Christology in Augustine's Confessions

“Through the humanity of Thy Son”: Christology in Augustine’s Confessions

The term “Christology” is the branch of theology pertaining to the attributes, person, and life of Christ, i.e., a study of Christ. The term implies a systematic study, delving systematically through theory and doctrine with philosophical rigor. But one will not find that kind of rigorous, systematic Christology in Augustine’s Confessions, just as one will not find the historical life of Jesus Himself in the Confessions. Not obviously Christological, the framework of the Confessions is very much from the historical life of one man, i.e., Augustine. In Books 1 through 9, Augustine writes about his personal past, in Book 10 he writes about his personal present, and in Books 11 through 13 Augustine, writing from his present, writes about events “before” Time (human language makes it difficult to speak of atemporal events without falling into paradox) and about events at the birth of Time, i.e., so far past that it is, so to speak, Eternal Present. Until the Genesis study in Books 11 through 13, Augustine’s past life is the center of the narrative but so is God, as revealed through the Son. In fact, since Christ has become that historical fact, i.e., He became human, just like Augustine is that historical fact, i.e., he is human, one can see the Confessions as Augustine’s journey toward taking upon himself the human exemplar, Jesus Christ. In “fits and starts,” young Augustine moves towards Christ as old Augustine, looking from the present, points out the Christological touchstones in his own conversion story with such Christological terms as “Christ,” “Son,” “Word,” “Word-made-flesh,” “Lord Jesus,” “Wisdom,” and other words. As Augustine becomes older and his longing for true wisdom increases, these terms increase in number, perhaps showing the increasing understanding in the young Augustine of the true nature of Christ in relation to himself.

As mentioned earlier, in Books 1 through 9, Augustine writes about his personal past. But the first instance of Christology, in the first chapter of Book 1, occurs in a prayer from the present Augustine: “My faith, Lord, cries to Thee, the faith that Thou hast given me, that Thou has inbreathed in me, through the humanity of Thy Son and by the ministry of Thy Preacher.” (Confessions, 1.1.3)[1] Augustine displays, early in his Confessions, his present Christological knowledge, showing that perfect union of Christ’s humanity and of His divinity, i.e., as second Person in the Trinity, “Thy Son,” and Man’s orientation to Christ, i.e., as prayerful and faithful recipient of His grace. In contrast, Augustine mentions Christ again in regards to his near-baptism as a boy; he has heard of “His Cross” and, when he was ill, Monica wanted him to “receive the baptism of Your Christ… while I confessed You, Lord Jesus”; but his parents postpones his boyhood baptism when he becomes well for fear that a Christian Augustine falling into sin would be worse than a pagan Augustine falling into sin (1.11.11-12). Augustine’s assessment of this decision, “It would have been far better had I been made whole at once” (1.11.12), indicates his family’s fragile faith in the efficacy of Christian strength in the face of worldly temptations, e.g., the temptations in Augustine’s imminent puberty. But Augustine is not “made whole at once” – his soul remains “wounded” (1.11.12), and it is with a wounded soul – a soul mired in sin -- with which Augustine, in Book 2, steals the pears from the pear tree. One should note that Augustine does not refer to Christ – or other Christological terms-- at all in Book 2.[2] This lack of Christological reference implies that the status of young Augustine’s soul is farthest away from God; says Augustine, as he reflects on why he stole the pears, “I loved my own undoing, I loved the evil in me – not the thing for which I did the evil, simply the evil” (2.4.27). In keeping silent in Christology in Book 2, Augustine shows his younger self’s deafness to God in the midst of his love of evil.

In contrast to this spiritual death, one sees an intellectual “birth” in Book 3, when Augustine reads Cicero’s Hortensius, and “with an incredible intensity of desire I longed after immortal wisdom. I had begun that journey upwards by which I was to return to You.” (3.4.38) Aptly enough, “Christ,” “Wisdom,” and “Lord Jesus Christ” occur only in chapters 4-6 in this book, from Augustine reading Hortensius to his falling in with the Manicheans. Even though Augustine’s intellect rises up to Cicero, his spirit – i.e., his faith -- is still on the level of that teenager under the pear tree; after reading Cicero, his childhood faith in the importance of Christ spurs him to turn to Scripture to sate his desire for wisdom because “whatever lacked that name [Christ, Your Son, my Savior], no matter how learned and excellently written and true, could not win me wholly.” (3.4.39) But the pride of the pear-stealer prevents young Augustine to emulate the humility of that Christ missing in Hortensius; says Augustine, “they [Scriptures] seemed to me unworthy to be compared with the majesty of Cicero. My conceit was repelled by their simplicity” (3.4.39). Accommodating the names of the three Persons of God to fit Augustine’s pride, he turns to the Manicheans because “[t]hese names were always on their lips, but only as sounds and tongue noises; for their heart was empty of the true meaning” (3.6.39). But at this stage in Augustine’s journey to God, Augustine does not want to true meaning, for his “conceit” will be “repelled” by it.

