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Book 12
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Confessions, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Faith and Conversion
Sin and Salvation
Interpreting the Bible
God, Goodness, and Being
Time, Eternity, and the Mind
Summary
Analysis
[1] Augustine thanks God for not forgetting him even when he forgot God. God made Augustine out of God’s goodness, even though he didn’t need to do so and can’t gain anything from Augustine. Indeed, Augustine only gains anything good from God, and he only exists in the first place because of God.
As he does in each book of Confessions, Augustine opens by praising God for seeking out Augustine for no other reason than that God is good and loves his creatures graciously.
Themes
[2] The heaven and earth, too, have no claim upon God and only exist because of his goodness. It was only by casting his own "brightness” upon creation in its incipient state that creation could be formed in God’s likeness. In a similar way, a soul that is mired in the formless darkness of sin can only be rescued from that state by God, the soul’s Light. [3] The formless creation only “became light” by the gift of God’s grace, which changed it by turning it towards God’s unchanging light. [4] God created, then, not out of any need to do so or because it would increase his happiness, but “out of the abundance of [his] own goodness.”
In this final book of Confessions, Augustine will approach the Genesis creation account in a still different way—taking it as an allegorical account of how God saves the soul. While the earlier part of the work detailed Augustine’s particular journey toward God, here he considers how God deals with souls generally. He starts with the idea that creation is gratuitous—in other words, that God did not create out of any necessity but simply because God is abundantly good.
Themes
[5] When Augustine reads the words in Genesis about God’s Spirit moving over the waters, he believes he glimpses the Trinity, with the Father creating heaven and earth in the “Beginning of our Wisdom” (the Son) and the Holy Spirit moving over the waters. [7] But why, Augustine wonders, was the Holy Spirit never mentioned until this point?
Augustine often alludes to the doctrine of the Trinity but hasn’t directly discussed it up to this point. The Bible, too, doesn’t make the doctrine as explicit as later creeds would do; but Christian interpreters have long expounded passages like the creation account to show where they believe that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit cooperated, as Augustine does here.
Themes
[7] To answer this question, Augustine quotes various passages from the epistles of Paul in the New Testament, particularly those about God’s love being poured out in the heart by the Holy Spirit. He says this is what it means in Genesis where it says that the Spirit “moved over the waters.” He tries to find words to explain the non-spatial depths into which the soul is dragged by sin and the new life to which the Spirit raises the soul. [8] Nothing less than God can give a restless soul happiness by clothing it with his light. [9] Augustine further describes the gift of the Holy Spirit as setting the soul aflame and carrying it aloft to heaven.
While Augustine’s connection of New Testament descriptions of the Holy Spirit’s action to the Genesis creation account may or may not seem plausible at first glance, perhaps the most striking thing about it is that it exemplifies an approach that interprets the Bible as a unified whole, with disparate passages illuminating and commenting on one another. This is a far cry from Augustine’s view as a young man, when he read individual passages in a woodenly simplistic and dismissive way. Besides water, the Holy Spirit is also associated with the light of God that bestows life on the soul and brings it into union with God.
Themes
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[11] People argue over the Trinity, but only a soul at peace is able to understand it. Augustine suggests a mental exercise for understanding it. Consider three things found within a person: existence, knowledge, and will. Although these things are distinct from one another, they share an inseparable essence. One can also say that these three things are together in God the Holy Trinity, immutably, though it is a mystery just how. [12] Beyond this, the Trinity must be understood and worshiped by faith. [13] Those who have turned to God’s light continue to long for “how bright a light of beauty will shine” in their eyes when they behold Christ.
Augustine’s mental exercise, making an analogy between three aspects of human life that inseparably operate together while remaining distinct, later becomes the basis for his work On the Trinity, which he began writing within a couple years of writing Confessions in the late 390s but did not finish until the 420s. Even though Augustine consistently maintains that doctrines as transcendent as the Trinity must be believed by faith and will only be understood rightly when a Christian beholds God in heaven, he also upholds the value of human analogies for humbly trying to understand them.
