 Welcome to The Spiritual Masters, a podcast from Tan Books and Tan Direction in which we look at the greatest and holiest writers from Catholic history. Join us as we explore the life and times in which they lived, an overview and study of their greatest works, and how we as Catholics can look to these masters as models for our own holiness on our journey to heaven. All right, welcome back for another episode on The Spiritual Masters with our focus on the great Doctor of the Church, the Doctor of Grace, Saint Augustine of Hippo. And we continue with my dear friend, Dr. Paul Thigpen. Thank you again for being here with us, Dr. Thigpen. It's a delight, Connor. Thank you for having me. Let's begin this time with a short prayer seeking Augustine's intercession into this conversation in our lives. Would you lead us, please? Sure. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Saint Augustine, Doctor of Grace, pray with us now and for us that God's grace will be abundant in this conversation, that we'll have the grace to discern and also the grace to act on what we learn. We thank you for your life of holiness, your pursuit of the truth. We ask that we could imitate you. Father, we ask all these things in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. Thank you. All right, Paul, why does the book Confessions matter to you so much? This matters to a lot of people, but just give us your own personal experience. What's the big deal about this book? When I read this book, I read my own story in so many ways. I mean, not to compare myself in any way to Saint Augustine, but he was really the only ancient writer like this to look so closely at the movements of the soul, interior things, whether it's memory or imagination or sense of guilt or moral behavior. I like to call him a doctor of the soul, a teacher of the soul. He really understood the soul. To this day, you have psychologists who study these passages in here because they officer so much abundant material to talk about. Augustine was the first psychologist. I think in certain ways you could say that. And he did it by looking at himself. I mean, he doesn't have some psychology of Monica in there too and Ambrose, maybe, but he did it by looking at himself. And because he was so honest and humble enough to, I'm here, he's a bishop to lay out his life, including all the bad stuff. He laid it out for people to read and for people to talk about because he thought it would help them to understand that. And here we are all these centuries later reading it and seeing ourselves. It's like a mirror sometimes. Seeing ourselves is his confession. So what about the kind of the historical context of this? You know, where was he in his life when he wrote this? He was not an old man yet. So talk to us about that. I read he was 43, which is my age. That's right. That's not an old man. I don't know. It's not yet. No, not in my book, that's for sure. Well, again, he was bishop at the time. A fairly new bishop a couple of years maybe. I don't know. A few years up. Let's look at the timeline here. He at least started writing about the about 400 and it was what 396, I guess, became bishop. Just a handful of years, just a few years. But already of great reputation. He's already kind of a celebrity. I mean, a reputation before he even became Christian when he was because of his rhetoric. He was such a preacher. So amazing thing that he would open up his life and be transparent and vulnerable. It made him so vulnerable to use the modern terms for the sake of his flock that some way maybe you can be encouraged by my struggles and be encouraged that I'm making it. It seems to be, but I still have struggles and I understand your struggles. So what a beautiful thing to do and it came at a price. I mean, there would have been people who would have made all kinds of, hey, out of this, did you hear what the bishop said about himself or especially his enemies, the Pallagians and others? Just touch on that because the Pallagians were really stuck up and they would have been scandalized about him confessing these things out loud. So just kind of touch on why would that be so scandalous today? I mean, people don't like to air their dirty laundry, but particularly back then. Well, they had a political, theological, political axe to grind. And so anything they said that, and he was their most formidable opponent, anything that he said that would give them ammunition was a good thing. And also, the Pallagians, the Pallagians that the, the core of their belief though, or actually more the Donatists. Well, I was going to say the Donatists probably more because they were the ones that the Puritans of their day. They're Puritans. They basically believed that if you were, if you had committed certain kinds of sins, then your sacraments weren't valid and that a priest could not confer the sacraments. And then there's certain people that, for instance, if you committed a apostasy, you could not even be forgiven. A lot of them believed it and brought back into the church. Yeah. So for him