief devotional commentary on Ps. 4.
[283] John 7:39.
[284] Idipsum -- the oneness and immutability of God.
[285] Cf. v. 9.
[286] 1 Cor. 15:54.
[287] Concerning the Teacher; cf. Vol. VI of this series, pp. 64-
101.
[288] This was apparently the first introduction into the West of
antiphonal chanting, which was already widespread in the East.
Ambrose brought it in; Gregory brought it to perfection.
[289] Cf. S. of Sol. 1:3, 4.
[290] Cf. Isa. 40:6; 1 Peter 1:24: "All flesh is grass." See Bk.
XI, Ch. II, 3.
[291] Ecclus. 19:1.
[292] 1 Tim. 5:9.
[293] Phil. 3:13.
[294] Cf. 1 Cor. 2:9.
[295] Ps. 36:9.
[296] Idipsum.
[297] Cf. this report of a "Christian ecstasy" with the Plotinian
ecstasy recounted in Bk. VII, Ch. XVII, 23, above.
[298] Cf. Wis. 7:21-30; see especially v. 27: "And being but one,
she [Wisdom] can do all things: and remaining in herself the same,
she makes all things new."
[299] Matt. 25:21.
[300] 1 Cor. 15:51.
[301] Navigius, who had joined them in Milan, but about whom
Augustine is curiously silent save for the brief and unrevealing
references in De beata vita-, I, 6, to II, 7, and De ordine, I, 2-
3.
[302] A.D. 387.
[303] Nec omnino moriebatur.  Is this an echo of Horace's famous
memorial ode, Exegi monumentum aere perennius . . . non omnis
moriar?  Cf. Odes, Book III, Ode XXX.
[304] 1 Tim. 1:5.
[305] Cf. this passage, as Augustine doubtless intended, with the
story of his morbid and immoderate grief at the death of his
boyhood friend, above, Bk. IV, Chs. IV, 9, to VII, 12.
[306] Ps. 101:1.
[307] Ps. 68:5.
[308] Sir Tobie Matthew (adapted).  For Augustine's own analysis
of the scansion and structure of this hymn, see De musica, VI,
2:2-3; for a brief commentary on the Latin text, see A.S. Walpole,
Early Latin Hymns (Cambridge, 1922), pp. 44-49.
[309] 1 Cor. 15:22.
[310] Matt. 5:22.
[311] 2 Cor. 10:17.
[312] Rom. 8:34.
[313] Cf. Matt. 6:12.
[314] Ps. 143:2.
[315] Matt. 5:7.
[316] Cf. Rom. 9:15.
[317] Ps. 119:108.
[318] Cf. 1 Cor. 13:12.
[319] Eph. 5:27.
[320] Ps. 51:6.
[321] John 3:21.
[322] 1 Cor. 2:11.
[323] 1 Cor. 13:7.
[324] Ps. 32:1.
[325] Ps. 144:7, 8.
[326] Cf. Rev. 8:3-5.  "And the smoke of the incense with the
prayers of the saints went up before God out of the angel's hand"
(v. 4).
[327] 1 Cor. 2:11.
[328] 1 Cor. 13:12.
[329] Isa. 58:10.
[330] Rom. 1:20.
[331] Cf. Rom. 9:15.
[332] One of the pre-Socratic "physiologer." Cf. Cicero's On the
Nature of the Gods (a likely source for Augustine's knowledge of
early Greek philosophy), I, 10: "After Anaximander comes
Anaximenes, who taught that the air is God. . . ."
[333] An important text for Augustine's conception of sensation
and the relation of body and mind.  Cf. On Music, VI, 5:10; The
Magnitude of the Soul, 25:48; On the Trinity, XII, 2:2; see also
F. Coplestone, A History of Philosophy (London, 1950), II, 51-60,
and E. Gilson, Introduction a l'etude de Saint Augustin, pp. 74-
87.
[334] Rom. 1:20.
[335] Reading videnti (with De Labriolle) instead of vident (as in
Skutella).
[336] Ps. 32:9.
