The Summaries, Commentaries, and Questions are Reproduced Be…
The Summaries, Commentaries, and Questions are Reproduced Below. When you come to the questions after the commentary on EACH Book, Answer those questions in the Textbox Provided. All Questions after each book must be answered. This is Honrolock Enabled. No Outside Materials at all can be used. Do your own work. You have 3 hours, but you do not have to use all three hours. Summaries, Commentaries, and Questions on Book 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, and 11 of Augustine’s Confessions Book 1 Summary: Book 1 tells us about Augustine’s infancy and childhood education. The format, though, is nonnarrative, consisting of (a) a continuous prayer addressed to God and (b) a series of meditations on various aspects of Augustine’s infancy and early education. Commentary: The format is not that of narrative or story. But, we should not entirely abandon the idea that the Confessions is an autobiography or memoir. We can piece together the story of Augustine’s infancy and grade school education. Additionally, we are constantly aware that the author is in the process of thinking, with the result that the mind engaged in thinking provides a main storyline to the book. Modern poets and storytellers have championed a type of structure called stream of consciousness in which the content of a composition follows the random flow and quick jumps of how people actually think. This is a useful model to have in mind as we read the Confessions. Another complexity that manifests itself in Book 1 is the dual perspective of the adult author (who is writing in his midforties) and the youthful person and experiences that are recalled and reconstructed. The authorial perspective is experienced, thoughtful, insightful, and sophisticated. He is a master thinker about life, superior in insight to us, and even more so to his youthful self.We quickly adopt the stance of a learner sitting at the feet of a wise man. With the foregoing orienting comments in place, the respective units are (1) an exalted invocation to God, (2) musings on Augustine’s infancy, and (3) analysis of Augustine’s early education. Two stories of development are interwoven in the second and third sections—the story of human development and the story of spiritual development. We can helpfully speak of the growth of the mind and the growth of the soul as the twin actions of Book 1. Two genres of Christian writing merge in the first five chapters of Book 1. The general category is prayer, and its essential feature is that Augustine continuously addresses his statements directly to God. The result is a tremendous sense of intimacy with God. Secondly and more specifically, these five chapters are a prayer of praise, thereby reminding us of the psalms of praise in the Old Testament. The opening pages of the Confessions (and many other passages in the book as well) are also a mosaic of references to the Bible. Part of the triumph of these passages is the skill with which Augustine weaves biblical verses together. One way to view Augustine’s famous opening is to see that Augustine wants to start with the most important truth that can be imagined. His first few sentences invite comparison with other great religious documents that begin by asserting what is most important. The Westminster Shorter Catechism begins by declaring that “man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” The Heidelberg Catechism begins by asking, “What is your only comfort in life and in death?” and the answer begins, “That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.” We should read the opening prayer (chapters 1–5) the same way we read the exalted prayers of the Bible (such as Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the temple recorded in 1 Kings 8 and 2 Chronicles 6). Augustine becomes our representative, saying what we, too, want to say to God. When Augustine turns to telling the story of his infancy, he faces an obvious challenge, namely that no one remembers his or her own earliest months and years. But with characteristic ingenuity, Augustine proceeds to tell the story by imagining what his infancy was like and by deducing what his first years were like based on his observation of universal infancy. He also shocks any reader with Romantic assumptions by assuming that even as an infant he was a sinful creature. Infancy and Early Education We can speak of the growth of the mind and the growth of the soul as the twin actions of Book 1.— Dr. Leland Ryken, Professor Emeritus of English The note of self-accusation becomes even stronger in the long section devoted to Augustine’s formal education. This makes the book a helpful counter to the idealization of childhood and human nature popularized during the Romantic movement of the early nineteenth century and that is still with us today. The chapter devoted to the deferral of Augustine’s baptism mystifies us, until we understand how the Church in Augustine’s day believed baptism to confer grace and forgiveness. Delaying baptism until late in life would enable it to cover more sins than if baptism were administered early in life. Augustine does not agree with that view. An additional thread is the heavy criticism that Augustine lays on his grade-school education and the teachers who oversaw it. The goal of education held before the students was to be successful in life, not to