Themes
[14] Augustine considers how even the soul that rejoices in God contains remnants of darkness and grows downcast and therefore must be exhorted to persevere, finding hope in God’s promises in Scripture. [15] Augustine says that the “firmament” God made in Genesis can be likened to the authority of the Scriptures. Even though mortal men authored the Bible, the words themselves are a heavenly shield, a shelter to those who submit to it but a weapon against those who resist God and seek to justify their wickedness. Above the “firmament” dwell the angels, who do not need to read God’s word in order to choose and delight in God’s will. It is only through that firmament that the Word, Jesus Christ, can be seen; but someday, those who believe in him will see him as he is.
Augustine views the reading of Scripture as vital for the ordinary Christian struggling through life, as it testifies to God’s promise to save his people even through their suffering. He uses the “firmament,” or the expanse or canopy of the heavens, in Genesis 1:6 as an allegory for the Bible’s protective, sheltering power over those who humbly submit to it. For now, people can only understand God through that “firmament,” but when they pass through it to join him in heaven, they will see him face to face and will no longer need it to tell them about God—similar to the position of the angels now.
Themes
[17] The great “sea” of human society is united by the goal of earthly happiness, but certain souls, those who thirst for God, are set apart. God “water[s]” them from his hidden spring so that they will bear fruit, such as works of mercy toward their neighbors. [18] From such good deeds, Augustine says, let Christians pass to the “more sublime harvest” of contemplation and “shine […] like stars set in the firmament of your Scripture,” the “stars” being different gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Augustine continues with his allegorical interpretation of Genesis as the story of the soul’s salvation, associating the “waters” of creation with baptism and the stars as the good deeds Christians will produce. Contemplation refers to deeper knowledge of God that comes from loving meditation on his being. Again, Augustine’s facility with Scripture shows how deeply he knew the text from reading and praying through it daily—there is scarcely a word in this section that doesn’t quote or allude to a verse.
Themes
[19] Augustine refers to the Gospel story of the rich young man who asks Jesus how he can gain eternal life. The young man says that he already keeps all the commandments, an obedience Augustine likens to a child’s duty to parents; it still remains to root out greed and seek perfection by giving to the poor, thereby reaping a harvest in heaven. In the young man’s case, sadly, he remained barren land, and “briers” choked out the Word. Those who have forsaken the world’s ways, though, “are fires burning with holiness” and must spread to illuminate the world.
Augustine again weaves different parts of Scripture together in a kind of textual conversation, showing that he believes it forms a divinely-inspired whole. He says that the rich young man whom Jesus charged to give up all his possessions did not become fruitful, as God charged the earth and his people to be in Genesis. At the same time, then, he reads Genesis as referring both to the thriving young universe and to a soul that fails to respond to God’s command to thrive.
Themes
[20] The sea also produces God’s works. The sacraments, like baptism, “bathe” people to cleanse them from the flood of the world’s temptations. The words of preachers “soar like winged things” in the skies, as God has “blessed and multiplied” their work. Should anyone object that Augustine is failing to distinguish between earthly things and spiritual mysteries, Augustine argues that God adapts his single truth to many different “bodily” representations, such as the sacraments. And yet, it isn’t the sacraments alone, but God’s life in the soul that prepares the soul to look to a still greater fulfillment in the future.
Augustine’s interpretation becomes a bit more fanciful here (and he seems to anticipate that not all his readers will favor his approach), though there’s precedent earlier in the book both for watery baptismal imagery and for preachers flying around like birds feasting on the “orchard” of Scripture. He points out that the Christian life is marked by a marriage between the bodily and the spiritual, as one finds in the observance of sacraments like baptism and eating the Lord’s Supper, or the Eucharist.
Themes
[21] The land that has been differentiated from the “bitter waters”—that is, baptized—is the fruitful soul. This earth no longer needs the creatures of the sea, though it does eat “the Fish” (ichthus).Therefore, God’s servants, especially preachers, must do their work on earth, living among other people and inspiring them through their own lives. A living soul must not forsake the eternal fountain of life and must resist the deadening impulses of the world. If the soul does this, the “beasts” that live in it will be tame and will serve reason.