[337] The notion of the soul's immediate self-knowledge is a basic
conception in Augustine's psychology and epistemology; cf. the
refutation of skepticism, Si fallor, sum in On Free Will, II, 3:7;
see also the City of God, XI, 26.
[338] Again, the mind-body dualism typical of the Augustinian
tradition.  Cf. E. Gilson, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy
(Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1940), pp. 173-188; and E.
Gilson, The Philosophy of Saint Bonaventure (Sheed & Ward, New
York, 1938), ch. XI.
[339] Luke 15:8.
[340] Cf. Isa. 55:3.
[341] Cf. the early dialogue "On the Happy Life" in Vol. I of The
Fathers of the Church (New York, 1948).
[342] Gal. 5:17.
[343] Ps. 42:11.
[344] Cf. Enchiridion, VI, 19ff.
[345] When he is known at all, God is known as the Self-evident.
This is, of course, not a doctrine of innate ideas but rather of
the necessity, and reality, of divine illumination as the dynamic
source of all our knowledge of divine reality.  Cf. Coplestone,
op. cit., ch. IV, and Cushman, op. cit.
[346] Cf. Wis. 8:21.
[347] Cf. Enneads, VI, 9:4.
[348] 1 John 2:16.
[349] Eph. 3:20.
[350] 1 Cor. 15:54.
[351] Cf. Matt. 6:34.
[352] 1 Cor. 9:27.
[353] Cf. Luke 21:34.
[354] Cf. Wis. 8:21.
[355] Ecclus. 18:30.
[356] 1 Cor. 8:8.
[357] Phil. 4:11-13.
[358] Ps. 103:14.
[359] Cf. Gen. 3:19.
[360] Luke 15:24.
[361] Ecclus. 23:6.
[362] Titus 1:15.
[363] Rom. 14:20.
[364] 1 Tim. 4:4.
[365] 1 Cor. 8:8.
[366] Cf. Col. 2:16.
[367] Rom. 14:3.
[368] Luke 5:8.
[369] John 16:33.
[370] Cf. Ps. 139:16.
[371] Cf. the evidence for Augustine's interest and proficiency in
music in his essay De musica, written a decade earlier.
[372] Cf. 2 Cor. 5:2.
[373] Cf. Tobit, chs. 2 to 4.
[374] Gen. 27:1; cf. Augustine's Sermon IV, 20:21f.
[375] Cf. Gen., ch. 48.
[376] Again, Ambrose, Deus, creator omnium, an obvious favorite of
Augustine's.  See above, Bk. IX, Ch. XII, 32.
[377] Ps. 25:15.
[378] Ps. 121:4.
[379] Ps. 26:3.
[380] 1 John 2:16.
[381] Cf. Ps. 103:3-5.
[382] Cf. Matt. 11:30.
[383] 1 Peter 5:5.
[384] Cf. Ps. 18:7, 13.
[385] Cf. Isa. 14:12-14.
[386] Cf. Prov. 27:21.
[387] Cf. Ps. 19:12.
[388] Cf. Ps. 141:5.
[389] Ps. 109:22.
[390] Ps. 31:22.
[391] Cf. the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, Luke 18:9-
14.
[392] Cf. Eph. 2:2.
[393] 2 Cor. 11:14.
[394] Rom. 6:23.
[395] 1 Tim. 2:5.
[396] Cf. Rom. 8:32.
[397] Phil. 2:6-8.
[398] Cf. Ps. 88:5; see Ps. 87:6 (Vulgate).
[399] Ps. 103:3.
[400] Cf. Rom. 8:34.
[401] John 1:14.
[402] 2 Cor. 5:15.
[403] Ps. 119:18.
[404] Col. 2:3.
[405] Cf. Ps. 21:27 (Vulgate).
[406] In the very first sentence of Confessions, Bk. I, Ch. I.
Here we have a basic and recurrent motif of the Confessions from
beginning to end: the celebration and praise of the greatness and
goodness of God -- Creator and Redeemer.  The repetition of it
here connects this concluding section of the Confessions, Bks. XI-
XIII, with the preceding part.
[407] Matt. 6:8.