By Book 4, Augustine’s philosophic friend has died, and Augustine discovers that all of his high, philosophic intellect cannot prevent grief, cannot bring the soul of man to peace. It is in this book, with the loss of the philosophic friend, in which Augustine refers to Christ as “The Word Himself”: “Listen. The Word Himself calls to you to return, and with Him is the place of peace that shall not be broken, where your love will not be forsaken unless it first forsake. Things pass that other things may come in their place…. ‘But do I depart anywhere?’ says the Word of God.” (4.11.59). Young Augustine’s “hardness of heart” (to use an Old Testament term) begins to soften, with the suffering of those left behind when a loved one dies. Augustine contrasts this lesson in mortality with Christ as the immortal Word, realizing, though he would not know until much later, that “First descend that you may ascend, ascend to God.” (4.12.60-61). Although young Augustine is not aware of it, his suffering and grief is a good which will prepare him for his conversion to the Word Himself.

In Book 5, the book about teachers educating the young Augustine, one finds, as one has found in Book 1, Augustine mortally ill again, this time in Rome. But unlike Book 1, there is no talk of baptism, for even though “You had not forgiven any of my sins in Christ,” and “[f]or great as that peril had been I did not ask for Your baptism” (5.9.78). The Manicheans have distorted Christ such that Augustine holds no value to baptism and “His cross” – the belief that Christ really suffered and really died for man’s sins. The Manichean distaste of the flesh shines forth in Augustine’s further presentation of the Manichean distortion of Christology which he once held:

I thought of our Savior Himself, Your only-begotten Son, as brought forth for our salvation from the mass of Your most luminous substance: and I could believe nothing of him unless I could picture it in my own vain imagination. I argued that such a nature could not possibly be born of the virgin Mary, unless it mingled with her flesh. And I could not see how that which I had thus figured to myself could be mingled and not defiled. Thus I feared to believe the Word made flesh lest I be forced to believe the Word defiled by flesh.

Thus Augustine presents a lengthy, Christological account of the Incarnation in this book about teachers and education; but he does so negatively, in a Manichean light (which is actually a Manichean darkness) to show the state of Augustine’s intellect, which was confused. Eventually, Augustine leaves the confusion and folly of the Manicheans (who had the name of Christ, albeit distorted) and falls into doubt, like “the manner of the Academics” (5.14.83). “Yet,” he says, “I absolutely refused to entrust the care of my sick soul to the philosophers, because they were without the saving name of Christ.” (5.14.83). Despite his association with the nonsensical Manicheans, despite his intellectual attachment to the pagan philosophers, his early teacher – his mother Monica – has instilled the importance of the name “Christ” like a touchstone such that Augustine follows the one teacher who seems to speak intelligently about Christ and the Scriptures. Therefore, Book 5 ends, appropriately, with Augustine following Ambrose, becoming a catechumen in the Catholic Church, the church of his mother. And, appropriately, in Book 6, Augustine refers to Christ 1) in reference to Monica’s belief, “that in Christ she believed that she would see me a faithful Catholic before she died,” (6.1.87), and 2) in reference to his own education as an infant and as a catechumen, “rejoic[ing], O my God, that Your only Church, the Body of Your only Son, in which the name of Christ had been put upon me while I was still an infant, had no taste for such puerile nonsense” (6.4.90). So from the beginning of Book 5 to the end of Book 6, one sees Augustine move from his distortion of Christianity to his reorientation to orthodox Catholic Christianity.

