Augustine’s *Confessions*: What Made Them Be So Introspective?
March 28, 2010 at 3:39 pm 23 comments
When I first read Augustine’s Confessions a number of years ago, I remember thinking: “What’s so special about this Christian leader in the late 4th century reminiscing about the sins of his youth?”
It was only later that I realized what a significant achievement the Confessions were. There simply had not been anything like that before: a psychologically introspective autobiography. Nowadays, of course, we have thousands of introspective autobiographies.
In fact, an autobiography isn’t considered very good if it doesn’t contain a large amount of introspection. We feel that we haven’t really gotten to know the person if he doesn’t honestly take us into his inner world—if he doesn’t put the public figure aside and present himself primarily as a human being with all the struggles that this entails. In that way, Billy Graham’s Just As I Am is somewhat of an antithesis to Augustine’s Confessions, because in Billy’s book you still meet foremost the preacher and public man Billy. Who is simply the man Billy? I came away quite empty in this regard after reading his autobiography, almost as if there was no man Billy beyond his public ministry, his preaching, his Christianity. A man reduced to anecdotes and didactic purposes for others.
Not so Augustine’s Confessions. There I got a strong sense of Augustine as a human being.
Now one thing I wonder about is what made Augustine achieve such an unprecedented psychological autobiography? Was it coincidental that he converted to Christianity before he wrote this work? Or is there something in the Christian faith that makes (some) people much more introspective than they would otherwise be? And if so, has Christianity made the entire West more introspective than it would be without the Christening of Europe?
Entry filed under: Books/Book Reviews, Christianity (general), History, Psychology. Tags: autobiography, Billy Graham, Christening of Europe, Christian West, Confessions, introspection, Just As I Am, St. Augustine.
1.
botox4thebrain | March 28, 2010 at 7:44 pm
Thanks Jokim. I like the way you compare Billy and Augustine. However, I am not entirely sure how you use the word “introspective.”
Deep in Thought?
Subjective?
Reflective?
2.
Edward T. Babinski | March 29, 2010 at 1:24 am
I suspect that all philosophies involve introspection. Too bad Socrates didn’t write anything. “Know thyself.” Augustine was influenced by neo-Platonists. Though I haven’t read their works.
I also recall that Augustine read without moving his lips, something that was considered a bit of a marvel in that day and age.
3.
jacobschriftman | March 29, 2010 at 3:10 am
Yeah, no doubt the analytical nature of Greek philosophy played a big part in making Augustine the man he was. But I think it was a merging of the Greek analytical thinking with the psychologically more complex Christian faith and values that produced the (at the time) unique introspection of the Confessions.
I mean, “Know thyself” meant primarily “Know your own limits,” didn’t it? “Know that you are a mortal. Know that you are not a god. Accept your place in life. Amor fati. Love your fate.”
I don’t think Socrates’ autobiography would have been as interesting as Augustine’s, because the psychology of the Greeks was much more straight-forward than of the Neo-Platonic Christians. As Nietzsche observed, Christianity has made people more “interesting” psychologically – more many-layered.
When a Greek was struck on one cheek, he defended his own honor. There was a battle. There was a victor. That was it. When a Christian is struck on one cheek and knows he ought to turn the other cheek, a lot more interesting things take place psychologically.
Or take the trial of Socrates versus the trial of Jesus. Psychologically, the latter is much more many-layered than the former. The former is quite a simple matter and Socrates has no inner struggles about it. Compare that to Jesus sweating blood in the Garden of Gethsemane, not to mention Judas, the disciples, the Sanhedrin, Pilate etc. What a wellspring for introspective struggles!
You only had to put the cup of analytical philosophy in the hands of a Christian with enough leisure and skill in rhetoric to write about it, and – voila! – he could start to scoop up deep psychological waters from that spring.
Anyway, I’m starting to get carried away. Thanks for your comment, Ed, and thanks for bearing with me.
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jacobschriftman | March 29, 2010 at 3:29 am
By introspection, I mean exploring and analyzing your inner world: your motives, the causes of guilt or elation, the inner things that drive you and move you; your inner puzzles, your inner complexity as an individual. Introspection means to observe from a subjective, “insider” view how your mind works.
There is a beautiful passage in the Confessions that illustrates this perfectly (about the “insider” view of how the minds works, not so much about one’s motives; there are other passages in the Confessions that go into that). This is Augustine speaking:
“And I enter the fields and spacious halls of memory, where are stored as treasures the countless images that have been brought into them from all manner of things by the senses. There, in the memory, is likewise stored what we cogitate, either by enlarging or reducing our perceptions, or by altering one way or another those things which the senses have made contact with; and everything else that has been entrusted to it and stored up in it, which oblivion has not yet swallowed up and buried.
When I go into this storehouse, I ask that what I want should be brought forth. Some things appear immediately, but others require to be searched for longer, and then dragged out, as it were, from some hidden recess. Other things hurry forth in crowds, on the other hand, and while something else is sought and inquired for, they leap into view as if to say, “Is it not we, perhaps?” These I brush away with the hand of my heart from the face of my memory, until finally the thing I want
makes its appearance out of its secret cell. Some things suggest themselves without effort, and in continuous order, just as they are called for–the things that come first give place to those that follow, and in so doing are treasured up again to be forthcoming when I want them. All of this happens when I repeat a thing from memory.
All these things, each one of which came into memory in its own particular way, are stored up separately and under the general categories of understanding. For example, light and all colors and forms of bodies came in through the eyes; sounds of all kinds by the ears; all smells by the passages of the nostrils; all flavors by the gate of the mouth; by the sensation of the whole body, there is brought in what is hard or soft, hot or cold, smooth or rough, heavy or light, whether external
or internal to the body. The vast cave of memory, with its numerous and mysterious recesses, receives all these things and stores them up, to be recalled and brought forth when required. Each experience enters by its own door, and is stored up in the memory. And yet the things themselves do not enter it, but only the images of the things perceived are there for thought to remember. And who can tell how these images are formed, even if it is evident which of the senses brought which perception in and stored it up? For even when I am in darkness and silence I can bring out colors in my memory if I wish, and discern between black and white and the other shades as I wish; and at the same time, sounds do not break in and disturb what is drawn in by my eyes, and which I am considering, because the sounds which are also there are stored up, as it were, apart. And these too I can summon if I please and they are immediately present in memory. And though my tongue is at rest and my throat silent, yet I can sing as I will; and those images of color, which are as truly present as before, do not interpose themselves or interrupt while another treasure which had flowed in through the ears is being thought about. Similarly all the other things that were brought in and heaped up by all the other senses, I can recall at my pleasure. And I distinguish the scent of lilies from that of violets while actually smelling nothing; and I prefer honey to mead, a smooth thing to a rough, even though I am neither tasting nor handling them, but only remembering them.