[408] The "virtues" of the Beatitudes, the reward for which is
blessedness; cf. Matt. 5:1-11.
[409] Ps. 118:1; cf. Ps. 136.
[410] An interesting symbol of time's ceaseless passage; the
reference is to a water clock (clepsydra).
[411] Cf. Ps. 130:1, De profundis.
[412] Ps. 74:16.
[413] This metaphor is probably from Ps. 29:9.
[414] A repetition of the metaphor above, Bk. IX, Ch. VII, 16.
[415] Ps. 26:7.
[416] Ps. 119:18.
[417] Cf. Matt. 6:33.
[418] Col. 2:3.
[419] Augustine was profoundly stirred, in mind and heart, by the
great mystery of creation and the Scriptural testimony about it.
In addition to this long and involved analysis of time and
creation which follows here, he returned to the story in Genesis
repeatedly: e.g., De Genesi contra Manicheos; De Genesi ad
litteram, liber imperfectus (both written _before_ the Confessions
); De Genesi ad litteram, libri  XII and De civitate Dei, XI-XII
(both written _after_ the Confessions ).
[420] The final test of truth, for Augustine, is self-evidence and
the final source of truth is the indwelling Logos.
[421] Cf. the notion of creation in Plato's Timaeus (29D-30C; 48E-
50C), in which the Demiurgos (craftsman) fashions the universe
from pre-existent matter and imposes as much form as the
Receptacle will receive.  The notion of the world fashioned from
pre-existent matter of some sort was a universal idea in Greco-
Roman cosmology.
[422] Cf. Ps. 33:9.
[423] Matt. 3:17.
[424] Cf. the Vulgate of John 8:25.
[425] Cf. Augustine's emphasis on Christ as true Teacher in De
Magistro.
[426] Cf. John 3:29.
[427] Cf. Ps. 103:4, 5 (mixed text).
[428] Ps. 104:24.
[429] Pleni vetustatis suae.  In Sermon CCLXVII, 2 (PL 38, c.
1230), Augustine has a similar usage.  Speaking of those who pour
new wine into old containers, he says: Carnalitas vetustas est,
gratia novitas est, "Carnality is the old nature; grace is the
new"; cf. Matt. 9:17.
[430] The notion of the eternity of this world was widely held in
Greek philosophy, in different versions, and was incorporated into
the Manichean rejection of the Christian doctrine of creatio ex
nihilo which Augustine is citing here.  He returns to the
question, and his answer to it, again in De civitate Dei, XI, 4-8.
[431] The unstable "heart" of those who confuse time and eternity.
[432] Cf. Ps. 102:27.
[433] Ps. 2:7.
[434] Spatium, which means extension either in space or time.
[435] The breaking light and the image of the rising sun.
[436] Cf. Ps. 139:6.
[437] Memoria, contuitus, and expectatio: a pattern that
corresponds vaguely to the movement of Augustine's thought in the
Confessions: from direct experience back to the supporting
memories and forward to the outreach of hope and confidence in
God's provident grace.
[438] Cf. Ps. 116:10.
[439] Cf. Matt. 25:21, 23.
[440] Communes notitias, the universal principles of "common
sense." This idea became a basic category in scholastic
epistemology.
[441] Gen. 1:14.
[442] Cf. Josh. 10:12-14.
[443] Cf. Ps. 18:28.
[444] Cubitum, literally the distance between the elbow and the
tip of the middle finger; in the imperial system of weights and
measures it was 17.5 inches.
[445] Distentionem, "spread-out-ness"; cf. Descartes' notion of
res extensae, and its relation to time.
[446] Ps. 100:3.
[447] Here Augustine begins to summarize his own answers to the
questions he has raised in his analysis of time.
[448] The same hymn of Ambrose quoted above, Bk. IX, Ch. XII, 39,
and analyzed again in De musica, VI, 2:2.
[449] This theory of time is worth comparing with its most notable
restatement in modern poetry, in T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets and
especially "Burnt Norton."
[450] Ps. 63:3.
[451] Cf. Phil. 3:12-14.
