184 Augustine, Saint
God’s accomplishments in Augustine’s life and how
ardently he now desires God.
All of the lesser loves Augustine has—for physi-
cal pleasure, for companionship, for knowledge—
imitate to some degree the love he should properly
have for God. And if Augustine’s loves help deter-
mine what he becomes, then loving God properly
will make him more like God in goodness and
wisdom.
Jonathan Malesic
reliGiOn in The Confessions of St. Augustine
As a religious autobiography, The Confessions is in
one sense entirely about religion. Augustine is in
search of God, but God can be found only through
the doctrines and disciplines of true religion. The
problem for Augustine is in discovering which reli-
gion is true. He finds the truth in Catholic Christi-
anity, but he takes a circuitous path to it.
Augustine lived in an era when several religions
competed for adherents. Although Christianity was
becoming the norm in the Roman Empire, many
still honored the old Roman pantheon, and a sect
called the Manicheans held some sway. Further-
more, the Christianity of this time was highly varied,
as authority within the church was diffuse, and many
points of doctrine were not yet settled.
Augustine’s own family exhibits this religious
diversity: His mother, Monica, is a Christian (later
to be acknowledged as a saint in the Catholic
Church), while his father, Patrick, is a longtime
pagan. Monica’s practice of true religion leads her
to live a life of prayer and moral rectitude. She, in
turn, prays constantly for Augustine to become a
full member of the church and actively encourages
him to give up his premarital sexual relationships
(which the church sees as sinful) and to marry a
Catholic girl. Patrick, meanwhile, is portrayed as
short-tempered and lustful, encouraging Augustine
to commit sexual sin. He becomes a Christian late in
his life, and Augustine remarks that this conversion
ended Patrick’s bad behavior.
As a young teacher of rhetoric at Carthage in
North Africa, Augustine is drawn to the Maniche-
ans, who see the world as a battleground between
the equal and opposite forces of light and darkness.
Augustine’s interest in the Manicheans reaches its
height in book 5 as he anticipates meeting Faustus,
the great bishop of the sect. Faustus turns out to
be a letdown, as his knowledge is slight and “con-
ventional,” not the profound wisdom Augustine
had expected. But by the end of book 5, Augustine
has moved to Milan in Italy and met Ambrose,
the Christian bishop there. Ambrose is the mirror
image of Faustus. Both men are bishops, but Faus-
tus is part of the false religion of Manichaeanism,
while Ambrose is a leader in the true religion of
Christianity. Though both are renowned for their
good speaking styles, “in content there could be no
comparison,” for Ambrose is expounding the truth
and exposing the pretty lies of teachers like Faustus.
Ambrose continues to influence Augustine, leading
him to join the Catholic Church.
The Manicheans’ failure to grasp the truth is
illustrated in their inadequate account of the pres-
ence of evil in the world. They believe that both
God and evil are physical substances in conflict
with each other. This doctrine concerns Augustine
because it implies that God is finite, something he
knows cannot be true.
Augustine discovers a Christian answer to this
problem in book 7, after reading books of Pla-
tonist philosophers who espouse many semireligious
teachings, including the idea that evil is not an
existing substance but, rather, the absence of good.
Although the Platonists lack the full religious truth,
which can be found only in Christianity, they have
elements of the truth (including this teaching on the
nature of evil) and are at any rate far closer to true
religious doctrine than the Manicheans. Because all
that is genuinely true comes from God, true philo-
sophical doctrines can lead a person a step closer to
God. For example, the Platonists rightly recognize
that the Word of God, the principle of order in the
universe, is itself light, but they do not recognize,
as Christians do, that this Word became a human
being, Jesus Christ.
Thus, Augustine’s intellectual encounter with
Platonism helps confirm for him the truth of Chris-
tianity. He eventually converts fully to Christianity
after an intense emotional experience that leads him
to “pick up and read” the letters of the Christian
apostle Paul, where Augustine reads an admoni-
tion to give up sin and to ally himself with Christ.