being a prominent bishop and confessing these things, these Puritans, for lack of a better word, they were scandalized. And, but to get back to the Pallagians, they, they claimed that they looked in the confessions and saw indications that he was really still Manichaean in certain ways. We talked in the last episode about the Manichae, Manichae's and because he, he talks so much about brokenness. And the Manichae's said that, you know, there's a God of evil in this whole realm of pure evil and, and it's trapped us and all these things. And it was a way to try to explain how evil's in the world. And so anyway, his enemies would do take different tax with it. But, oh, he's not, not to be respected at all because he has this past or he still struggles with things or to say, oh, yeah, you've listened to him. He's, he's still Manichaean. Wow. Yeah. And they probably knew that he'd be open to all those things, but still he wrote it. And still we have this gift today centuries later where we can read this book and say, oh my goodness, that's my story. The books had many additions, many translations through the years, probably in every language imaginable. And I have to note that if we're, we're recording this in February of 2023, I mean, in a few more months, we're going to have our own translation at 10 books, we're going to have our own translation of the Augustine's Confessions by Dr. Anthony Esslin, who you know, know of. And, and, and he's just a masterful translator. He did all of Dante, the Divine Comedy. So I wish we had that now to read some passages, but it's still in manuscript form. But I'm hoping that that will be a tremendous addition to add to the, the long lineage of many good additions. If someone had asked me, you know, before I knew about that he's doing it, if you could grab one living person to do a new translation of the Confessions, well, who would it be? It would have been Tony. That's awesome. Thanks. Yeah. Thanks for saying that because I'm so excited. I called him or we called him as a team and said, so I would know you like to translate, you know, how would you like to do the Confessions? And he said, he said, this sounds awesome. Let me think about it. And very quickly, he's like, yep, I'll do it. So we're very, very excited. I just can't, can't wait to, to read it. It's going to be beautiful. I mean, you have Augustine who just wrote beautifully, but if your translation's not right, you can butcher it. So Tony will nail it. He certainly will. All right. So here at 10, we're trying to add to that, you know, to that great history of great translations. Okay. So, you know, this book really gives a very good overview of his early life, a couple key points that I thought we'd kind of touch on. I sent some interesting things. And I'm trying not to be too redundant about the timeline that we covered in the last episode, because we don't want to repeat everything. But let's, let's zoom in on a few key points that reveal what Augustine's really trying to discover about himself and about his human nature. It was just always the struggle for him to understand what is this human nature that we have. And it begins, well, actually, let's begin by saying how the book actually begins, which is the, the great famous quote that we finished last episode with. So just go through that, because I think that's the very beginning of the work. Mm-hmm. I did, this is not a commercial because this is out of print, but I did a book before Restless, So We Rest in You. It was Reflections from St. Augustine. And I chose that title because on the very first page of the Confessions, he says, you know, you have made us for yourself, O Lord. Almost choked up. And our hearts are restless until they find the rest in you. And he returns to that theme again and again, seeking rest. He, and again, other books too, City of God and All, How the Great Sabbath, the consummation of all things that we read about in the Book of Revelation, it will be the great rest, the great rest. And so I think it tells us so much about the book. It tells us so much about the man that his whole life was spent seeking the truth and doing so seeking God. And he was restless. And in the way he did it, he would, you get it in the Confessions, he'll, he'll see a lizard basking in the sun. And immediately his mind will turn to, okay, what's the spiritual illustration that comes out of that? Or he'll hear the women in the harvest who are harvesting a great crop there in North Africa. And they have this kind of uvulik trail that they do that it goes beyond words. And it's, but it's just this great celebratory thing. And he sees that as almost like some people have been said, like speaking in tongues or something, but a praise that just goes beyond earth because we're so exalted up to heaven with it. And for every term, he was restless to find God in that moment, God in that situation. What lesson can I learn about God? He's looking for traces of God in the creation. Yeah, absolutely. And early in the Confessions, he finds it, he asks questions and finds these difficult celestial questions, even in infant nursing on his mother. I've had plenty of kids. So he has a, I'm just gonna, well, explain why would he even bring that up? What was the point of that? Well, he said, you know, even when we're babies, we're selfish. Real selfish. It's basically, you know, original sin or concupiscence already. And he talks about how our children would be, even little children, that they want their way and they'll pitch a fit, you know, it's almost violent. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I can't remember exactly how I said it. But he says, basically, yeah, they're, people say, well, they're harmless. He says, well, they're only harmless because they're not as strong as adults are. But with their attitude and their desires and their passions, if they were strong as we are, they'd really be troubled. They've been beating us all up because they are selfish in that way. Right. And then he says, you know, in particular, that if you have two children at the breast and one sees the other one is drinking, it doesn't matter whether the other one's hungry or not. This is my place. You know, we had twins five years ago. I saw it firsthand. These little guys, well before the age of reason, they were getting very territorial in lots of ways. But it's just, again, that shows the spirit of Augustine. He is seeing the moral dilemma, the human nature, the presence of God, the lack of God and sin and vice. And he sees it everywhere, everywhere. And so it's just a stroke of brilliance to kind of begin the book by talking about infants. He's confessing I was an infant and a selfish infant. Who would have thought to do that? But to use it as a point and we're all this way. We're all this way. So that kind of leads into his adolescence, about 12 years old, and there's a famous scene that gets, you know, again, it's kind of, it looks like a little harmless incident in every boy's little life. But he's able to extrapolate tremendous theological insight from it. So tell us that story. So he's out playing with some buddies and he makes the comment, we're probably out much too late. And being that late than the adults weren't watching. And so somebody gets the idea, hey, this neighbor over here has a pear tree and it's full of fruit. And he makes the point of saying, the fruit wasn't that good. It wouldn't even taste it very good. I mean, I'd prefer some other fruit, but they all said, you know, let's trick on them basically. And they all went and they shook the thing to get all the pears down and started pulling all the pears off the tree. And he used to have a pear tree. And I remember one time for myself, I was shaking it and they just all started falling because they get so heavy. But anyway, they do this. And, you know, he talks about his own inner life at that point and how I'm not doing it because I want to eat the pears. In fact, we took the pears and fed them to the beast. I don't know, pigs or something. We threw it to them. We didn't want it for ourselves. The pleasure was in doing the wrong thing. And if any starts thinking about, you know, take that to the next level, how often is that the case for us? We're not even doing it because we're hungry knowing that it's wrong because it's not ours. But we're doing it just because we take pleasure, not in the pear, but in the stealing of the pear. It's a staggering thought. And, you know, and again, that's just a brilliant insight in that maybe what, how much of that is present when we as grown adults do sins, big sins, little sins. I mean, when is that present? But is it fair to say, Paul, that Augustine, he struggled with the problem of evil his entire life? I mean, he just continually came back to it in one way or another, dealing with the heresies, dealing with his own sermons, his different works. I mean, what is this thing in us or outside of us or both that is drawing us away from God? And it was just, you can just tell, I can just see the guy sitting in his room, just shaking his head, saying, what is going on? Well, I mean, his experience with the mannequins, that's what one of the things that would have attracted them. They promised this explanation for that. And seeing that there is a dualistic presence in the universe and there was just this God of evil, at least he could stick his finger out. Exactly. That's what it is. Yeah, that's because we are trapped here in this world and have been trapped because there was an elaborate mythology that they had, but we are trapped in this world. So that's, that's where it comes from. That's the problem. So I mean, that's the thing is like it just shows that his intellectual and his own spiritual struggle began very young. He must have been aware of it. But even as a 43-year-old man, a bishop, he's looking back at 12 years old, he's looking back at infancy and saying, this struggle, this struggle. And that's, again, that's the other side of that restlessness. So it's kind of beautiful. So what else about the confession? What are the themes or do you think or some passages