All this I do within myself, in that huge hall of my memory. For in it, heaven, earth, and sea are present to me, and whatever I can cogitate about them–except what I have forgotten. There also I meet myself and recall myself–what, when, or where I did a thing, and how I felt when I did it. There are all the things that I remember, either having experienced them myself or been told about them by others. Out of the same storehouse, with these past impressions, I can construct now this, now that, image of things that I either have experienced or have believed on the basis of experience–and from these I can further construct future actions, events, and hopes; and I can meditate on all these things as if they were present. “I will do this or that”–I say to myself in that vast recess of my mind, with its full store of so many and such great images–“and this or that will follow upon it.” “O that this or that could happen!” “God prevent this or that.” I speak to myself in this way; and when I speak, the images of what I am speaking about are present out of the same store of memory; and if the images were absent I could say nothing at all about them.
Great is this power of memory, exceedingly great, O my God–a large and boundless inner hall! Who has plumbed the depths of it? Yet it is a power of my mind, and it belongs to my nature. But I do not myself grasp all that I am. Thus the mind is far too narrow to contain itself. But where can that part of it be which it does not contain? Is it outside and not in itself? How can it be, then, that the mind cannot grasp itself? A great marvel rises in me; astonishment seizes me. Men go forth to marvel at the heights of mountains and the huge waves of the sea, the broad flow of the rivers, the vastness of the ocean, the orbits of the stars, and yet they neglect to marvel at themselves. Nor do they wonder how it is that, when I spoke of all these things, I was not looking at them with my eyes–and yet I could not have spoken about them had it not been that I was actually seeing within,
in my memory, those mountains and waves and rivers and stars which I have seen, and that ocean which I believe in–and with the same vast spaces between them as when I saw them outside me. But when I saw them outside me, I did not take them into me by seeing them; and the things themselves are not inside me, but only their images. And yet I knew through which physical sense each experience had made an impression on me.”
5.
botox4thebrain | March 29, 2010 at 3:44 pm
This “introspective” tendency seems to have started with Paul. I am thinking here of a famous passage in Romans 7:
“We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.”
It seems indeed that Christianity would foster “introspection” as one would have to check its “motive” our its “inner world.” In the same way, Jesus, on the Sermon of the Mount challenges his disciples to look at their inner motives.
However, to be fair, it would be good to see if other religions (worldview, or philosophies) have had such an idea… Unfortunately, I have no clue about this. Anything from Confucius?
6.
jacobschriftman | March 29, 2010 at 3:53 pm
I have read Confucius as well as other Asian wisdom and religion teachers, both ancient and contemporary ones. But I think drawing a more detailed comparison between East and West in terms of introspection would take too long; I’m in the middle of work at the moment.
To put it very briefly: Yes, there has been introspection in the East, too, and in some ways even more. But its goal was to empty your inner self, whereas the goal in the Christian West was to fill your inner self, in a manner of speaking, with the right stuff. Those are two very different kinds of introspection that lead to very different psychological states.
7.
Edward T. Babinski | March 29, 2010 at 5:18 pm
Augustine was whacked about some things, like his view that celibacy was “it,” and if everyone practiced it, the Lord and final judgment would arrive all the quicker, based on what Paul wrote in 1 Cor., and concerning infants being in Satan’s power till they are baptized.
How introspective do you have to be to see that introspection of that sort was nutty?
On the Bible verse that you mentioned: “sweating blood and being administered to by angels” is a late addition to the text of Luke.
Lastly. . .
The point of some Christian “introspection” appears to also play into the hand of mind control techniques. Both Jesus and Paul commanded some things that reek of cult-like control over people. Family? Jesus cultists are your new “family.” Save your soul! Believe or be damned. Fear him who can cast body and soul into hell.
Even the super aggrandizement of passages from “holy” books reeks. Here, memorize and repeat and meditate on these Gospels, or these letters of Paul. Till you can’t think in any other terms.
Christianity is also the religion that instituted thought police. Christian emperors in league with church councils composed laws as to what must believed, and ordered persecution and burning books of Greek philosophers as well as fellow Christians who were considered heretics.
CHRISTIANITY CAN MAGNIFY HARMLESS ACTIONS INTO DEADLY OFFENSES
One of Christianity’s chief offenses is not that it has enlisted the services of bad men, but that it has misdirected the energies of good ones. The kindly, the sensitive, the thoughtful, those who are striving to do their best under its influence, are troubled, and consequently often develop a more or less morbid frame of mind. The biographies of the best men in Christian history offer many melancholy examples of the extent to which they have falsely accused themselves of sins during their “unconverted” state, and the manner in which harmless actions are magnified into deadly offenses.
Chapman Cohen, Essays in Freethinking
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HOW DIFFERENT ARE MOST “CONVERTED” PEOPLE?
Were it true that a converted man as such is of an entirely different kind from a natural man, there surely ought to be some distinctive radiance. But notoriously there is no such radiance. Converted men as a class are indistinguishable from normal men.
By the very intensity of his fidelity to the paltry ideals with which an inferior intellect may inspire him, a saint can be even more objectionable and damnable than a superficial “carnal” man would be in the same situation.
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
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A MINISTER CRITICIZES HOW OTHER MINISTERS SEEK TO DRIVE PEOPLE TO DESPAIR
(The ‘Methodists’) demonstrate to secure, contented, happy mankind that it is really unhappy and desperate, and merely unwilling to realize that it is in severe straits it knows nothing at all about, from which only they can rescue it. Wherever there is health, strength, security, simplicity, they spy luscious fruit to gnaw at or to lay their pernicious eggs in. They make it their object first of all to drive men to inward despair, and then it is all theirs… The church must stop trying to act like a “spiritual pharmacist”–working to produce acute guilt, and then in effect saying, “We just happen to have the remedy for your guilt here in our pocket.”
Deitrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison [Bonhoeffer is a famed moderate Christian minister who was imprisoned by the Nazis for his opposition to Hitler. His books, including, The Cost of Discipleship have been praised and read by Evangelical Christians.]
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Evangelical Christianity = Being made to feel sinful and guilty for not having felt sinful and guilty, in order that one might experience release from sin and guilt; Like donning lead boots and walking about in them until totally exhausted in order to have the exhilarating experience of taking them off again.
Conrad Hyers, Once-Born, Twice-Born Zen [Hyers is a moderate Evangelical Christian and former Chair of Religion at Gustavus Adolphus College]
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IS THE HEART OF MAN DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS AND DESPERATELY WICKED?
According to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus taught, “If you see a woman and lust after her, I say that you have already committed adultery in your heart.” In other words, even if you don’t commit adultery “in the flesh,” you’ve committed it just by lusting after someone. Now suppose you see someone in need, who could use some cash or a kind word, and you yearn in your heart to give it to them (but for whatever reason are unable to give it to them). Does that mean you have “already committed charity in your heart?” Think about it. If a lust-filled yearning (not the act of sex, but just the yearning), is evidence of how bad the human heart is, then what about the yearnings people feel to help and support one another? Might they not be an indication of goodness in people’s hearts?
Gandhi, the famous Hindu peace-activist, taught that people should seek out what was best in their own religions and hearts. Even Jesus put a positive spin on “the heart” when he taught that “The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart” (Luke 6:45 & Mat. 12:35), and when he taught that people ought to “Love God with all their heart,” (Mat. 22:37). How is that possible if the “heart” is “wicked and deceitful above all things?”