[452] Cf. Ps. 31:10.
[453] Note here the preparation for the transition from this
analysis of time in Bk. XI to the exploration of the mystery of
creation in Bks. XII and XIII.
[454] Celsitudo, an honorific title, somewhat like "Your
Highness."
[455] Rom. 8:31.
[456] Matt. 7:7, 8.
[457] Vulgate, Ps. 113:16 (cf. Ps. 115:16, K.J.; see also Ps.
148:4, both Vulgate and K.J.): Caelum caeli domino, etc.
Augustine finds a distinction here for which the Hebrew text gives
no warrant.  The Hebrew is a typical nominal sentence and means
simply "The heavens are the heavens of Yahweh"; cf. the Soncino
edition of The Psalms, edited by A. Cohen; cf. also R.S.V., Ps.
115:16.  The LXX reading seems to rest on a variant Hebrew text.
This idiomatic construction does not mean "the heavens of the
heavens" (as it is too literally translated in the LXX), but
rather "highest heaven." This is a familiar way, in Hebrew, of
emphasizing a superlative (e.g., "King of kings," "Song of
songs").  The singular thing can be described superlatively only
in terms of itself!
[458] Earth and sky.
[459] It is interesting that Augustine should have preferred the
invisibilis et incomposita of the Old Latin version of Gen. 1:2
over the inanis et vacua of the Vulgate, which was surely
accessible to him.  Since this is to be a key phrase in the
succeeding exegesis this reading can hardly have been the casual
citation of the old and familiar version.  Is it possible that
Augustine may have had the sensibilities and associations of his
readers in mind -- for many of them may have not known Jerome's
version or, at least, not very well?
[460] Abyssus, literally, the unplumbed depths of the sea, and as
a constant meaning here, "the depths beyond measure."
[461] Gen. 1:2.
[462] Augustine may not have known the Platonic doctrine of
nonbeing (cf. Sophist, 236C-237B), but he clearly is deeply
influenced here by Plotinus; cf. Enneads, II, 4:8f., where matter
is analyzed as a substratum without quantity or quality; and 4:15:
"Matter, then, must be described as toapeiron (the indefinite). .
. .  Matter is indeterminateness and nothing else." In short,
materia informis is sheer possibility; not anything and not
nothing!
[463] Dictare: was Augustine dictating his Confessions? It is very
probable.
[464] Visibiles et compositas, the opposite of "invisible and
unformed."
[465] Isa. 6:3; Rev. 4:8.
[466] De nihilo.
[467] Trina unitas.
[468] Cf. Gen. 1:6.
[469] Constat et non constat, the created earth really exists but
never is self-sufficient.
[470] Moses.
[471] Ps. 42:3, 10.
[472] Cor. 13:12.
[473] Cf. Ecclus. 1:4.
[474] 2 Cor. 5:21.
[475] Cf. Gal. 4:26.
[476] 2 Cor. 5:1.
[477] Cf. Ps. 26:8.
[478] Ps. 119:176.
[479] To "the house of God."
[480] Cf. Ps. 28:1.
[481] Cubile, i.e., the heart.
[482] Cf. Rom. 8:26.
[483] The heavenly Jerusalem of Gal. 4:26, which had become a
favorite Christian symbol of the peace and blessedness of heaven;
cf. the various versions of the hymn "Jerusalem, My Happy Home" in
Julian's Dictionary of Hymnology, pp. 580-583.  The original text
is found in the Liber meditationum, erroneously ascribed to
Augustine himself.
[484] Cf. 2 Tim. 2:14.
[485] 1 Tim. 1:5.
[486] This is the basis of Augustine's defense of allegory as both
legitimate and profitable in the interpretation of Scripture.  He
did not mean that there is a plurality of literal truths in
Scripture but a multiplicity of perspectives on truth which
amounted to different levels and interpretations of truth.  This
gave Augustine the basis for a positive tolerance of varying
interpretations which did hold fast to the essential common
premises about God's primacy as Creator; cf. M. Pontet, L'Exegese
de Saint Augustin predicateur (Lyons, 1944), chs. II and III.