Thus, not surprisingly, Augustine states many Christological terms in Book 7, the book of his conversion. In a review of where he has been, Augustine reminds the reader of his distortion of “Your Word” as a Manichean (7.2.109), moves to his “faith of Your Christ, Our Lord and Savior, taught by the Catholic Church… though on many points I was still uncertain” as a catechumen (7.5.112), differentiates “the Wisdom which illuminates the minds” from “the ridiculous prophesyings and blasphemous follies of the astrologers” (7.6.112), and arrives at his place of his pre-conversion, when Augustine “was still on fire with the question whence comes evil.” (7.7.115). In this state, Augustine relates his discovery of the Platonists, which is the intellectual rebirth of his mind, that a Christian can be a philosopher, since the Platonists speak of the “Word” as the “only-begotten Son… before all times and beyond times and abides unchangeably, co-eternal with you” (7.9.116-17). The Platonists, however, as Augustine points out, do not have “the Word became flesh” (7.9.116) – they do not speak of His Incarnation, his role as Suffering Servant, His death and resurrection, “and that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father”, i.e., the divine Word and human man Jesus are one and the same (7.9.116). Augustine will not find spiritual rebirth in the Platonists but in “the Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus” (7.18.122). Augustine uses the term “Mediator” for the first time[3] in the Confessions, for it is a concept that neither the Platonists nor the Manicheans discuss but is what Augustine has been searching for all of these years. Still, he says, “I was not yet lowly enough to hold the lowly Jesus as my God” (7.18.122). Book 7 ends with what the lowly Jesus as God means: it means God who is human, “altogether man” (7.19.123) whose “humility” is what saves; God who is “meek and humble of heart” (7.20.124-21.125). Feeling the pride of his knowledge, young Augustine cannot quite accept this true meaning of “Word made flesh,” for, as Augustine states in City of God, “humility [is] the necessary condition for submission to this truth” (City of God, 10.29.415).

In Book 8, the book of his conversion, young Augustine’s faith and intellect turns to the Catholic Church, but his “need of women” (8.1.129) keep him from conversion. Augustine quotes Christ, saying that “He that can take it [celibacy], let him take it” – being celibate is not necessary in being a good Christian. Yet, he says, “I hesitated still.” (8.1.130), which is reminiscent of his parents postponing his early baptism as a child until after his future sinning during adolescence, looking more towards the inevitability of the sinner as opposed to the reliability of God’s grace. With the image of young Augustine’s hesitation, Augustine presents Simplicianus’ story of Victorinus’ conversion, which serves as a lesson in “the humility of Christ,” for Victorinus “thought it no shame to be the child of Your Christ, an infant at Your font, bending his neck under the yoke of humility and his forehead to the ignominy of the Cross” (8.2.130-31). Augustine repeats the folly of human pride over “the light yoke of Christ” in quoting the conversion of Saul (8.4.134); he states man’s need for Christ’s grace (8.5.136), and calls upon Christ as “my Helper and my Redeemer” as a recounts how he got over his “desire of the flesh” (8.6.136). Repeatedly, Augustine shows that man cannot rise above sin under his own power; he is powerless, he is weak. It is accepting the help of Christ, the taking upon Christ’s humility, take receiving of His grace, can man rise above sin. The reader finally sees this acceptance of Christ in Augustine’s conversion under the fig tree, a healed image of Adam and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: he reads, “Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and impurities, not in contention and envy, but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and make not provision for the flesh in its concupiscences.” (8.12.146). Man’s flawed humanity cannot heal him; only Christ’s humanity can heal man, for he has become the exemplar of what Man is.

After his conversion, Augustine’s use of Christological terms increases, displaying young Augustine’s return to God. Augustine shows the taking upon of Christ’s humility: “I bowed my neck to Your easy yoke and my shoulders to Your light burden, Christ Jesus, my Helper and my Redeemer” (9.1.151). He links the Eternal Trinity with the historical Jesus as Messiah: “And I remember too how You subdued my heart’s brother Alypius to the name of Jesus Christ Your only-begotten Son, Our Lord and Savior” (9.4.154), and “He [Father] already sent Him [Holy Spirit] … because He [Jesus Christ, only-begotten Son] was magnified and risen from the dead and ascended into heave. For till then the Spirit was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified.”(9.4.155-56), and “It was the scepter of Your Christ, the discipline of your Only-Begotten” (9.8.160). Augustine reminds the reader of Christ as the eternal Wisdom, as the eternal Word: “You feed Israel forever with the food of truth: and there life is that Wisdom by which all things are made….For what is like to your Word, Our Lord, who abides in Himself forever, yet grows not old and makes all things new!” (9.10.164). After the Monica and Augustine’s vision of Beatitude at Ostia, and after Monica’s death, in his grief Augustine is able to find solace in Christ, is able to ask, “let him weep for my sins to You, the Father of all the brethren of Your Christ” (9.12.168); and, in the present, he is able to “pray to Thee for my mother’s sins. Grant my prayer through the true Medicine of our wounds, who hung upon the cross and who now sitting at Thy right hand makes intercession for us.” (9.13.169). In recounting his past, Augustine begins with prayer and thus ends with prayer.