that you might want to read? I mean, what we've talked about, it takes tremendous humility. It's about this internal struggle. We're not really going through the biography, but what other parts of the confessions would you want to talk about? I think it's important to recognize why he called it the Confessions. Oh yeah, of course. And because today when we think of confession, we think of confession of sin, you know, sacramental confession or just confess, you know, fess up. And that was certainly one of the, as we're seeing, one of the important themes there. But confession also meant, it could mean a confession of faith. So even later on the middle ages, you would, like the Lutherans had the Augsburg Confession, and it was a creed, basically. But then also confession could have the sense of praise, saying to God, how wonderful you are. So you're kind of, you're speaking, you're stating something with God. You're agreeing with God about your sin, you're agreeing with God. Even like the word con was with, of course. And the word for fessio or whatever is something having to do with speak or deliver or something. So you're speaking with God. We're speaking with God. God says, it's wrong. You say, yes, sir. I went to confession not too long ago, and the priest made the comment that, you know, by the fact that you're in this little room on your knees just shows that you're agreeing with God that you need to be here. And it was an interest. I had never really thought about it. Oh, we're in agreement. Okay, that's good. You know, that's a start. But that's a confession, and it's kind of an interest. Yeah. And we'll often say profession of faith, because you're speaking forth, that means declaring. But in the other sense of confession, of staying faith, you also think about how you're agreeing with God about the truth, but you're also agreeing with the others, especially when you make a corporate confession of faith, that you're saying together, you're saying with each other, these things are true. And then finally, you know, when you do it as an act of praise, you're saying to God, yes, you really are smart, you really are big, you really are loving, you're just, you're kind, you're all powerful, you're agreeing with God about who he is. And you think this is why he wrote the Confessions to God? It's everything that that was your unique device. Yeah, that struck me when I first picked up the book, because no one had warned me, it was going to be that way, that he's writing it in second person. He's not just writing first person, I do this, I do that. He's not writing about himself as if, you know, he's a third person. But the whole thing is, it's a book length prayer, because it's all said to God, second, and he's consistent about it. And so it makes very vivid, you know, his sense of the reality that God is right there with him, watching everything, observing, talking. It did that for me to help me think about how God is right there. It enables you to kind of put his words into your own mind, because as you're reading and you're seeing, you know, I praise you, Lord, or whatever it may be, I did this wrong. I did, you know, it enables you to put it into your own mind and your own words. It helps you connect with it. But I can't think of many other saints or scholars who have used this device. And it might be because we're all scared to try it, because he did such a good job. We don't want to look like a third-rate Augustan if we try it, you know. I was going to find this book that I had done. So this book that you wrote? This is the one that I wrote. It was basically daily meditations. Yeah, but drawn from his. Yeah, that's just some beautiful places where but he has one place where he just goes on and on, and he just does what I was doing a while ago, just creates this mountain of praise where he just keeps, it's like he keeps piling on, piling on. Oh, you're great. You're so good. You're merciful to us. You forgive us. And it all has an interior aspect to it where he's talking about, this is what you've done for me and this is what you've done in me. But it's a very powerful expression of praise. It reminds you of the Psalms, which he loved dearly. And he wrote about all the Psalms. He had commentaries on all the Psalms. And, you know, speaking about that mounting of praises, he just keeps building and building it and building it. You know, he said somewhere, and I have the quote buried in here somewhere, but he makes the comment that he's always, he feels the truth and beauty in his heart so, so strongly. And he's always disappointed when it comes out of his mouth. He says, why cannot my lips do justice to my heart, you know? And it's amazing to think that because, you know, he was so articulate and so beautiful in his speech, but he always feels let down when he speaks and writes. And as somewhat of a writer myself, I can relate that, you know, one of the reasons I like writing more than speaking is you can polish and edit. That's right. That's right. Because you have as a melancholic, I have the sense