[487] In this chapter, Augustine summarizes what he takes to be
the Christian consensus on the questions he has explored about the
relation of the intellectual and corporeal creations.
[488] Cf. 1 Cor. 8:6.
[489] Mole mundi.
[490] Cf. Col. 1:16.
[491] Gen. 1:9.
[492] Note how this reiterates a constant theme in the Confessions
as a whole; a further indication that Bk. XII is an integral part
of the single whole.
[493] Cf. De libero arbitrio, II, 8:20, 10:28.
[494] Cf. John 8:44.
[495] The essential thesis of the De Magistro; it has important
implications both for Augustine's epistemology and for his theory
of Christian nurture; cf. the De catechizandis rudibus.
[496] 1 Cor. 4:6.
[497] Cf. Deut. 6:5; Lev. 19:18; see also Matt. 22:37, 39.
[498] Cf. Rom. 9:21.
[499] Cf. Ps. 8:4.
[500] "In the beginning God created," etc.
[501] An echo of Job 39:13-16.
[502] The thicket denizens mentioned above.
[503] Cf. Ps. 143:10.
[504] Something of an understatement!  It is interesting to note
that Augustine devotes more time and space to these opening verses
of Genesis than to any other passage in the entire Bible -- and he
never commented on the _full_ text of Genesis.  Cf. Karl Barth's
274 pages devoted to Gen., chs. 1;2, in the Kirchliche Dogmatik,
III, I, pp. 103-377.
[505] Transition, in preparation for the concluding book (XIII),
which undertakes a constructive resolution to the problem of the
analysis of the mode of creation made here in Bk. XII.
[506] This is a compound -- and untranslatable -- Latin pun: neque
ut sic te colam quasi terram, ut sis uncultus si non te colam.
[507] Cf. Enneads, I, 2:4: "What the soul now sees, it certainly
always possessed, but as lying in the darkness. . . .  To dispel
the darkness and thus come to knowledge of its inner content, it
must thrust toward the light." Compare the notions of the
initiative of such movements in the soul in Plotinus and
Augustine.
[508] Cf. 2 Cor. 5:21.
[509] Cf. Ps. 36:6 and see also Augustine's Exposition on the
Psalms, XXXVI, 8, where he says that "the great preachers
[receivers of God's illumination] are the mountains of God," for
they first catch the light on their summits.  The abyss he called
"the depth of sin" into which the evil and unfaithful fall.
[510] Cf. Timaeus, 29D-30A, "He [the Demiurge-Creator] was good:
and in the good no jealousy . . . can ever arise.  So, being
without jealousy, he desired that all things should come as near
as possible to being like himself. . . .  He took over all that is
visible . . . and brought it from order to order, since he judged
that order was in every way better" (F. M. Cornford, Plato's
Cosmology, New York, 1937, p. 33).  Cf. Enneads, V, 4:1, and
Athanasius, On the Incarnation, III, 3.
[511] Cf. Gen. 1:2.
[512] Cf. Ps. 36:9.
[513] In this passage in Genesis on the creation.
[514] Cf. Gen. 1:6.
[515] Rom. 5:5.
[516] 1 Cor. 12:1.
[517] Cf. Eph. 3:14, 19.
[518] Cf. the Old Latin version of Ps. 123:5.
[519] Cf. Eph. 5:8.
[520] Cf. Ps. 31:20.
[521] Cf. Ps. 9:13.
[522] The Holy Spirit.
[523] Canticum graduum.  Psalms 119 to 133 as numbered in the
Vulgate were regarded as a single series of ascending steps by
which the soul moves up toward heaven; cf. The Exposition on the
Psalms, loc. cit.
[524] Tongues of fire, symbol of the descent of the Holy Spirit;
cf. Acts 2:3, 4.
[525] Cf. Ps. 122:6.
[526] Ps. 122:1.
[527] Cf. Ps. 23:6.
[528] Gen. 1:3.
[529] John 1:9.
[530] Cf. the detailed analogy from self to Trinity in De
Trinitate, IX-XII.
[531] I.e., the Church.