No doubt the “wickedness” of the “heart” as depicted in the book of Jeremiah, chapter 17, verse 9 (“The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked”) applies to some people at some times whenever they act deceitful and wicked, especially when they are at their lowest and weakest points. But to take the book of Jeremiah’s exaggerated ancient Near Eastern way of speaking, and bake it in an oven until it becomes as dry and hard as a brick of dogma, and make that brick a cornerstone of your theology, well, to do that takes a “heart” relatively dry of compassion and fair appraisals of others’ beliefs and actions.
E.T.B.
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THE EVANGELICAL MIND
We who are in pietistic, generically evangelical, Baptist, fundamentalist, Restorationist, holiness, “Bible church,” megachurch, or Pentecostal traditions face special difficulties when putting the mind to use. Taken together, American evangelicals display many virtues and do many things well, but built-in barriers to careful and constructive thinking remain substantial. These barriers include an immediatism that insists on action, decision, and even perfection right now, a populism that confuses winning supporters with mastering actually existing situations, an anti-traditionalism that privileges one’s own current judgments on biblical, theological, and ethical issues (however hastily formed) over insight from the past (however hard won and carefully stated), and a nearly gnostic dualism that rushes to spiritualize all manner of bodily, terrestrial, physical, and material realities (despite the origin and providential maintenance of these realities in God). In addition, we evangelicals as a rule still prefer to put our money into programs offering immediate results, whether evangelistic or humanitarian, instead of into institutions promoting intellectual development over the long term.
These evangelical habits continue to hamper evangelical thinking. We remain inordinately susceptible to enervating apocalyptic speculation, and we produce and consume oceans of bathetic End Times literature while sponsoring only a trickle of serious geopolitical analysis. We are consistently drawn to so-called “American Christianities”–occasionally of the left, more often of the right–that subordinate principled reasoning rooted in the gospel to partisanship in which opponents are demonized and deficiencies in our friends are excused… Capitulation to disembodied ideals of spirituality incapacitates our struggling band of novelists and poets. And far too many of us still make the intellectually suicidal mistake of thinking that promoting “creation science” is the best way to resist naturalistic philosophies of science. When it comes to the life of the mind, in other words, we evangelicals continue to have our problems…
Evangelical higher education in North America remains a fragmented enterprise, both nourished and impeded by the sectarian character of American religion…
Pentecostals, Southern Baptists, members of Holiness movements, seeker-sensitive churches, dispensationalists, Adventists, African-American congregations, radical Wesleyans, and lowest-common-denominator evangelicals have great spiritual energy, but they flounder in putting the mind to use for Christ. On the other side, Lutherans, Catholics, Anglo-Catholics, the Reformed, and the Eastern Orthodox enjoy incredibly rich traditions that include sterling examples of Christian thought, but they often display a comatose spirituality.
This picture is, of course, a generalization…
Mark Noll [Christian and Professor of History at Wheaton College--Billy Graham’s alma mater], “The Evangelical Mind Today,” First Things, No. 146, Oct. 2004
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Jack Kelley, an Evangelical Christian and star reporter with USA Today, resigned in January after admitting he fabricated many of his sensational stories covering war and terrorism. His admission of guilt came after USA Today’s investigative team found major fabrications and plagiarisms in Kelly’s stories. The same Jack Kelley told Christian Reader magazine recently: “God has told me to proclaim truth,” and, he teaches at the World Journalism Institute, whose mission is “presuppositional reporting” from an “unapologetic Christian point of view.”
E.T.B., based on an article in Christianity Today
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I believe part of the appeal of the evangelical religion is for offering certainty, not faith, certainty about what is doctrinally correct. I think one of the dangers of religion is to believe we have got God all buttoned down. I believe just the opposite. I believe in the freedom and mystery of God that doesn’t allow us to be certain but allows us to be loving. To put it in street talk, I look more to how people live than what they say they believe.
Rev. Albert Pennybacker [Pastor in Lexington, Kentucky, and head of the Clergy Leadership Network, a cross-denominational group of liberal and moderate religious leaders seeking to counter the influence of the Religious Right and to mobilize voters to change leadership in Washington. http://www.clnnlc.org/%5D
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ON “REVIVALS”
In the days of my youth, ministers depended on revivals to save souls and reform the world. The emotional sermons, the sad singing, the hysterical “Amens,” the hope of heaven, the fear of hell, caused many to lose what little sense they had. In this condition they flocked to the “mourner’s bench”--asked for prayers of the faithful--had strange feelings, prayed, and wept and thought they had been “born again.” Then they would tell their experiences--how wicked they had been, how evil had been their thoughts, their desires, and how good they had suddenly become.
They used to tell the story of an old woman who, in telling her experience, said, “Before I was converted, before I gave my heart to God, I used to lie and steal, but now, thanks to the grace and blood of Jesus Christ, I have quit ‘em both, in a great measure.”
Well, while the cold winter lasted, while the snows fell, the revival went on, but when the winter was over, the boats moved in the harbor again, the wagons rolled, and business started again, most of the converts “backslid” and fell again into their old ways. But the next winter they were on hand again, read to be “born again.” They formed a kind of stock company, playing the same parts every winter and backsliding every spring.
I regard revivals as essentially barbaric. The fire that has to be blown all the time is a poor thing to get warm by. I think they do no good but much harm; they make innocent people think they are guilty, and very mean people think they are good.
Robert Ingersoll, “Why I am An Agnostic”
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I had what I consider a “spiritual epiphany” regarding “evangelicalism” in high school when a group of friends and I drove to an evangelistic rally and heard the preacher rail on and on against the evils of drinking, smoking, and other things. The evangelist was a spectacular showman and implored the audience to take heed, come forward, let go of any liquor bottles or packs of cigarettes in their possession, repent, and sin no more with God’s power. Each word of the evangelist blazed with the certainty that God would heal His people’s sinful ways and a choir was singing with trumpets blaring and the audience grew very excited. My friends all deposited their packs of cigarettes on the growing pile in the center of the rally and prayed with the ushers and pleaded with me to do so as well for the good of my soul.
I refused.
No sooner had the emotion-filled rally ended, no sooner had we traveled a few blocks in our car, than my friends bummed cigarettes off me.
Dr. Charles Brewer, Professor of Psychology (as told to E.T.B. 7/18/06)
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HOW TO SPOT CHRISTIANS
One Sunday afternoon my cousin and I were eating at a restaurant. He paused, and started pointing at people. “He’s a Christian… He’s a Christian… So is she, and she, and that other guy.”
I asked how he was so sure.
His reply? “I was a hard-core Evangelical Christian for a few years, remember? It’s not hard to see once you know what to look for. Look for someone who looks like they’re wearing clothes just a little bit nicer than they’re comfortable in, that have a smile on their face. It won’t look like a happy smile, it’ll look kind of contrived and forced, like they’re trying to convince themselves they’re happy and rich.”
