Character of St. Augustine as Shown in Confessions

St. Augustine's Character as Illustrated Within His Confessions

The character of St. Augustine (354-430) as seen within his Confessions (begun 397), which he wrote as a long epistle to God, in midlife, marks a distinct turning point in the life, attitudes, and values of Augustine the man. The content of Augustine's Confessions itself points to personality traits of Augustine's including honesty, sincerity, humility, piety, a capacity for self-reflection, and a desire for self-improvement. Augustine spent his youth licentiously, and up to the point of his midlife, remained far more interested in hedonistic pursuits than in being of service to God. All of that changed for him midlife, however, precipitated by a sort of "midlife crisis" (as we would call it nowadays). At that point in his life, when he was about 43, Augustine realized that none of the activities from which he derived temporary pleasure were genuinely fulfilling, and that genuine fulfillment came to him only from service to God. Augustine was also strongly affected, in a spiritual sense, by his mother's death at around this time. Augustine's mother had been a devout Christian, far more so than Augustine's father, and she had always hoped that her son would follow her own spiritual path. However, St. Augustine's own Christian beliefs were not especially strong until after his mother's death. It was then that Augustine himself converted to Christianity, taking the core value of his beloved mother into himself. In this essay, I will discuss how Augustine's character is reflected within the words of his Confessions.

Augustine's Confessions is, first and foremost, a work of self-revelation. As such, it shows the vulnerability of its author, and in particular, Augustine's strong and sincere desire to repent of and learn from his sins. Confessions in fact forms the cornerstone of the Catholic belief that, whatever one's stage in life or past sins, it is never to late to repent, and to seek forgiveness and redemption. This cornerstone belief of Augustine's likely indicates that he was, himself, a forgiving individual, since one must first possess the capability to forgive oneself, in order to forgive others.

The text of Augustine's Confessions also indicates that Augustine believed in the importance of the individual, the individual soul, and the individual's relationship to God. According to Lawall et al.:

Augustine, [was] . . . responsible for the consolidation of the Church in the West, especially for the systemization of its doctrine and policy. . .

. . . he set down, for the benefit of others, the story of his early life and his conversion to Christianity . . . which proclaims the value of the individual soul and the importance of its relation to God. . . . Augustine talks directly to God, in humility, yet conscious that God is concerned for him personally.

(p. 1221)

Augustine's humility toward God is shown by his willingness to give God credit for everything that has happened to him in life, good, bad, or neutral. Augustine gives God credit for his education, his experiences (even the ones he now regrets, so that he might come to know better), and indeed, for his very existence on earth. Furthermore, none of this is random, Augustine observes within his epistle, but instead part of God's plan for him. In Book I of his Confessions, for example [Childhood], Augustine states:

. . . For my sustenance and my delight I had woman's milk; yet it was not my mother or my nurses who stored their milk for me: it was Yourself,

using them to give me the food of my infancy, according to Your ordinance and the riches set by You at every level of creation. (p. 1222).

Augustine further confesses, within Book I, that he disliked learning, but that it was God's will that he learn what, and as, he did, although Augustine did not understand this at the time. As he tells God now, however, all that he learned as a child, adolescent, and young man, as uninteresting or irrelevant as it seemed then, was in fact part of God's plan as well: to prepare him for the service to God that is his real purpose on earth, and for which he now feels ready, despite his misspent youth.

In Book II [The Pear Tree] Augustine confesses to God his past carnal wickedness: "I propose now to set down my past wickedness and the carnal corruptions of my soul, not for love of them but that I may love Thee, O my God" (p. 1226). He also confesses to stealing pears from a pear tree in his youth, not because he was hungry or otherwise needed them, but because "Our only pleasure in doing it was that it was forbidden" (p. 1227). Acts like these were, however, merely idle mischief to Augustine at the time, since he had not yet learned how to serve God, or even to begin to understand the central importance, to his life, of serving God, that he understands now. Reflecting on the reasons for his past sexual adventures, Augustine states: "The caresses by which the lustful seduce are a seeking for love: but nothing is more caressing than Your charity, nor is anything more healthily loves than Your supremely lovely, supremely luminous Truth" (p. 1229).

Augustine continues reflecting on, and expressing regrets, to God, about his past sexual licentiousness in Book III [Student at Carthage]. At Carthage, as he states: "I was not yet in love, but I was in love with love . . . For within I was hungry, all for the want of that spiritual food which is Thyself, my God" (p. 1229).