[532] Cf. Ps. 39:11.
[533] Ps. 36:6.
[534] Gen. 1:3 and Matt. 4:17; 3:2.
[535] Cf. Ps. 42:5, 6.
[536] Cf. Eph. 5:8.
[537] Ps. 42:7.
[538] Cf. 1 Cor. 3:1.
[539] Cf. Phil. 3:13.
[540] Cf. Ps. 42:1.
[541] Ps. 42:2.
[542] Cf. 2 Cor. 5:1-4.
[543] Rom. 12:2.
[544] 1 Cor. 14:20.
[545] Gal. 3:1.
[546] Eph. 4:8, 9.
[547] Cf. Ps. 46:4.
[548] Cf. John 3:29.
[549] Cf. Rom. 8:23.
[550] I.e., the Body of Christ.
[551] 1 John 3:2.
[552] Ps. 42:3.
[553] Cf. Ps. 42:4.
[554] Ps. 43:5.
[555] Cf. Ps. 119:105.
[556] Cf. Rom. 8:10.
[557] Cf. S. of Sol. 2:17.
[558] Cf. Ps. 5:3.
[559] Ps. 43:5.
[560] Cf. Rom. 8:11.
[561] 1 Thess. 5:5.
[562] Cf. Gen. 1:5.
[563] Cf. Rom. 9:21.
[564] Isa. 34:4.
[565] Cf. Gen. 3:21.
[566] Ps. 8:3.
[567] "The heavens," i.e. the Scriptures.
[568] Cf. Ps. 8:2.
[569] Legunt, eligunt, diligunt.
[570] Ps. 36:5.
[571] Cf. Matt. 24:35.
[572] Cf. Isa. 40:6-8.
[573] Cf. 1 John 3:2.
[574] Retia, literally "a net"; such as those used by retiarii,
the gladiators who used nets to entangle their opponents.
[575] Cf. S. of Sol. 1:3, 4.
[576] 1 John 3:2.
[577] Cf. Ps. 63:1.
[578] Ps. 36:9.
[579] Amaricantes, a figure which Augustine develops both in the
Exposition of the Psalms and The City of God.  Commenting on Ps.
65, Augustine says: "For the sea, by a figure, is used to indicate
this world, with its bitter saltiness and troubled storms, where
men with perverse and depraved appetites have become like fishes
devouring one another." In The City of God, he speaks of the
bitterness of life in the civitas terrena; cf. XIX, 5.
[580] Cf. Ps. 95:5.
[581] Cf. Gen. 1:10f.
[582] In this way, Augustine sees an analogy between the good
earth bearing its fruits and the ethical "fruit-bearing" of the
Christian love of neighbor.
[583] Cf. Ps. 85:11.
[584] Cf. Gen. 1:14.
[585] Cf. Isa. 58:7.
[586] Cf. Phil. 2:15.
[587] Cf. Gen. 1:19.
[588] Cf. 2 Cor. 5:17.
[589] Cf. Rom. 13:11, 12.
[590] Ps. 65:11.
[591] For this whole passage, cf. the parallel developed here with
1 Cor. 12:7-11.
[592] In principio diei, an obvious echo to the Vulgate ut
praesset diei of Gen. 1:16.  Cf. Gibb and Montgomery, p. 424 (see
Bibl.), for a comment on in principio diei and in principio
noctis, below.
[593] Sacramenta; but cf. Augustine's discussion of sacramenta in
the Old Testament in the Exposition of the Psalms, LXXIV, 2: "The
sacraments of the Old Testament promised a Saviour; the sacraments
of the New Testament give salvation."
[594] Cf. 1 Cor. 3:1; 2:6.
[595] Isa. 1:16.
[596] Isa. 1:17.
[597] Isa. 1:18.
[598] Cf. for this syntaxis, Matt. 19:16-22 and Ex. 20:13-16.
[599] Cf. Matt. 6:21.
[600] I.e., the rich young ruler.
[601] Cf. Matt. 13:7.
[602] Cf. Matt. 97 Reading here, with Knoll and the Sessorianus,
in firmamento mundi.