Justice McPherson
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Many of the most cordial Christians either hum hymns or listen to contemporary Christian music, or repeat Scripture in their heads, and wonder what they can do next to make someone think that they’re a “good little Christian.”
I used to do the same thing, and now people wonder why I do not shower them with praise and gifts to make them think that I am a “good little Christian.” I used to go to people’s houses and work and they would try to pay me, But No! I would not take a dime, because I wanted to emblazon on their brains the idea that I was a “good little Christian.” (The “people-pleasing-for-Christ” part of my life ended over 15 years ago.) That’s what many Christians are, people pleasers, God pleasers, Jesus pleasers, preacher pleasers.
Jesus was a people pleaser, that’s why he was so willing to die, either to please God or his ignorant followers.
Ben at http://www.exchristian.net/ [edited by E.T.B.]
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CONVERTED OR ADDICTED?
Psychotherapists will tell you that in dealing with an addict, you have to understand that the person’s primary relationship is with the drug. The drug has the ability to control the addict’s thinking to a remarkable degree, and you must understand that any relationship you may feel with the addict is a distant second to the one they have with their drug. The most devout Evangelical Christians are open and unabashed about this. Their “relationship with Jesus” as they use the term, is the primary relationship in their lives. There is even a scripture that goes something like, “Not unless you hate your mother and father can you be my disciple,” and, “Who are my mother and father? But he who hears and words of God and does them.” Jesus even suggested to one disciple that he ought not return home to help bury a dead family member, instead he ought to “Let the dead bury the dead.” In other words, Evangelicals stress that one’s love for Jesus ought to be so strong that relatively speaking, one’s love for even close family members, must not compare. You may love your mother but you should love Jesus so much more that in comparison it’s like you hate her. Doesn’t this sound an awful lot like a drunk’s love for the bottle?
It may be helpful when trying to have a relationship with a believer to remember that you and their relationship with you means very little to them compared to their need to continue in their thought addiction. In fact “true believers” may happily sacrifice a relationship with their own spouses or children should those family members refuse to convert, or become “unbelievers.” In such cases the “true believer” feels they are making the ultimate sacrifice in “serving God rather than man.”
Evangelical beliefs may promise you comfort, security and power just like the ads for alcohol link its consumption with sexiness, sports activities, and a rippin’ good time, but the promises in both cases often grow sour as the addict grows more hardened and insistent.
Some people have an instant “conversion” to alcoholism. They take their first drink, or have their first good drunk and understand (in the words of a very young alcoholic client I once had) “This (drinking) is what I was put on this world to do.”
For some people their religion is an illness they are trying to recover from and the recovery process is more difficult than recovering from alcoholism.
Saint Vilis at the Yahoo Group, ExitFundyism
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You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that WE are the ones who “need help?”
Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist
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EVANGELICAL EGO-GAMES
An evangelical Christian once told me, “Only Jesus Christ can save man and restore him to his lost state of peace with God, himself and others.” Yeah, sure, and only new Pepsi can make you feel really happy, and only our brand is better than the competition, and only our country is the best country. It is truly amazing to me that people can utter such arrogant nonsense with no humor, no sense of how offensive they are to others, no doubt or trepidation, and no suspicion that they sound exactly like advertisers, con-men and other swindlers. It is really hard to understand such child-like prattling. If I were especially conceited about something (a state I try to avoid, but if I fell into it…), if for instance I decided I had the best garden or the handsomest face in Ireland, I would still retain enough common sense to suspect that I would sound like a conceited fool if I went around telling everybody those opinions. I would have enough tact left, I hope, to satisfy my conceit by dreaming that other people would notice on their own that my garden and/or my face were especially lovely. People who go around innocently and blithely announcing that they belong to the Master Race or the Best Country Club or have the One True Religion seem to have never gotten beyond the kindergarten level of ego-display. Do they have no modesty, no tact, no shame, no adult common sense at all? Do they have any suspicion how silly their conceit sounds to the majority of the nonwhite non-Christian men and women of the world? To me, they seem like little children wearing daddy’s clothes and going around shouting, “Look how grown-up I am! Look at me, me, me!”
There are more amusing things than ego-games, conceit and one-upmanship.Really, there are. I suspect that people stay on that childish level because they have never discovered how interesting and exciting the adult world is.
If one must play ego-games, I still think it would be more polite, and more adult, to play them in the privacy of one’s head. In fact, despite my efforts to be a kind of Buddhist, I do relapse into such ego-games on occasion; but I have enough respect for human intelligence to keep such thoughts to myself. I don’t go around announcing that I have painted the greatest painting of our time; I hope that people will notice that by themselves. Why do the people whose ego-games consist of day-dreaming about being part of the Master Race or the One True Religion not keep that precious secret to themselves, also, and wait for the rest of the human race to notice their blinding superiority?
Robert Anton Wilson
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Many Christians who can’t even get members of their own family to agree with them on trifling matters are currently seeking to evangelize the world and tell everyone “what’s what.”
E.T.B.
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YOUR OWN PERSONAL JESUS
Many evangelical Christians boast that they have a “personal relationship” with Jesus. What makes it so “personal?” Well, they say, we have the words attributed to Jesus in the four Gospels. But there are so few of them, a couple thousand. You could fit all of Jesus’s words into a small 16-page booklet. And they are subject to interpretation.
Well, they say, there are “answered prayers.” But again, that is a matter of interpretation, because no matter what happens, an evangelical Christian interprets it as “Jesus’s will,” even when bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people.
Whenever I have a “personal relationship” with someone it does not consist of a few thousand words spoken two thousand years ago, recorded accurately (or inaccurately) by someone else, and which require interpretation from third parties for me to “truly” understand them (especially when the third parties disagree concerning the meaning and intent of those words).
Neither should a “personal relationship” depend on me having to interpret the results of every prayer uttered. And the range of interpretations covers every conceivable outcome: “strongly positively answered,” “weakly positively answered,” “strongly negatively answered,” “weakly negatively answered,” or even, “try again later when you have more faith.”
E.T.B.
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Question: What’s the difference between a trained psychologist and a born again Christian?
Answer: A trained psychologist can read a person like a book, but a born again Christian reads a book like it’s a person.
E.T.B.
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KNOCK! KNOCK!
Two evangelical Christians at the door: May we come in and share some good news with you?
Me: Don’t you mean, “May we blatantly disregard your privacy for a few minutes in order to further our own personal goals?” Tell me, which denomination do you belong to, and when was it founded? That’s Protestant, isn’t it? I bet the Pope has rings older than your denomination. I bet your denomination numbers a couple million at most. Catholics number far more. In fact, if you added up every member of every Protestant denomination on earth, the Catholics equal or exceed that number. You say that’s a logical fallacy, truth is not determined by sheer numbers? That’s what all small denominations say. Heck, maybe you’re knocking on doors because you’re bored seeing the same faces in church or you fear your heaven won’t have enough folks in it to form a decent choir. I have a hot tip for you, you’ll be happier if you seek out people whom you admire–and things you enjoy–on an individual basis, rather than try to pour yourself and the whole world into a “one size fits all” religious Jello mold.