love learning for its own sake and to become a good person. It was a classical education. Mastery of written and spoken Latin and Greek dominated the curriculum. Of course students needed to read actual texts as part of their language study, and those texts were written by authors uninfluenced by the revelation of the Bible. Part of Augustine’s case against his classical education and its required texts is the triviality of its content compared to the content of the Bible. In addition to the triviality of what was studied, there was a moral issue. Young Augustine was unable to waive moral standards and overlook the immoral behavior portrayed in the mythological stories. In this section of the Confessions, Augustine participates in one of the great dilemmas of the early (postbiblical) Christian church, namely, the need to reach a satisfactory assessment of the classical heritage of the West in its relation to Christianity. Most of the people who wrote on the subject (known as the church fathers) had themselves received a classical education. Opinions varied widely on what to make of the classical tradition. Some church fathers (such as Tertullian) rejected the classical heritage completely, while others found a way to integrate it into their Christian worldview. There are ways in which Augustine falls between those two poles, but Book 1 of the Confessions lands on the negative side. We end with a brief final chapter in which Augustine thanks God for what was good in his education and for the personal endowments that God gave him. This brief prayer gives Book 1 a nice envelope structure, ending on the exalted spiritual note that was present at the beginning. For Reflection or Discussion: The main themes that are woven throughout the units of Book 1 include the following: (1) the longing that every human soul possesses to find God and to praise him(2) original sin—the principle of sin and movement away from God with which everyoneis born(3) the narrator’s continuous interaction with God, with prayer serving as the means ofthat interaction(4) the adult and wise narrator’s assessment of his early life. At what points do these themes enter Book 1, and what specific things should we note about each one? What form may Augustine’s experiences and observations take in your own life? Book 2 Summary: In the brief second book, Augustine informs us about his sixteenth year. During the preceding four years he had attended school in a town twenty miles north of his hometown of Thagaste. That school was located in the town of Madauros, a center of classical education in Roman North Africa. Augustine returned home for an interim year as his father saved money to send him to an even more prestigious school in Carthage. Two main subjects occupy Augustine’s highly selective review of his sixteenth year—his sexuality and his theft of pears from a neighbor’s orchard. Commentary: Augustine nowhere calls the book he is writing an autobiography. He believes that he is writing a confession—a confession of past wrongdoings and of his spiritual quest for God. What we mainly get in Book 2 is an abundance of analysis and commentary, scantily tied to the two external events of reaching puberty and stealing pears. The dominant format is the memoir—a highly selective remembrance of a few events that are subjected to extensive analysis. Whereas Book 1 had cast a critical eye on the people who oversaw Augustine’s education, Book 2 turns the gaze inward. Augustine is unsparing in judging his teen behavior as having been very bad indeed. The Sins of Youth In Augustine’s analysis, sin is misdirected longing for the beauty that only God can supply in a person’s life.— Dr. Leland Ryken, Professor Emeritus of English Augustine never gives us details about his lust, and it seems likely that he simply had the normal urges of a young man who had reached sexual maturity. In his own mind, however, he was guilty of excessive and misdirected sexuality. The note of regret runs strong, as Augustine now wishes that he had done better. It is possible that in Augustine’s imagination, sexual misconduct is metaphoric of sin generally, thereby accounting for the hyperbolic rhetoric that he uses. Augustine lived in a Romanized culture; its sexual conduct and values ran counter to Christian standards of married sexual love. When he looked back on his early sexual behavior as an adult Christian, he found it despicable. The pear orchard incident is one of the most famous stories in Augustine’s life. Externally it is an example of what we would call petty theft, but in Augustine’s imagination and theological analysis it becomes nothing less than a paradigm of the essence of human sinfulness. In view of all this, it is not surprising that Augustine devotes the second half of Book 2 to an analysis of the nature of sin. In Augustine’s analysis, sin is misdirected longing for the beauty that only God can supply in a person’s life. Desire defiled is Augustine’s theme here, and it includes his delight in doing something sinful. For Reflection or Discussion What are the precise points Augustine makes about these two main youthful experiences? Why do they loom so large? What landmark events do you return to in thinking of yourself as a sinful person? What points does Augustine make about sin in the second half of Book 2? How does Augustine believe he was being directed to God by God even in his sinfulbehavior?