[603] Cf. Isa. 52:7.
[604] Perfectorum.  Is this a conscious use, in a Christian
context, of the distinction he had known so well among the
Manicheans -- between the perfecti and the auditores?
[605] Ps. 19:2.
[606] Cf. Acts 2:2, 3.
[607] Cf. Matt. 5:14, 15.
[608] Cf. Gen. 1:20.
[609] Cf. Jer. 15:19.
[610] Ps. 19:4.
[611] That is, the Church.
[612] An allegorical ideal type of the perfecti in the Church.
[613] 1 Cor. 14:22.
[614] The fish was an early Christian rebus for "Jesus Christ."
The Greek word for fish, was arranged acrostically to make the
phrase Jesus Christ, GodUs Son, Saviour; cf. Smith and Cheetham,
Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, pp. 673f.; see also Cabrol,
Dictionnaire d'archeologie chretienne, Vol. 14, cols. 1246-1252,
for a full account of the symbolism and pictures of early
examples.
[615] Cf. Ps. 69:32.
[616] Cf. Rom. 12:2.
[617] Cf. 1 Tim. 6:20.
[618] Gal. 4:12.
[619] Cf. Ecclus. 3:19.
[620] Rom. 1:20.
[621] Rom. 12:2.
[622] Gen. 1:26.
[623] Rom. 12:2 (mixed text).
[624] Cf. 1 Cor. 2:15.
[625] 1 Cor. 2:14.
[626] Cf. Ps. 49:20.
[627] Cf. James 4:11.
[628] See above, Ch. XXI, 30.
[629] I.e., the Church.
[630] Cf. 1 Cor. 14:16.
[631] Another reminder that, ideally, knowledge is immediate and
direct.
[632] Here, again, as in a coda, Augustine restates his central
theme and motif in the whole of his "confessions": the primacy of
God, His constant creativity, his mysterious, unwearied,
unfrustrated redemptive love.  All are summed up in this mystery
of creation in which the purposes of God are announced and from
which all Christian hope takes its premise.
[633] That is, from basic and essentially simple ideas, they
proliferate multiple -- and valid -- implications and corollaries.
[634] Cf. Rom. 3:4.
[635] Cf. Gen. 1:29, 30.
[636] Cf. 2 Tim. 1:16.
[637] 2 Tim. 4:16.
[638] Cf. Ps. 19:4.
[639] Phil. 4:10 (mixed text).
[640] Phil. 4:11-13.
[641] Phil. 4:14.
[642] Phil. 4:15-17.
[643] Phil. 4:17.,
[644] Cf. Matt. 10:41, 42.
[645] Idiotae: there is some evidence that this term was used to
designate pagans who had a nominal connection with the Christian
community but had not formally enrolled as catechumens.  See Th.
Zahn in Neue kirkliche Zeitschrift (1899), pp. 42-43.
[646] Gen. 1:31.
[647] A reference to the Manichean cosmogony and similar dualistic
doctrines of "creation."
[648] 1 Cor. 2:11, 12.
[649] Rom. 5:5.
[650] Sed quod est, est.  Note the variant text in Skutella, op.
cit.: sed est, est.  This is obviously an echo of the Vulgate Ex.
3:14: ego sum qui sum.
[651] Augustine himself had misgivings about this passage.  In the
Retractations, he says that this statement was made "without due
consideration." But he then adds, with great justice: "However,
the point in question is very obscure" (res autem in abdito est
valde); cf. Retract., 2:6.
[652] See above, amaricantes, Ch. XVII, 20.
[653] Cf. this requiescamus in te with the requiescat in te in Bk.
I, Ch. I.
[654] Cf. The City of God, XI, 10, on Augustine's notion that the
world exists as a thought in the mind of God.
[655] Another conscious connection between Bk. XIII and Bks. I-X.
[656] This final ending is an antiphon to Bk. XII, Ch. I, 1 above.




(..end, Confessions.)

[Note: Dr. Outler's book continues in a second series on the Enchiridion,
with document number agenc-01.txt, also located at this archive.]




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