Austin Hall Library

Confessions

The Confessions, by St. Augustine (pronounced "Ah-GUS-tin"), describes his conversion to Christianity in AD 386, is his best known work, and is one of the great classics of Western literature. Begun in AD 396, a full ten years after his conversion, the Confessions defies any neat classification. It remains highly popular today with people of devout religious faith, historians, biographers, and classicists. It deserves careful study by thoughtful people everywhere, whether motivated by religion or otherwise.

My favorite English translation is the Penguin Classic paperback by R.S. Pine-Coffin (yes, that's his real name). It is a highly readable translation and has been my personal favorite for many years, even though I own many other translations. The popular, and very fine, Oxford World Classic translation by Henry Chadwick is also a very good choice. For text and outstanding commentary, try the three-volume series by James J. O'Donnell, although it is likely only to be available these days on the secondary market. Fortunately, there is an electronic version of O'Donnell's masterful work with Latin text and commentary (some in English) here.

Confessions is arranged in thirteen books (roughly equivalent to modern chapters), and is written as a sort of prayer or conversation, with God as the unseen and unheard interlocutor. Books 1-9 are highly biographical and provide a version of St. Augustine's life leading up to, and immediately following his dramatic conversion in Milan in 386.

As O'Donnell notes, Book 10 reflects on "the continuing search for God and the continuing failure of that search to achieve perfect fruition"--what St. Augustine calls continentia, which is primarily understood as single-minded and single-hearted devotion to God.

Books 11-13 are dedicated to the beginnings of a commentary on the biblical book of Genesis, chapter one. But, Augustine gets no farther in Book 11 than 'In the beginning' before he becomes preoccupied with the nature of time. Books 12-13 cover the six days of creation as they are recorded in Genesis.

There has been a great deal of scholarly theorizing as to the unity of the Confessions. What could be the connection between the early biographical books and the latter books? The view that seems to make the most sense to me is unity in the nature of conversion. St. Augustine's dramatic personal conversion, and creation understood (as Augustine often understands it) as transformation towards God, display a certain unity. What happened to St. Augustine in his conversion is simply a miniature of what is happening in divine creation and world history--God at work conforming all things to Himself. As St. Augustine says so eloquently,

You are great, O Lord, and greatly to be praised: great is your power and to your wisdom there is no limit. And man, who is a part of your creation, wishes to praise you, man who bears about within himself his mortality, who bears within himself testimony to his sin and testimony that you resist the proud. Yet man, this part of your creation, wishes to praise you. You arouse him to take joy in praising you for you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.

Come Be My Light

Alice Thomas Ellis said: "Highly coloured sentimentality is a more comforting response to death than acceptance of the stark facts and it was easier to mourn the demise of the Princess of Wales than contemplate the life of Mother Teresa, which might have caused us to examine our consciences."

If, however, one is in the mood to examine one's conscience, I recommend Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, which consists primarily of correspondence between Mother Teresa and her confessors over a sixty-six year period. The correspondence was preserved against her wishes and chronicles her candid "dark night of the soul"--her lengthy and agonizing doubts about God's presence and favor. It may not be comforting, but it is a stark fact that great saints, like some of us, have struggled with their faith. Curiously, however, we mourn the death of the Princess of Wales because she is seen as "one of us," and we recoil from contemplating the life of Mother Teresa because she is beyond our comprehension, or perhaps, her life in the midst of poverty, suffering, and doubts, causes us to examine our own consciences. Here is the way Mother Teresa closed one of her letters to a priest who served as her confessor: "I pray for you that you let Jesus use you without consulting you. Do the same for me." 

Are We in an Apocalyptic Age?

Christopher Dawson, in The Movement of World Revolution, said:

"There are moments when the obscurity of history seems to be suddenly illuminated by some sign of divine purpose. These are the moments of crisis in the literal sense of the word--times of judgement when the powers of this world are tried and condemned and when the  course of history suddenly flows into a new channel. Such was the age of the Hebrew prophets, such was the age of St. Augustine, and such is the age in which we have the privilege and the misfortune to live today. For the present century has been an apocalyptic age--a time of judgement in which the established powers and authorities of the world have been put through the fire and destroyed or renewed, and when civilizations that have endured for thousands of years are being forced into a new mold."

 

 

 

Berry for What Ails You.

