CONFESSIONS(BOOKVIII) 275
Theory of Knowledge (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1969);
R.A. Markus,Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St. Augustine
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); Robert J. O’Connell’s pair of
books,St. Augustine’sConfessions and Images of Conversion in St. Augustine’s
Confessions (New York: Fordham University Press, 1989 and 1996); Brian Stock,
Augustine the Reader(Cambridge, MA; Harvard University Press, 1996); and
Robert Dyson,St. Augustine of Hippo: The Christian Transformation of Political
Philosophy(London: Continuum, 2005) deal with the specialized topics indicated
by their respective titles. John M. Rist,Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) explores the connections between
Augustine and Platonic thought. For collections of essays, see M.C. D’Arcy et al.,
Saint Augustine(New York: Meridian, 1957), and R.A. Markus, ed.,Augustine:
A Collection of Critical Essays(Garden City, NY: Anchor, Doubleday, 1972).CONFESSIONS (in part)
BOOKVIII—CONVERSION
5,10.... It was no iron chain imposed by anyone else that fettered me, but the
iron of my own will. The enemy had my power of willing in his clutches, and from it
had forged a chain to bind me. The truth is that disordered lust springs from a perverted
will; when lust is pandered to, a habit is formed; when habit is not checked, it hardens
into compulsion. These were like interlinking rings forming what I have described as a
chain, and my harsh servitude used it to keep me under duress.
A new will had begun to emerge in me, the will to worship you disinterestedly
and enjoy you, O God, our only sure felicity; but it was not yet capable of surmounting
that earlier will strengthened by inveterate custom. And so the two wills fought it out—
the old and the new, the one carnal, the other spiritual—and in their struggle tore my
soul apart.
8, 19. Within the house of my spirit the violent conflict raged on, the quarrel with
my soul that I had so powerfully provoked in our secret dwelling, my heart, and at the
height of it I rushed to Alypius with my mental anguish plain upon my face. “What is
happening to us?” I exclaimed. “What does this mean? What did you make of it? The
untaught are rising up and taking heaven by Storm, while we with all our dreary teach-
ings are still groveling in this world of flesh and blood! Are we ashamed to follow, just
Saint Augustine,Confessions, Book VIII (5, 8–12) and XI (14–28), translated by Maria Boulding (New York:
New City Press, 1997). © 1997 by the Augustinian Heritage Institute.