E.T.B.
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Evangelist = A bearer of good tidings, particularly (in a religious sense) such as assure us of our own salvation and the damnation of our neighbors.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary
8.
jacobschriftman | March 29, 2010 at 6:41 pm
Ed: No doubt Augustine was “whacked” in several respects, not least in the relation to his sexuality. The book “Vita Brevis” by Jostein Gaarder is good reading in this regard and not exactly a favorable take on Augustine’s sexuality as expressed in the Confessions. See this post for more on that.
But that wasn’t really my question. The value judgment of whether (or to what degree) the introspection that Christianity brought into the West was good or bad comes much later. My primary interest here is a historical and psychological one: Has Christianity in fact brought a new kind of introspection to the West, and if so, in what way does this introspection differ from other kinds of introspection prior to the advent of Christianity and in other parts of the world?
Also, I’m not at all concerned here about the historical validity of the Gospels or the truth claims of Christianity. The point is that the Christian faith gave rise to such psychologically rich stories, and my question is “Why?” The “sweating of blood or drops like blood” might well be an addition to the text by a later Christian. That is only relevant in so far as it might underline the gradual nature in which the introspection of Christianity became more complex, but it doesn’t change the fact that it is a very good example of the new psychological state that developed among Christians.
Let’s not become too derogatory too quickly; it clouds our view of the facts.
9.
botox4thebrain | March 29, 2010 at 6:42 pm
Thanks Jokim to put the conversation back in track. I kind of got lost in the way…
10.
botox4thebrain | March 29, 2010 at 6:48 pm
I think that it is recognized that Augustine was the first autobiography in the West.
I wonder if the importance of “individualism” in Christian thought, or in other words, the importance of both the universal and particular (as in trinitarian thought) has anything to do about it.
Moreover, the importance of “calling” or “singling out” individuals in Jewish and Christian thought might have some influence as well.
By giving importance to the individual, the individual is enable to exist apart from the group (in some sense), which gives rise to the idea of the “self”… and then introspection…
11.
jacobschriftman | March 29, 2010 at 6:56 pm
Yes, I completely agree. The importance of the individual must have been a huge stepping stone toward the new introspection, and it can be argued that this is also what gave rise to much of what we value today–and maybe, too, the cause of some of the problems that modernity bestowed on us.
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Edward T. Babinski | March 30, 2010 at 12:05 am
Augustine’s musings on the marvels of memory are probably indebted to Platonist and neo-Platonist philosophical musings before his time.
Indeed he was attracted to philosophy even before religion/Catholicism if I recall.
Augustine’s introspection also involves, in part, combing one’s soul for sins, does it not? “Spitting out the seeds of Augustine’s pear” as Chad Walsh called it in his poem, “Spiritual Aubiography.”
13.
Edward T. Babinski | March 30, 2010 at 12:43 am
TWO QUOTATIONS ON AUGUSTINE AND INTROSPECTION
“Augustine is influenced the NeoPlatonic theorum that introspection coincides with contemplation of the One (or highest principle), that in Plotinus’ words, ‘knowing thyself it (sc. mind) will also know its source,’ and, conversely, that ‘looking towards the Good it will know itself.’”
Augustine’s philosophy of mind By Gerard J. P. O’Daly
Chapt. 1, Augustine the Philosopher, pg. 1.
http://books.google.com/books?id=bp1_-WB2Bx4C&lpg=PA1&dq=introspection%20Augustine%20philosophers&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q=&f=false
“Plotinus paves the way for Augustine, who is simply more radical in never, even in discussing normative ideal states of the soul, identifying truth with human selfhood. Truth is, rather, Christ or God, and the knowledge of it happens through the teacher within, Christi present in the soul. . . . Furthermore, Cary draws attention to a methodologically significant factor, that is, to the way in which Augustine suggests we must move step by step from body and perception to the interior process of perception, and only then to reasoning power. This shows the gradual way in which the mind become acquainted with its true and better nature, ultimately approaching God. In my view, this methodology seems entirely Neoplatonic. For Plotinus, too, turning inwards is a beginning of a long journey towards truth and ultimately the One, and it starts by stripping the soul from the body and then step by step from those of its functions connected to the body and to this world. In a very similar fashion Porphyry put Plotinus’ Enneads in order such that the lengthy books on soul functions such as perception come before the treatises on intellect and the intelligible, and the Enneads as we have them end with treatises on the One. . . . Both in method and content then, the inner vision of Plotinus and Augustine share more features than are obvious at first sight. . . . [footnote] Although there is no proper space here to tackle the question of introspection in Augustine, let it be noted that Suzanne Stern-Gillett (“Consciousness and Introspection in Plotinus and Augustine”) makes a useful distinction between contemplative and confessional introspection. Contemplative introspection has God as its intentional object, and resembles Plotinus’ mystical experiences with unity, while confessional introspectionis an investigation of one’s inner self. In his commentary of Stern-Gillett, Peter John Kenny acknowledges the distinction but points out that the relationship between the two is special:confessional introspection is not simply preparatory for contemplative introspection, since contemplative introspection leads Augustine to confessional practice. One might therefore perhaps conclude that the vision of God has a different place in Plotinus’ and Augustine’s systems: for the former, it is the end of a long preparatory and intellectual road, for the latter something that also guides and motivates one to travel that road.”
Ancient philosophy of the self By Pauliina Remes, Juha Sihvola
http://books.google.com/books?id=mAAIW0A0NqcC&lpg=PA164&dq=introspection%20Augustine%20philosophers&pg=PA165#v=onepage&q=introspection%20Augustine%20philosophers&f=false
See also this work that mentions Augustine, Descartes, and then some nineteenth century psychologists on “introspection.” II would probably that many mystics and contemplatives of different religious traditions have looked inside and asked themselves highly pertinent questions concerning human, and after looking, summarized the wisdom they have gained into statements concerning human beings and their nature. There is a long history of that, in the Pre-Socratics as well as eastern philosophy.
The Taboo of Subjectivity: Towards a New Science of Consciousness By B. Alan Wallace
http://books.google.com/books?id=waJG9fviR-YC&lpg=PA76&dq=introspection%20Augustine%20philosophers&pg=PA76#v=onepage&q=introspection%20Augustine%20philosophers&f=false
AT ANY RATE, I SUSPECT THAT THE RENAISSANCE LED TO INDIVIDUALISM IN WESTERN SOCIETY MORESO THAN AUGUSTINE. THE REDISCOVERY OF THE RICHES OF THE CLASSICAL WORLD IN ART, LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY INDEED SPARKED A GREAT REAWAKENING OF THE INDIVIDUALITY OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT (SOON TO BE SUBMERGED IN CREEDAL WARFARE AND THE REEMERGENCE OF THE BIBLE, EVEN GOING SO FAR AS SOLA SCRIPTURA, THOUGH THE DIVISIONS AMONG CHRISTIANITIES DID HELP SPARK THE RISE OF INDIVIDUALISTIC WAYS OF THINKING IN GENERAL,. AND THE RISE IN LITERACY ALSO HELPED MORE PEOPLE READ INDIVIDUALLY RATHER THAN HAVING THE BIBLE READ TO THEM CORPORATELY IN CHURCHES). LOOK EVEN AT MICHAELANGELO’S “ADAM,” THE SAME SIZE AS GOD, REACHING OUT WITH HIS OWN HAND TO TOUCH GOD’S FINGER.