I have previously mentioned on this blog my appreciation for the writings of Wendell Berry. The more time I spend on a tractor moving dirt, the more I think of distributivism and Berry's writing. For an interesting introduction to his thought, I recommend Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community: Eight Essays. The paragraph below explaining the book is taken from Kirkus Reviews:

"Eight exhortatory essays (some of which appeared previously in the Atlantic Monthly, The Progressive, and elsewhere) by the Kentuckian fiction writer (Fidelity, 1992, etc.) and moral critic (What are People For?, 1990, etc.). Berry once again carves out a unique position in American social debate: not liberal (he hates big government), not conservative (he hates big corporations), not libertarian (he would balance individual rights with those of the commonweal), but always sharp-tongued and aglow with common sense. His pessimism seems to grow with each volume, as he sees the nation in a tailspin toward moral and economic chaos. His targets proliferate: the military and its Gulf War (he calls for a national peace academy); profiteering industrialists who ravage economies around the world; addiction to drugs, war, TV, and junk products; public schooling, which instills mediocrity in place of moral values; media exploitation of sexuality, which robs it of sacred meaning; "tolerant and multicultural people'' who defend special interest groups but defame "people who haven't been to college, manual workers, country people, peasants, religious people, unmodern people, old people''--in other words, Berry's friends, neighbors, and comrades. If the diagnosis is bitter, so is the cure: "economic secession.'' For Berry, small communities based on the household are our only hope. He calls upon these localities to seize control of their economic and social lives, supporting home-grown agriculture, manufacturing, and education, and establishing moral codes that reflect eternal truths. Power-to-the-people, 90's-style. A powerful emetic, worth a swallow."

 

A Beginning Guide to Gothic

Approaching my first Gothic cathedral took my breath away. I had never approached a structure that evoked such an unexpected and moving emotional response. A reference to a good meditation on the architecture and mystical space of a Gothic cathedral can be found here. 

Even if you cannot arrange a visit right away, you can acquire Bernhard Schultz's Great Cathedrals. It is a coffee table book that covers the great  European cathedrals of just about every style, but the Gothic cathedral is the central focus. Given me by a friend, it has become one of my most treasured books. There is an architectural history of each  cathedral and the interior and exterior pictures are phenomenal. An online sketch of the description of a Gothic cathedral I have found beneficial may be found here. Scroll down the page and you will even find a short and helpful vocabulary list. If you can afford only one other coffee table type book (they are expensive), then add Great Monasteries of Europe. You will find there stunning pictures of a number of cloisters in the great monasteries. The picture on the right side of this paragraph is of the cloisters at Gloucester Cathedral in England, where I visited in 2006.

For a comprehensive treatment of the context and history of Gothic cathedrals, I always recommend Otto Georg Von Simson's The Gothic Cathedral. It covers everything from the aesthetic principles of Gothic architecture to the social and political history out of which it emerged. It is a great book and it can be purchased easily in paperback.

There is a great deal of excellent literature available on the design and construction of Gothic cathedrals. Excellent introductory books include The Cathedral Builders of the Middle Ages and Building the Great Cathedrals. The latter might take a little effort to find, but it is considered by many to be the book on the subject, and it will be more than worth the effort to find it.

The upcoming summer would be a great time to conduct a delightful introductory study of Gothic architecture. Then one would be prepared to plan an introductory visit to some key sites.

The Importance of Subtlety

The older I get the more I appreciate the skill and ingenuity it takes to express an opinion or principle with subtlety--that is, the quality of expressing one's meaning with diplomacy, fine distinction and finesse, and without tactlessness or coarseness.

I thought of this recently when I was reminded of C.S. Lewis's contention in God in the Dock: "What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects--with their Christianity latent."

Lewis makes a good point. What is needed are more subjects analyzed and developed through the lenses of a classic Christian worldview, not more books about this or that Christian doctrine.

On another entirely unrelated note, C.S. Lewis thought that there may be books in heaven. He would, of course, know by now, but we remain somewhat in the dark on that question. In God in the Dock Lewis pondered this question in typical fashion and concluded that our personal library in heaven would contain only the books we gave away or lent on earth. He contemplated the idea that just as the wounds of the martyrs turned into marks of beauty, in heaven so will have the borrower's thumb marks turned into beautiful illuminated capitals or exquisite marginal woodcuts. His view was that only what we give up can become truly ours. He said, in fact, in Mere Christianity, "Aim at heaven and you will get earth 'thrown in': aim at earth and you will get neither."

I may have missed Lewis's point in all this, but I have for some time been in the process of expanding my library just in case, in the hope that the old adage "you can't take it with you" might be wrong in the one instance.