that I never quite said it right. And I second guess, speaking of melancholic, I'm reading his biography the other night. And my wife, who's an extremely caloric temperament, and I'm very melancholic, and I read a part in here where a quote from Augustine that says, I was just looking for sad things to read. I love reading sad things. And I read this to my wife and she went, oh, he's such a melancholic. So, but he was, but that enabled him to feel deeply. He was a, and I think the confessions, particularly that amongst all his works, Paul, it shows that he felt even more deeply than he thought. Oh, passionate about God. I love how he's passionate about his friendships. You read some of his descriptions. He says, you know, close friend, we were like one soul and two bodies. And when he has a friend die, and he just, he grieves so deeply. He says, I don't even want to be in the places where we used to be together. I can't stand that. And I keep thinking that I just want to die myself. But then he says, but no, because we really were kind of like one soul and two bodies. I didn't want to die because then it would mean the rest of who he was would be gone too. And all these just beautiful things. He just like that. But let me, yeah, let me give an example here. Please, please do. I did find one of the ones. And a lot of folks will recognize the words. He says to God in the confessions. I'm going to read it without you. Too late have I come to love you. Beauty so ancient, so new. Yes, too late have I come to love you. You were within. Sorry, I can't read it for you. My own conversion. You were within me, yet I was looking for you outside myself. I and my ugliness rushed headlong into the things of beauty you had made. She's loving the things, the beautiful things more than the one who made them. You were with me, Lord, what a great line. You were with me, but I was not with you. The things you had created kept me far from you, yet if they had not been in you, they would not have been at all. You called to me, you cried aloud, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed and shone and chased away my blindness. You breathed upon me frequently. I drew in my breath, and now I pant for you. I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I burned to enjoy your peace. Why does it mean so much to you, Paul? It's my story. That's your story? It's my story. Thank you. Yeah. I should have had it closer by if we were going into the confessions. I should have known. That language is packed so full with meaning. It's such beauty. It's analogies, it's imagery, it's all. But if you recognize it as your own, you just can't read it without tears. That's amazing. That's a perfect passage to show this passion of this man, and the doctor of grace. It could be the doctor of passion. It could be the doctor of many things. But thank you for sharing that and sharing the emotion. It's very powerful. Let's move now to the last three books of the Confession. It was interesting to me that we go from this extraordinarily passionate appeal and description of his life and the pair and his conversion. Of course, which we talked about in the last episode, but his baptism, the moments of conversion when he hears about the life of St. Anthony and then he hears the child calling to him to pick up, take it up and read and he finds the passage from St. Paul and the death of his mother and just all this incredible stuff. But at the last three chapters or books of this work, he turns to Genesis and he starts doing some biblical commentary. It seems out of place, but it's probably not. So why do you think he finishes his autobiography at the age of 43 as a fairly new bishop? The last three parts of the work are on the book of Genesis. Why? I think it's at least once since it's his confession of praise. Because what he does with it is to draw out from these first chapters of Genesis the creation and that means talking about who the Creator is and how he's all-powerful and does it out of nothing. Not just it's powerful to make these things, but as he said in the passage I read, you're the beauty so ancient and so new. You look at creation and what he's made. It's so beautiful because he's beautiful. The one who made it is beautiful. It's reflecting his own beauty. So it shows his power, his beauty, but also shows his wisdom. And so by looking at the early chapters of Genesis, it's kind of a almost like a confession of faith, finally saying, first of all, this is God. This is all about God. But then, because it's those early chapters, you also get to the fall and that allows him to start talking about this theme that we're talking about, sin, grace, and how our story begins there. And as a human race it begins there, but for each of us it kind of begins there too, because of original sin. And so it gives him the opportunity, I think, to lay out kind of so many principal truths of the Christian faith. But it also reflects just how important the scripture was to him. He had written off to Saint Jerome, please give me your translations