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Edward T. Babinski | March 30, 2010 at 12:46 am
One of my paragraphs above was edited without correction, I forgot to delete several parts. Here is how it SHOULD have read:
Many mystics and contemplatives of different religious traditions have looked inside and asked themselves questions and after looking, summarized the wisdom they have gained into statements concerning human beings and their nature in general. There is a long history of that in the Pre-Socratics as well as eastern philosophy, and in later Christian mystics.
15.
jacobschriftman | March 30, 2010 at 1:22 am
Thank you, Ed, for your further (and more constructive) comments.
Yes, the passage I cited on memory is definitely indebted to Neo-Platonism and served the purpose of showing what I meant by introspection; it’s not the best passage to demonstrate the uniqueness of the Confessions.
The uniqueness, I think, comes from the psychological complexities of the Christian faith. The idea of sin as understood by Augustine is certainly an important part of it, but I wouldn’t reduce it to that. Though “combing of the soul for sins” is quite a fitting phrase to describe Christian introspection as opposed to Pagan, Eastern and purely philosophical introspection.
About the “many mystics and contemplatives” and Pre-Socratics you mention: Did anyone of them actually write an autobiography that would be comparable to Augustine’s and precedes his? Can you name any specific books? I’d love to know about them, because I’m not aware of any. And I’m not talking about works like Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, which is certainly very reflective, but does not constitute an autobiography. Putting it differently: Is there in actuality an ancient autobiography like Gore Vidal’s fictional Julian?
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Edward T. Babinski | March 30, 2010 at 2:37 am
You asked about ancient biographies. . . There is a marvelous general summary of autobiographies in antiguity that I found and edited below, and it includes a line about Augustine’s powers of introspection, and also a line about discovering religion in one’s soul or “nothing.” I didn’t write those lines. Introspection of even atheistic writers can be quite interesting and contain insights into the mind and human nature. Also, introspection of a religious sort has a chance of being delusional. Sometimes introspection also reveals a “dark night of the soul” instead of divine certainties. Look at the works of St. John of the Cross, or even Mother Teresa’s decades of private corespondence that was made public in which she admits feeling nothing, no beautific vision intellectually or emotionally. You can also see that the west had been developing the art of autobiography prior to the first century, and some extensive works have been lost. But a great many works survive from the fourth to fifth centuries, including Augustine’s.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN ANTIIQUITY (from a book review)
The first autobiography on record is the Apology of Socrates (V B.C.), dating of 399. According to Misch, the first is the Antidosis of Isocrates, written c. 353. Then follow Demosthenes’ oration On the crown (330); the political apology written by Aratos of Sicyon C. 215 (this was a very large work, but it is lost); diverse writings of Cicero (I-i B.C.) dated 63-6o, not to mention his enormous correspondence, full of personal data; and finally the reminiscences of Nicholaos Damascenos (I-2 B.C.), the friend of Herod the Great. That is all for the pre-Christian period.
The two outstanding autobiographical documents of the First Half of the First Century are the elegy ending Ovid’s Tristia (A.D. io), the earliest autobiography of a poet, and Augustus’ will (A.D. I3) [in the form of a royal inscription preserved in the Monumentum ancyranum, upon which [the emperor Augustus] had long meditated and which he finally wrote out in his 76th year, in I3 A.D. As compared with the lying braggadoccio of Oriental kings it is a very honest and modest statement. ]
For the. Second Half of the First Century we have various writings of Seneca (I-2) and Flavius Joseph (I-2) and the abundant letters of Pliny the Younger (6i-ef.i14). In the First Half of the Second Century, the political autobiography of Emperor Hadrian (lost) and the Discourses of Epictetos (II-i).
We now approach one of the two great periods of ancient autobiography, II(2), the other being IV(2). Think of this extraordinary galaxy, Galen (II-2), who wrote the first autobibliography, and was the earliest man of science to leave reminiscences, Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations (II-2), Justin Martyr (II-2), Apuleius (II-2), Lucian of Samosata and Ailios Aristides (I28-89). We may expect our readers to be familiar with all these men, but the last named. This Ailios was a singular type and his Sacred Discourses is the strangest autobiographical work in Greek literature. He was a famous sophist, educated in Pergamon and Athens, who lectured in Egypt, Asia Minor, even in Rome and was extremely interested in his own mental states day and night. He had kept a record of his dreams extending to some 30,000 lines but had lost it. In his Sacred Discourses, written late in life, from i 70 on, he described his illnesses, his nervous disorders and the help which the Gods gave him in his dreams. Maurice Croiset was not very tender for him and concluded, “Ses Discours sacres sont bien, quant au fond des choses, l’une des plus sottes et des plus impertinentes compositions qu’on puisse lire,” ‘ yet he had to admit that the book contained many data of great interest. The main point for us is that Ailios gave full importance to dreams in self-analysis, and he influenced later writers such as Libanios and Synesios. To these men of the second century may be added a woman, Perpetua, who was thrown to the wild beasts in the circus of Carthage (202) to celebrate the birthday of Septimius Severus (emp. I93-2II). The Passion of S. Perpetua preserved in the Acts of the Martyrs is partly based upon her own records, which were probably in the Phoenician language.
After that magnificent flowering, there is relative quietness for a century and a half. We may refer briefly to St Cyprian of Carthage (C. 200-58), because of the reminiscences at the beginning of his book on the Grace of God which he dedicated to his friend Donat soon after his own conversion to Christianity (Ad Donatum).
The greatest personality of the third century from our point of view is that of the Egyptian Plotinos (III-2), the master of Neo-platonic self-communion; he it was who introduced the term “ego” in philosophy. This Plotinian concept was superseded by the Christian conception of the individual soul but was reintroduced by Schlegel and Goethe (gepragte Form).
One may mention also, though with some diffidence, Cyprian of Antioch, the ancient “Faust,” whose legend appeared in Christian literature about the middle of the fourth century.
And now we approach the series of autobiographical records of (IV-2), of which St Augustine’s Confessions (c. 400) is the astounding climax. [Largely because of the popularity of St Augustine's great work, the title Confessio was used very frequently. The literature of "confessiones" is enormous, and its study is made difficult because of the fundamental ambiguities of that word. There is a confessio errati sive peccati, and also a confessio laudis,--a confession of sin and a confession of faith in the remission of sins. Confessio may also mean witness, e.g., confessio de somno piscium (Pliny), a testimony favoring the idea that fishes sleep. Students of early English will remember the Confessio amantis of John Gower (XIV-2); it is not necessary to give other examples, almost every European literature is full of them. In Arabic the confession of sin would be called i'tirif and the confession of faith, iqrar.]