Join a Book Club

One of the best ways to increase one's appreciation for books and motivation to read is to join a book club, or, to start one's own book club. They range from very small to large, from one genre to many, and from very informal to quite formal. Yesterday, my wife was inducted into the quite formal history book club in our community--white tablecloths and napkins, attendance roll, and all. This particular book club celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2009 and is inviting Barbara Bush to join them and speak to commemorate its anniversary.

You can find a virtually comprehensive online guide to starting and running a book club here. Another helpful resource may be found here. For an interesting approach to a book club, take a look at this article. You can meet in a private home, public hall, or a small intimate coffeehouse, but don't forget that the objective is the intellectual stimulation and growth that results from reading and dialogue.

Who Speaks for the Embryo?

Modern biotechnology (the application of the principles of engineering and technology to the life sciences), with its scientific tunnel vision and its concern for improving human health and increasing life spans, now appears to be at the mercy of the "technological imperative." The principle of the technological imperative means that because a particular technology allows us to do something (i.e., it is technically possible), then we ought, must, or inevitably will do it.

Thus, for the first time in the history of the world, modern biotechnology bereft of moral constraints has progressed from sex without babies to babies without sex, the destruction of human embryos to advance research, human cloning, fetal farming to obtain whole organs or other complex tissues, egg farming in young women for embryo cloning, and even the creation of animal-human hybrid embryos. Because it can be done, it is being done.

Even Nietzsche, in whom, Camus said, "nihilism became conscious for the first time," seemed to realize the effect in the modern mind when it became conscious of its abandonment of the moral, metaphysical world:

"What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us?

Heidegger was likely right when, at the end of his life, he declared, "only a god can save us."

But, fortunately for now, we still have clear-thinking men whom God can use to challenge the technological imperative and, particularly, to speak for the often forgotten embryo. Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen are two such men and their excellent new book, Embryo: A Defense of Human Life, makes a compelling scientific and philosophical case that every tiny embryo is an individual human being deserving of respect and protection at its earliest stage of development.

George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton and a member of the President's Council on Bioethics, and Tollefsen, a philosophy professor at the University of South Carolina, have produced an outstanding work that deserves careful attention from anyone serious about bioethics and concerned about science's capitulation to the technological imperative.

By the way, the photo in the upper left-hand corner of this post was published in Time magazine in 2007. The embryo is approximately one week old--about the same age as that of countless embryos from whom stem cells are intentionally harvested virtually every day, thus killing the tiny embryo.

The Forgotten Virtues of Community

Having traveled to downtown Chicago recently, I recall a reading recommendation of a friend mentioned some time back in a blog post comment. He recommended Alan Ehrenhalt's The Lost City: Discovering the Forgotten Virtues of Community in the Chicago of the 1950s.

I have the book and it is a provocative look at three Chicago neighborhoods at a time generally considered the "golden age of community": the 1950s. With keen analysis, Ehrenhalt reveals the glue that held each community together: the limitations of life and accepted authority figures. Beneath the author's analysis, it is not difficult to see that the breakdown of authority in society is a source of cultural decline, and even personal happiness.

This book does not romanticize or whitewash city life in the 1950s, but it does challenge some of the commonly held assumptions about the unmitigated value of progress. And it brings to light a theme increasingly suspected in society today: the rise of unlimited personal freedom and breathtaking cultural progress is not a friend of community.

Importance of the Right Mentors

“And so I came to Milan to Ambrose the bishop.” These are the poignant words of St. Augustine, simply recording in the late fourth century his arrival to study under the man who would become his mentor. Initially charmed by his rhetorical skills, Augustine eventually realized Ambrose’s preaching the “sound doctrine of salvation,” was “drawing him closer.” (CONFESSIONS, 5.13.23).  Simplicianus, a devout cleric, was Ambrose’s mentor, and his eventual successor in Milan.

In A.D. 397, Augustine wrote a very important watershed work entitled, TO SIMPLICIANUS: ON DIVERSE QUESTIONS, in which he completely upends much of his previous work on sin, free will, grace, and other critical issues. This work came as a result of the effect of St. Paul’s writings on Augustine and a serious and lengthy study on the fallenness of man. From A.D. 396 onward, St. Augustine’s doctrine of the fall of man is central and determinative of virtually everything he wrote. Whether he was right or wrong, failure to understand the development of Augustine’s thought, his mentors, and these watershed events is failure to understand Augustine.

How critical it is to have the right spiritual and intellectual mentors. For good or bad, our lives have a way of becoming intertwined with our mentors. We first choose them, and later they mold us—imperceptibly at first, but powerfully in the end.