During his long stay in Milan, Augustine entered that phase in life when, in ancient Rome, men focused on their careers and other pursuits before starting a family. In Book VI, Augustine laments: “here I was in my thirtieth year sticking fast in the same muddy bog.” Books VII-IX recount the three years that followed. He was thirty-two years of age when he was baptised by Bishop Ambrose in Milan during the Easter vigil of 387 AD (he would later turn thirty-three years old on November 13 of the same year).
Despite his enhanced experience and maturity at the beginning of his third decade, in Book VII he is still struggling to ‘see’ God. Our vision is widely considered the most important human sense, and now, surrounded by screens, we seem to rely on it more than ever. As Augustine shows us in this book, however, vision proves a significant obstacle for him and for his attempt to know God: “By now my misspent, impious adolescence was dead, and I was entering the period of youth, but as I advanced in age I sank ignobly into foolishness, for I was unable to grasp the idea of substance except as something we can see with our bodily eyes.”
Imago Dei
Among the many ideas Augustine ponders here in Book VII, he wonders what it means for humans to be made in the image of God, what it means for a person to be imago Dei (Genesis 1:27). He has stopped confining God to the image of a human body, but he cannot go beyond imagining the divine as corporeal: “because anything to which I must deny these spatial dimensions seemed to me to be nothing at all, absolutely nothing, not even a void such as might be left if everybody […] were removed from it.” As he observes, even “nothingness” has a space and image in his mind.
In Book VII, he also confronts the problem of evil, imagining that it too possesses a form and substance, such as the devil. He considers the important question of how a good God could possibly create something evil or that turns to evil. He returns to asking many questions as he did in the beginning of Confessions: “Who made me? Was it not my God, who is not merely good, but Goodness itself? Whence, then, did I derive this ability to will evil and refuse good?”
By your [God’s] secret inspiration you make each inquirer hear what befits him, as your unfathomable judgment shall justly assess our souls’ secret deserving”
Indeed, Augustine also returns to astrology, confirming a conclusion that he had already reached in Book IV where he dismissed it because it relies too much on luck and not enough on expertise. To prove his point, he provides two more examples: 1) social status can suggest more about a person’s future success in life than a birth horoscope; and 2) twins – who share the same birth horoscope – often end up living very different lives. Astrologers, he concludes, “could speak the truth only by chance, then, not by skill.” He realises that it is God – and not the stars – who is always at work in the world and on each of us: “By your [God’s] secret inspiration you make each inquirer hear what befits him, as your unfathomable judgment shall justly assess our souls’ secret deserving.”
He reads books written by the Platonist philosophers, but in the end, they come up short like everything else. They, he says, have boosted themselves up with their lofty doctrine and are “too high to hear him [God] calling.” Platonism offered intellectual ascent but needed Christ for true application. He concludes that the Greeks and Egyptians alike correctly identified God’s divine nature but ultimately failed by continuing to worship man-made idols and worldly creatures instead of the Creator.
Stasis
Some scholars have referred to this period in Augustine’s life as a kind of “stasis,” however it seems to me that Augustine is gradually orienting himself toward Christian belief in these books. For instance, he does make some significant discoveries and draws important conclusions about astrology. And, regarding the question of evil, he arrives at the important realisation that evil is not a thing but absence of the good.
Overall, Augustine in this chapter strikes me as someone lost in his mind. Where are other people? His mother? His son Adeodatus? The teachings of life experience? They are conspicuously absent in Book VII. Here Augustine seems too deeply immersed in his books and circuitous thoughts, and cut off from the world and human experience, when, in truth, the two – intellect and experience in the “real world” – must go hand-in-hand.
For example, during my years at university, I had the privilege of working with a sight-impaired doctoral student who was writing her dissertation on Italian Baroque music. Despite being born without eyes, she had used her intelligence and skills as both scholar and singer to pursue a doctoral degree (which she would receive and then go on to teach at university herself).
One of the things I most appreciated about her knowledge of the world – a knowledge gained not through the dominant sense of sight like most of us but through her other senses – was her knowledge of myself, because she never judged me based on my appearance (which she struggled to understand) but only on what I said and what I did. When we weren’t together, I found myself trying to imagine the world without sight. We tend to look down on people with impairments such as hers, when there is a silver lining few seem to be aware of. Because I realised at a certain point the enormous challenges of navigating the world without eyes, but also that humans are much more than our clothes, skin, and bodies. Eventually, I would regard this lesson as one of the most important things I learned at university.
Thus, in Book VII, Augustine acknowledges his well-developing love for knowledge and wisdom but also his own spiritual blindness. This is a frequent theme in the gospels, but it’s interesting that Augustine never mentions these moments in Book VII. For example, Jesus often restores the sight of those who are blind because of their well-developed faith. In Matthew 13:13-15, Jesus explains spiritual blindness as an inability to grasp divine truths, even when they are presented clearly, because some people “have eyes but do not see, ears but do not hear.” In short, in Book VII, Augustine is mired in material things, and images, and ideas, unable to escape himself and, most significantly, his mind.
Humility
Ultimately, Augustine’s intellectual journey in Book VII culminates in the recognition that true conversion requires humility and God’s grace, not just human intellect: “So totally is it a matter of grace that the searcher is not only invited to see you, who are ever the same, but healed as well, so that he can possess you.” Thus, he sets the stage for his moral conversion in Book VIII. I think this is what Pope Leo XIV meant when he explained on December 29 before an audience at the Apostolic Palace that “in order to allow God’s action in our personal lives, people must ‘empty’ themselves and cultivate a deep inner life.” Augustine may not be ready to do this, but he will eventually get there.
Sarah Faggioli received her PhD in Italian literature from the University of Chicago in 2014. For the last eight years she has taught in the Augustine and Culture Seminar Program at Villanova University (alma mater of Leo XIV) just outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
All quotations, unless otherwise noted, are taken with kind permission from Augustine, The Confessions, translated by Maria Boulding, New City Press, 2019, and the mobile app, edited by Allan Fitzgerald and Noël Falco Dolan.