These records are so numerous that we shall divide them in three linguistic groups, Syriac, Greek, and Latin. The Syriac group is represented by St Ephraim of Edessa, author of a Confession or Self-accusation; the Greek, by Libanios who pronounced in 374 in his native city Antioch an oration concerning his own life and left us an immense correspondence; by St Gregory of Nazianzos, whose prose and verse contain a wealth of autobiographical effusions, and at the turn of the century by Synesios of Cyrene (V-i), who reiterated the great value of dreams for self-knowledge and self-portrayal. Among the Latin writers we find two Spaniards, Acilius Severus (d. 370) who wrote a history of his life (The wayfarer’s temptation), partly in prose and partly in verse (lost), and Priscillian of Avila who was accused of being a Mithraist and a Manichaean, composed an apology and was beheaded at Treves in 385, and then the three giants, St Ambrose of Milan (IV-2), St Jerome of Bethlehem (IV-2) and St Augustine of Hippo (V-i).
It is hardly necessary to underline the importance of St Augustine’s Confessions in the world literature, but his autobiography is not restricted to that work. He was always ready to express his feelings, and not to mention his correspondence, three works of his are autobiographical, the Soliloquies (387), the Confessions (394-400), and the Retractations (427). Never had introspection been carried more deeply; St Augustine discovered the infinity within his own soul, the “eternal in the depths of the internal” (internum aeternum). He is the ancestor of all the spiritual autobiographers, even as Marcus Aurelius is the ancestor of all the spiritual diarists. In both cases, one might say that religious self-consciousness was the creative power, and so it will always be. When we go deep enough into ourselves, we find religion, or nothing. St Augustine’s life extended to 430 and is fairly well divided between the fourth and fifth centuries, the essential was done before 40I, yet the City of God was written only in 4I3-28
Among his younger contemporaries was the Roman aristocrat Rutilius Claudius Namatianus, who was prefect of Rome in 414, travelled in Gaul two years later and wrote a long diary in Latin verse.3 The achievements of St Augustine were so high that those which follow are an anticlimax. There are the Eucharisticos ‘ written in old age about the middle of the fifth century by Paulinos of Pella, the Apology of Nestorios’ condemned for heresy by the Council of Ephesos (43) and banished to the Lybian desert, the Confessio of St Patrick (c. 460), the Confessio of Magnus Felix Ennodius, bishop of Pavia (d. 52I), and finally the Consolatio philosophiae of Boetius (VI-i). This is the last document considered in this work and the author does not discuss it as it deserves to be, for it is the most mysterious of all. Boetius, a Christian theologian wrote it in 524, in prison, in the shadow of death, and yet there is not a word in it to suggest that Boetius was a Christian, not a pagan, “the last Roman philosopher.” It is equally strange that this non-Christian book was one of the most popular books of the Christian Middle Ages.
GEORGE SARTON, reviewing GEORGE MISCH: A history of autobiography in Antiquity. VOl. I, xii+352 pp. Vol. II, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. MISCH was working on another volume in his history of autobiography.
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jacobschriftman | March 30, 2010 at 2:55 am
Thanks for the info, Ed. Several of the works that are mentioned there I’ve actually read or am at least aware of, but I wouldn’t have put them in league with the Confessions.
I’m particularly surprised by the inclusion of the Discourses that Epictetus’ pupil Arrian wrote (supposedly) based on his teacher’s lecture notes. Have you read them? If the Discourses are counted as autobiography, then most of the prose literature of antiquity is autobiography. This is an unhelpful stretch of the definition of the genre.
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Edward T. Babinski | March 30, 2010 at 2:56 am
Here’s a confession of Augustine. He taught that unbaptized infants were damned. He said that an unbaptized infant was a “limb of Satan”:
Infants, When Unbaptized, are in the Power of the Devil… The Christian faith unfalteringly declares that they who are cleansed in the laver of regeneration (i.e., the baptismal font) are redeemed from the power of the devil, and that those who have not yet been redeemed by such regeneration are still captive in the power of the devil, even if they be infant children of the redeemed … From the power of the devil … infants are delivered when they are baptized; and whosoever denies this, is convicted by the truth of the Church’s very sacraments, which no heretical novelty in the Church of Christ is permitted to destroy or change, so long as the Divine Head rules and helps the entire body which He owns–small as well as great. It is true, then, and in no way false, that the devil’s power is exorcised in infants, and that they renounce him by the hearts and mouths of those who bring them to baptism, being unable to do so by their own; in order that they may be delivered from the power of darkness, and be translated into the kingdom of their Lord.
- Saint Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence, Book 1, Chapter 22
19.
Edward T. Babinski | March 30, 2010 at 3:13 am
Yes, I’ve read Epictetus and Aurelius.
Not much of Epictetus remains.
Augustine’s book was insightful and popular, a bestseller in antiquity. But so was Jonathan Edwards’ sermon in its day, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” which went through numerous reprintings. Augustine thought he had found “God” literally inside Him, the Christian God. This God even spoke to him. “Take and read.” Unfortunately not everyone finds the same God even after years of prayer and introspection. Some people have more questions. Augustine apparently thought he had found the answers via Neo-Platonism coupled with orthodox creedal Christianity. C. S. Lewis was also a neoPlatonist of sorts and a Christian.
Trouble is there’s plenty of excellent autobiographies and excellent summations of practical moral wisdom, and plenty of amazing story tellers in the history of literature. And they are not all Christians. Neither is scientific investigation into the cosmos and into the depths of the human mind being carried out by nothing but Christians today. People of all faiths or none are writers and scientists. And they each write and investigate quite well.
And each religion adapts as civilization undergoes sea changes over time. There’s a Christianity Today magazine, but did you know there’s also a magazine in English for the modern Buddhist, titled, Tricycle, that is like Christianity Today, but for Buddhists? Did you know that there are Buddhist bookstores in Japan like we have Chrisitan bookstores here in the U.S.? English speaking Hindus also have their own magazine titled, Hinduism Today, and in Indian court rooms they swear with their hand on the Gita rather than the Bible.
Christianity is continuing to adapt, just see the BIOLOGOS website where Christian evolutionists, including Christian Darwinists, are arguing against both creationism and I.D. Fascinating to watch BIOLOGOS develop. They have some heavy hitters in Evangelical OT studies and scientists as well, experts in the evidence for evolution and common ancestry based on studying the human genomes. There never was a site like BIOLOGS before last year. Now Christian evolutionists are putting in effort on the web. It should prove interesting.
20.
Edward T. Babinski | March 30, 2010 at 3:26 am
By the way I find the topic of comparative humor in world religions more fascinating than the topic of comparative autobiographies.
Check out the works of Conrad Hyers sometimes. He’s written about six books on humor in world religions, and humor in spirituality, mostly focusing on Buddhist and Christian cases, though he delves into stories from a wide range of different religions and ancient tribal and mythological tales (he’s a moderate Presbyterian, very moderate and inclusivistic in his overall views but definitely a Christian and theist). He has even compared the born again experience in Evangelicaldom with the epxeriences and descriptions of an interesting sect of Buddhism that believes in envisioning hell to move toward grace.