Augustine identifies the land that emerged from the primordial waters as the baptized person emerging from the chaotic waters of sin. The word ICTHUS, besides meaning “fish,” is a traditional Christian acronym that means “Jesus Christ Son of God Savior” in Greek—one “fish” in other words, that even those who’ve emerged from the waters still need (i.e., partaking of Christ in the Eucharist).
Themes
[22] So, first of all, a living soul must keep the love of worldly things in check. Only then can the soul be “remade” in God’s likeness, as God next says in Genesis, “let us make man wearing our own image.” At this point, the soul moves beyond simply imitating others’ good deeds and is able to know the Holy Trinity (Augustine notes the use of the plural in the Genesis verse), growing stronger in spiritual gifts.
Augustine moves to the part of the Genesis account that includes the creation of humankind. In terms of salvation, he sees this as referring also to the remaking of the new Christian into a person whose life resembles Christ’s. Early Christian commentators often pointed to the “Let us make…” in Genesis as implying God’s Trinitarian nature.
Themes
[23] Among these gifts is spiritual judgment, which is given equally to male and female, to those in authority and those who are under authority. This does not mean that such a person can pass judgment on the Bible’s truths, or upon those who have not yet joined the church, since there is no way of knowing if someone will become a Christian in the future. Spiritual judgment is only exercised over those who are already in the church and by means of the sacraments and the authority of the Bible. And the one who exercises authority over other faithful souls only judges correctable vices, like the passions that must be tamed through chastity and fasting.
Augustine discusses the role of wisdom and spiritual discernment in mature Christians, which doesn’t apply only to those in ordained roles like priest or bishop, but to all people who have studied the word and sought to live in communion with God and charity with one another. (He doubtless thinks of his mother Monica as a prime example of a holy woman.) He also views spiritual authority as applying mainly to one’s fellow Christians and not to the world outside the church.
Themes
[24] When Genesis says that creatures are instructed to increase, multiply, and fill the earth, Augustine sees a figurative meaning—that, in the case of sea creatures, it refers to physical signs, but in the case of humanity, it refers to the fertility of reason, or the multiplication of human thought. So, the filling of the waters of the sea with creatures refers to the miraculous physical signs and wonders that impress human beings at first; but the appearance of the dry land from out of the sea refers to the prevailing of reason as people seek to learn and understand the more obscure scriptures.
Augustine returns to the idea of scriptural interpretation as a fertile and multiplying field, with rich meanings being unfolded for the benefit of people and their diverse needs. Catchy miracles might draw people in initially, but Augustine suggests that ideally, people should exercise their reason to move beyond the superficially impressive to the deeper and more enduring.
Themes
[25] Augustine has already spoken of the fruits of the earth as works of mercy that people do to help their neighbors. [26] This fruit nourishes those to whom it is given, but when the givers give with joy, they are nourished, too. Augustine points to the apostle Paul’s expressions of joy not only in the ways that the Christians he served provided for his needs, but in the fact that they did good deeds. The true “fruit,” then, is the will of the giver and not just the thing given that nourishes the body.
The Bible often describes Christians’ lives as bearing fruit as they reflect Christ more and more in their attitudes and actions. The goodness of such deeds, Augustine suggests, is not in the minimal doing of them, but especially in the motive of the heart, which should reflect Christ’s own generosity and love.
Themes
[28] Augustine observes that God proclaimed seven times that the things he had made were “good,” and that the eighth time, he said the whole of his creation was “very good.” [29] Augustine comes to understand that God did not actually see and speak of these things within time, the way human beings do, since he exists in eternity. [30] Augustine speaks of those “madmen” who claim that God only created out of necessity or that he merely assembled creation out of things that already existed. Such people don’t see God’s works by his Spirit.