of scripture and studying them. And you look at this, not just these books, but his homilies. He's just tossing scripture references off all the time. And certainly would have agreed with the famous statement of Saint Jerome, ignorance of the scripture is ignorance of Christ. So he sees Christ the Word in these words. And so even though some folks have complained that it seems to lack unity, the book does, because you've got this last part like that, I think it just shows us Augusta. It shows where his heart is. It shows us where his mind is. These are important things, and they touch on all the kinds of themes that we've been discussing. You know what I think it is? Whether it was intentional or not intentional but providential. It was a foreshadowing of his new life, you know, the new Augusta. And most of that book was kind of the old Augusta. But now it's saying, I sought wisdom. I sought even pleasure in all ways, in all manicheism and neoplatonism and all these different places in Cicero and Virgil and wherever. Now I'm going to seek it in holy scripture. And for an academic to admit that is quite something. And so for him to say, yep, my autobiography at the age of 43, it finished it up with showing that I'm dedicating my life to understanding scripture. And that's ultimately what he did. I mean, he was just one of the greatest biblical scholars. But again, I just want to really drive the point home for a philosopher to admit it's just in understanding what God is saying through scripture. That's where true wisdom is found. That's a great act of humility. And I think he's showing us that this is what he's going to do for the rest of his life. I think it's a foreshadowing. It illustrates what, since she's later, St. Thomas will say, you know, is that even though the faith is reasonable, there's a lot that we can't get to by reason. It had to come by revelation. And he gives the reasons. It's in the beginning of his summa gives various reasons for why God had to also reveal truths that, you know, for starters, he says, you know, it could take a play to figure out some of these things and we're not all Plato. But also things that like the inner life of God, the inner nature of God, the Trinity, you can't get there by reason. But that doesn't mean it's not true or it's unreasonable. It has to be revealed. And it's revealed in, first of all, in Christ's coming, but then in the scripture that points to Christ. It's a beautiful work. Closing comments, I'll give you the last word on what makes the Augustans Confessions so powerful. The next episode, we're going to talk about the city of God, which is a very different kind of work. But closing comments on the confessions. I would just call them a doctor of the soul, not just a doctor of grace, but a doctor of the soul, doctor in the old sense of the word that means teacher from the land. And people have recognized that, even people who don't agree with them on so much, even it's amazing. Calvin and Luther just were great Augustinians in certain ways. They didn't take it all the way. But modern psychologists, modern philosophers, it's such a rich garden to go digging in and find all different kinds of fruits and other things. And I would just encourage our listeners to read the book, even if you get to a place where he starts talking about time and eternity and he's a little above me, my pay grade, just jump over it, but keep reading. And you'll almost certainly see at least some part of your story there. And it will stretch your mind in all kinds of ways. That's wonderful. I'm actually going to change course now. I'm actually going to do something that might sound weird, but I'd like you to read that passage again, read the passage again. And that's just the perfect way to let us go out. And so wherever our audience is listening to this, it's worthy of hearing it again. They're not going to be able to go and jump right into the book and find it. So I think it's worth you reading it one more time. Should have had you earmarked last time. All right, let it rip, Paul. Here we go. This will take us out. Too late have I come to love you, beauty so ancient, so new. Yes, too late have I come to love you. You were within me, yet I was looking for you outside myself. I, my ugliness, rushed headlong into the things of beauty you had made. You were with me, but I was not with you. The things you had created kept me far from you, yet if they had not been in you, they would not have been at all. You called to me and cried aloud and you broke through my deafness. You flashed and shone and chased away my blindness. You breathed upon me frequently. I drew in my breath and now I pant for you. I tasted and now I hunger and thirst for you. You touched me and I burned to enjoy your peace. This has been an episode of The Spiritual Masters, a podcast from Tan Books and Tan Direction. To follow the show, learn about more inspiring holy men and women, and to get special offers exclusive to Spiritual Masters listeners, sign up at SpiritualMastersPodcast.com and thanks for listening.