Alan Watts is a Britisher whom you might enjoy reading, especially his early books written while an Anglican minister, like BEHOLD THE SPIRIT.
Another Anglican worth reading is Robert Farrar Capon, HUNTING THE DIVINE FOX, who admits his love of Chesterton and Lewis.
Yet another is Logan Pearsall Smith and his classic, ALL TRIVIA.
I recommend Conrad Hyers, Alan Watts, Robert Farrar Capon, and Logan Pearsall Smith highly! Some of their works are probably accessible free online via google books or amazon.com. I love the luscious thick prose of Smith’s ALL TRIVIA best of all.
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jacobschriftman | March 30, 2010 at 12:17 pm
Ed, I have no quarrel with what you say about their being great autobiographies and wisdom books from various religious and secular traditions, not to mention other types of media. I’ve been to every continent of the world, have lived in the Middle East and Africa, spent several months in Eastern Asia etc., which has made me very multi-cultural and multi-religious in my perception of the world.
I also have no quarrel with your criticisms of Augustine. In fact, my youngest daughter is called “Floria Amelia”, inspired by Augustine’s long-time girlfriend whom he so infamously ditched.
But none of that changes the fact that from a purely historical, literary, and psychological perspective, the Confessions are generally considered a very important pioneering work. And I was trying to analyze whether his Christian faith was coincidental or imperative in making him such a pioneer in the field of introspective autobiography.
What made me think of it was actually reading Nietzsche and his take on the more simple, straight-forward psychology of the ancient Pagans versus the more “interesting,” complex (not necessarily better; this is Nietzsche writing!) psychology of Christians.
Lastly, speaking of humor in religion: Did you see that the latest Simpsons episode is about Homer having the “Jerusalem syndrome” on a trip to the Holy Land, believing that he is the “chosen one”?
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Edward T. Babinski | March 30, 2010 at 2:53 pm
I understand your focus, but how are you going to separate a person’s religious beliefs from parallel “coincidental” effects, including his wide knowledge and love of philosophy and his unique individual gifts in expressing himself, in the craft of writing itself?
We both agree that “Christian” writing runs the gamet from complex to inane and even insane, and I suspect that what you find most interesting and complex in Augustine might just be his neioPlatonistic musings, such as those on “memory,” along with his individual ability to express himself well with words. Others wrote philosophy and recorded how they felt inside.
But I will say that attempting to combine Greek philosophy with ancient Near Eastern views of oh so emotional and volatile deities has GOT to be a challenge, It involves inventing excuses, fallacious explanations, and warring with yourself in your own mind, the rational and feeling parts.
Pre-Christian philosophers as well as deists centuries after Augustine gave up on the enterprise, elaborating on its fruitlessness and all the human imagination involved in the process of harmonizing Greek and Hebrew thinking on the highest Power, and how the general “God” of Greek philosophy could be stuffed into the box of special revelation of both Old and New Testaments, acting like a child one moment, and a genocidal maniac the next, love and hate and jealousy, even fear in the way Yahweh shuffles the first couple out of the garden “before they eat of the tree of eternal life and become like us.”
The Emperor Julian himself noted such incongruities in his work, “On the Nazarenes” that I’ve read. Unfortunately we only have it in edited format, whatever was reproduced when Christians were responding to his work. That’s true of Porphyry’s works as well, though he’d composed volumes critiquing the Bible and Christian theology, and religious psychology as well judging by Julian’s, Porphyr’s and Celsus’ writing. Thanks to subsequent Christian emperor and their book- burning laws we do not possess the work of Christianity’s earliest critics except in the form of limited excerpts that Christian apologists reproduced so as to refute and revile anyone daring to criticize the one true faith, all such critics being viewed as on the side of demons and damned.
It’s also true that Augustine’s autbiographical writings stand out among even his Christian contemporaries. But how much of that is because he was a devoted reader and writer and learned from those before him? As i said it was considered a marvel that he read without moving his lips, and he loved to study, it became his new joy, the new addiction for him, after sex. Though who knows if he wasn’t enthralled to learning even while being enthralled to sex? The church gave Augustine government funds to live off of, gave him a career and people to listen to whatever he had to preach or write. He heard Ambrose preach and said, “nice job,” wish I had it, people attending my every word. Paid to say things people had to sit and listen to. And Augustine went for it, and got the same job, and did it even better.
As for the REST of Augustine’s writings, his nonautobiographical writings, there are many more of those, dogma-wrangling as is most of the rubbish written about “systematic” Christian theology even to this day. Sheesh,. Augustine could prove from Scirpture that there probably were no human being living on the other side of the earth, that unbaptized babies were damned eternally, that the Donatists needed to be coerced using force. “Compel them to come into the one true church,” and that it woudl be best if everyon gave up on sex entirely to hasten the coming of the kingdom of God.
Did Christianity perhaps WASTE some of the greatest minds of the ancient world, including Augustine’s, attracting them with paid clergy jobs, so they could preach and people would have to sit still and listen, quite an egotistical job in and of itself, but one can see the attraction of being the guy in the know up on stage, the one interpreting the “holy book” for the laity; and as a preacher you get to. harmonize and allegorize away all difficulties and play with Greek philosophical notion of The One as well, interacing it with special revelation about a Hebrew god who loved the smell of burnt goat flesh and tormenting people by asking them to kill their children for him (as if anyone could possibly conceive that killing their own child was something a true God ever wanted).
In short, what might a mind like Augustine’s have come up with, what might it have pursued as “most interesting” if that mind had had access to all the literature, biography, psychology, wordly wisdom, philosophical, scientific and religious ideas that exist today? He’d probably have sought to become a college professor, lecturer and writer and acheive tenure and try to write a bestseller that moved people. He’d probably have envied C. S. Lewis’ job in other words instead of Ambrose’s. On the other hand, who’s to say such that the intellectually hungry mind of the young Augustine would have chosen to specialize in a particular revealled religion at all given the wide range of knowledge today at people’s fingertips?
Can anyone answer such questions? Would Newton be a creationist today, knowing what today’s scientists know?
Would Darwin have gone into the ministry instead of becoming an explorer if someone with his exact same genes had been born a couple centuries earlier?
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jacobschriftman | April 3, 2010 at 5:15 am
Sorry for not replying to your last comment, Ed. I’m a bit behind on my work and need to resist using work time for intriguing exchanges on the internet. I’m my own boss and need to watch myself.
As always, you make very valid points, though I never doubted that the non-Christian and non-orthodox influences on Augustine were absolutely essential in making him the person he was. I was not suggesting that those were coincidental, but that his Christian faith might have also been an important player in the development of his introspection.
My goal was not so much to separate out the religious beliefs from other influences, but to see the unique effects that the combination of various influences has. And I don’t think there are many historians who doubt that it was the combination of (the) Judeo-Christian worldview(s) with the Greek achievements – in other words, the marriage of Jerusalem and Athens – that has produced what we now call the West. For better and worse. And Augustine was an essential step in that development.