God’s announcement that the things he created were “good” or “very good” recurs throughout the Genesis account. Always interested in the concept of eternity, which God experiences in a way that’s impossible for humans, he's careful to point out that God, existing in eternity, didn’t experience creation as a succession of events the way people read about it in the Bible or would experience it for themselves. He also upholds God’s freedom to create and his ability to create everything out of nothing.
Themes
[31] But when people do see God’s works by his Spirit, God sees through their eyes and sees that those things are good; and when people are pleased by God’s works, it’s actually God who pleases them in those works. Augustine observes, too, that only God’s Spirit can be said to truly understand his Spirit’s gifts, since only God can know God’s thoughts. This connects to the idea that many people find creation pleasing because it’s good, but what they find pleasing isn’t God; they are looking for happiness in creation, in other words, rather than in God himself. It is only the Spirit of God that enables a person to see and love God in his creation.
Augustine expands on what it meant for God to look upon creation and declare it good, suggesting that the eternal God sees and is pleased by creation through the people to whom he is united by the Holy Spirit. He also returns to his recurrent interest in the meaning of happiness and the impossibility of finding it in creation, but only ultimately in God himself. Part of the Holy Spirit’s role is to open people’s eyes to see and love God through and beyond the created world.
Themes
[32] Augustine praises God for all that can be seen, from the heaven and the earth down to the individual human being. Just as in a human being there is a dominant, deliberative force and a subject, obedient force, in the same way, woman (who has been “made for man”) has an equal mind and rational intelligence to man but is physically subject. Each part of creation is good on its own, and together, creation is collectively very good. [33] God’s works proclaim God’s glory. Because of that, people love God; and it’s in people’s love for God that God’s works proclaim his glory.
Augustine sees range and diversity in creation, which includes hierarchy. He actually comments little on distinctions between men and women; their minds and souls are equal. The bigger emphasis in this section is that all of creation forms a collective whole, and that parts of it are not as good on their own as the whole of creation is altogether. The ultimate goal of creation is for God’s glory to be manifested through it.
Themes
[34] Augustine has explored the spiritual truths that the Bible expresses through the description of the order in which the world was created. He sees that heaven and earth respectively represent the Head and body of the Church, as was predestined before time began. What God predestined, he brought to pass in time. Augustine again rehearses all the works of creation and what each spiritually represents. [35] The world’s beauty will someday pass away. Each work of creation has been “allotted their morning and their evening” and will reach the end of its existence.
The New Testament refers to Christ as the head of the church and Christians as the body; here, Augustine sees heaven and earth as an expression of that same metaphor. The analogy makes sense in that Augustine regarded the church as the place God brings his purposes to pass within time, much as his glory is manifested throughout physical creation. But like each of the creation days in Genesis reaching its appointed end, everything earthly, including each Christian, will reach an earthly end, too.
Themes
[36] But the “seventh day” won’t have an evening, and the sun will not set. The Bible says that God rested on the seventh day; this shows that when our earthly life is complete, we will rest in an eternal Sabbath as well. [37] In that Sabbath, God will rest in humanity just as he now works in them, though it is true that God is eternally at work and at rest; he makes time and rest himself. [38] People only do good after the Holy Spirit inspires them to do so. But God has never ceased doing good. God is in fact Goodness itself. Augustine ponders that no human being or angel can teach this truth to another; humans must “ask […] seek […] knock” to receive it from God; and then God will open the door.
The Bible takes the imagery of creation’s seventh and final day, when God rested, to also refer to the rest God’s people experience on the sabbath day—referring not only to the sabbath of the Jewish people in the Old Testament, but a Sabbath that will someday extend forever into eternal life. Since God does not change, he is always at rest; someday, human beings who have sought God’s goodness will rest in that goodness forever. Augustine closes with this move from the original creation to a new creation that will last forever; God alone can enlighten the soul’s darkness in order to cause a person to believe in him—a truth in Augustine’s own life and one he exhorts his readers to pursue for themselves, citing Jesus’s promise in the gospel of Matthew to receive anyone who seeks him.
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