Saint Augustine's Conversion - Hardcover

Wills, Garry; Augustine, Saint, Bishop Of Hippo

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670033529 ISBN 13: 9780670033522

Verlag: Viking Pr, 2004

Inhaltsangabe

In a translation by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Papal Sin and Lincoln at Gettysburg, the final chapter of the bishop's seminal confessional features an in-depth introduction and extensive accompaniment notes.

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Garry Wills is one of the most respected writers on religion today. He is the author of Saint Augustine’s Childhood, Saint Augustine’s Memory, and Saint Augustine’s Sin, the first three volumes in this series, as well as the Penguin Lives biography Saint Augustine. His other books include “Negro President”: Jefferson and the Slave Power, Why I Am a Catholic, Papal Sin, and Lincoln at Gettysburg, which won the Pulitzer Prize.

Garry Wills is one of the most respected writers on religion today. He is the author ofSaint Augustine’s Childhood, Saint Augustine’s Memory, and Saint Augustine’s Sin, the first three volumes in this series, as well as the Penguin Lives biographySaint Augustine. His other books include “Negro President”: Jefferson and the Slave Power,Why I Am a Catholic, Papal Sin, and Lincoln at Gettysburg, which won the Pulitzer Prize.

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part i

Introduction

1. The Book of Conversions

Book Eight of The Testimony tells the second most famous religious conversion story in Western literature, second only to that of Saint Paul, on which it is modeled. These two accounts have jointly determined much of what has been thought and written on the whole subject of conversionùin such classics on the subject as William JamesÆs The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) or Arthur Darby NockÆs Conversion (1933). The stories of Paul and Augustine have led to a belief that ôrealö conversion is sudden, effected by the incursion of an outside force, and emotionally wrenching. Certainly Augustine does everything he can to create that image in the emotional paroxysm of the garden scene that closes Book Eight. He prepares for that moment by an elaborate arrangement of conversion storiesùseven of them, with his own coming as the climactic eighth case, and with PaulÆs as a ninth one implicit in the text that Augustine reads in the garden. The artistry of AugustineÆs presentation as well as the gripping nature of its contents has made Book Eight the most famous and most cited book in The Testimony. Among other things, it contains the most frequently cited sentenceùôLord, give me chastity and self-control, but not just nowö [17].

But what does conversion mean here? We often use the word to indicate the adoption of a new religion. One is a Jewish convert, or a Muslim convert. But Augustine tells us he had accepted the Christian faith before he went into the garden. He already believed in the basic doctrines of the church [1, 18]. In fact, only one of the conversion stories he uses involves the acceptance of a new creed, and that one, exceptionally, is not recounted to Augustine by another person but inserted by him into one such reported story. This tale- within-a-tale (of Sergius PaulÆs conversion at Acts 12.6û12) is used to show that celebrity conversions are worth encouraging. Everyone else ôconvertedö here was already a Christian in belief, and most of them (Anthony, the four in Trier) were not only doctrinal believers but had been baptized. The only such ôconvertö who had not been baptized is the subject of the first and longest story, about Victorinus, who was a believer though he did not want to sacrifice his worldly position by open profession of Christianity. His is a baptism story, and the story is expressly told to Augustine (by Simplician) to make him give up worldly ties by undergoing baptism.

With the exception of this baptism story, the other conversion narratives are more properly vocation narratives, telling how a person already Christian (and already baptized) receives a higher callingùto the monastic life (PonticianÆs friends) or to a hermitÆs life (Anthony). Augustine has chosen his parallel narratives carefully, since his own case will combine both kinds of spiritual changeùhe will come not only to accept baptism, but to undertake a further commitment, to celibacy. These are separate matters, as Augustine tells his mother in reporting the garden struggleÆs outcome. He reports that her prayers have been rewarded beyond her own expectation. She had wanted him, when she had a dream about him (T 3.19), to be converted from Manicheism to Christianity, joining her on the rulerÆs edge of belief in Jesus. He now tells her that the garden experience has gone beyond the conversion she prayed for, giving him the further call to celibacy [20]. This is more properly a vocation story than a conversion oneùwhich is why he chose six of his seven parallel narratives from people already converted to the faith.

Of course, conversion in the broad sense does not necessarily entail a change of creed. It can refer to any significant spiritual reorientation (whether sudden or gradual). In that sense, AugustineÆs life up to the garden scene was one long tale of conversionsùfrom Christianity to Manicheism, from Manicheism to a Ciceronian Skepticism, from Skepticism to Materialism, from Materialism to Neoplatonism, and from Neoplatonism to Christianity. None of these breaks was absolutely clean. As a Skeptic, he still felt a need for the savor of ChristÆs name (T 5.25), something that had retained its hold on him from the time when he begged for baptism during a childhood sickness (T 1.17). And he would always retain a Manichean sense of the struggle with evil (O 3.48). The Christianity he embraced in Milan retained for a long time as many Neoplatonic as gospel elements. ôThe conversions of Augustine were many, and they did not end in the garden in Milanö

(O 1.xlii). There was as much continuity as disjunction in his lifeÆs developmentùwhich makes the clean break described in Book Eight so striking by its contrast with what went before.

It is a contrast striking enough that one must ask whether Augustine has not, for theological or other purpose, exaggerated its suddenness and violence. This suspicion is reinforced by the conflict between what he was writing, in or near Milan, at the time of his conversion and what he tells us, over ten years later, in Book Eight. The garden story has long been doubtedùat least from 1888, when Boissier and Harnack challenged it, and that has involved Book Eight in controversy. It is hard to sort out all the problems of the book because so many of us first approached it with presuppositions derived from what we knew, or thought we knew, or had been told, about AugustineÆs life and conversion. There are many myths that have accumulated around this subject. In calling them myths I do not claim that they lack truth of some orderùjust what kind and degree of order will be the matter for decisionùbut that they do not give a literal report of what was happening or being thought at the time being described. There are at least four such mythsùthat of Monnica, that of Ambrose, that of Paul at Damascus, and that of Augustine in the garden. In order, then:

2. The Myth of Monnica1
His mother joined him at Milan, and he was
under the influence of her life and faith ...
ùNock, Conversion

It is often assumed or asserted that AugustineÆs conversion was the result of his motherÆs efforts and prayers. It is true that by the time Augustine wrote The Testimony, he attributed his conversion to GodÆs grace, and attributed much of that grace to MonnicaÆs prayers. But the idea that she had a controlling influence at the time, or even a very strong one, cannot be substantiated in the natural order, or by any literal reading of the evidence. The hagiographical approach to her life has greatly inflated her roleùyet all that we know of her comes from The Testimony, which does not present her as a perfect mother or Christian. The exaggeration of her influence reaches a dark apogee in Rebecca WestÆs biography of Augustine:

She did not want her son to grow up.... It was fortunate that in her religion she had a perfect and, indeed, noble instrument for obtaining her desire that her son should not become a man. Very evidently Christianity need not mean emasculation, but the long struggles of Augustine and Monnica imply that in his case it did.... With her smooth competence she must have been able to make the Church a most alluring prospect.2

The most significant thing Augustine says of his mother during his own youth was that she had fled from the epicenter of Babylon (worldly corruption) but was loitering (tardior ibat) in other parts of it (T 2.8), which is not the definition of a saint, by his own exacting standards. He rebukes Monnica for worldliness on several occasionsùwhen she did not baptize him after his childhood sickness (T 1.18), when she did not urge marriage on him earlier (T 2.8), when...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Viking Pr
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2004
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0670033529
• ISBN 13: 9780670033522
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 128
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
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