In his conclusion to his confession of his past, Augustine writes not as a young convert who has buried his mother but as the Bishop of Hippo, Shepherd of his Christian flock, minister of Christ’s sacraments, and, therefore, he serves as a mediator between Christ and His flock of believers in Hippo. Thus the Christological chapters in Book 10, chapters 42 and 43, discuss what “the true Mediator” means, for, of course, this would be of concern for a priest in the Church, the Body of Christ. Thus, these chapters, in all of the Confessions, is almost entirely Christological. In Chapter 42, Augustine speaks about the “sham mediator,” like “the devil, transforming himself into an angel of light” (10.42.207). In contrast, in Chapter 43, Augustine writes:

But the true Mediator, whom in the secret of Your mercy You have shown to men and sent to men, that by His example they might learn humility – the Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, appeared between sinful mortals and the immortal Just One: for like men He was mortal, like God He was Just; so that, the wages of justice being life and peace, He might, through the union of His own justice with God, make void the death of those sinners whom He justified by choosing to undergo death as they might do. ….As man, He is Mediator; but as Word, He is not something in between, for He is equal to God, God with God, and together one God.

In explaining the mystery of Christ’s Redemption of all sinners, such that “[w]e might well have thought Thy Word remote from union with man and so have despaired of ourselves, if It had not been made flesh and dwelt among us” (10.43.208), Augustine not only points to man’s way to heal his wounded soul through Christ’s redemption but also to implies the special status of being a priest in the City of God in pilgrimage, i.e., as man, the priest is also a mediator. But only Christ is the true Mediator in the sense of ontologically one in being with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, and it is to this one true Mediator whom Augustine prays, to “teach me and heal me” (10.43.208) so that Augustine can teach and heal his flock in His name. Thus, Augustine, in the City of Man but a priest in the City of God in pilgrimage, asks for the grace to be a good mediator, and then, in the next section of his Confessions moves ab rerum humanibus to a meditation de rerum divinarum.

IV. Books 11-13: “Genesis I”

Although the main Christological terms in this meditation on Creation are “Word,” “Son” (as in the second Person in the Trinity), and “Wisdom,” Augustine, in Book 11, prays to “Our Lord Jesus Christ Thy Son… as Mediator between Thyself and us… and makes intercession for us” such that he make seek “Thy Word” faithfully (11.2.212-13). This prayer to the Incarnate Word literally grounds Augustine – and the reader – such that he will not make any nonsensical interpretations of Scripture, such as the ones which plagued Augustine in his pre-conversion years. In Chapters 6 through 11, Augustine discusses the nature of the Word as Son as Wisdom, i.e., the Son eternally begotten from the Father because the Son is the Wisdom of the Father, eternally enacted in the Word: “marvellously speaking and marvellously creating in Your Word, Who is Your Son and Your Strength and Your Wisdom and Your Truth” (11.9.216). This discussion is difficult, and lest Augustine thinks he is able to make this discussion on his own power, he reminds himself (and the reader) that “It is Wisdom, Wisdom Itself, which in those moments shines upon me, cleaving through my cloud” (11.9.216), “O Wisdom of God, Light of minds” (11.9.217). Similarly, when Augustine struggles with understanding Time, “this complicated enigma” (11.22.224), he prays for the intercession of Christ to help him understand: “O Lord my God, O good Father, for Christ’s sake I beseech Thee…. For Christ’s sake I beseech Thee, in the name of Him who is the Holy of Holies” (11.22.224), reminding the reader that “my Lord, the Son of Man… is the Mediator in many things and in divers manners” (11.29.230).

Again, this prayer grounds Augustine as he looks up towards things divine such that he is able to be consistent in his meditation on Creation and his Christology, as seen in Book 12: God’s only-begotten Son is equal to God, “Trinity that is One, Unity that is Three,” and not a created substance like “heaven and earth” (12.7.238). Wisdom, i.e., the Son, i.e., His Word, “is co-eternal and equal, O our God, with You, His Father, and by whom all things were created, the Beginning in whom You made heaven and earth”; this is in contrast to “created wisdom,” i.e., man’s intellect, whose power is only by “reflection” of the uncreated Wisdom (12.15.243). “Son,” “Wisdom,” and “Word” are synonymous and consistent with the second Person of the Triune God.[4]

In Book 13, Augustine continues with the Christological terms of “Wisdom,” (13.2.261, 5.263, 18.273) “Word,” (13.2.262, 18.271, 29.283) and “Son,” (13.2.262, 5.263-64, 6.264, 9.265, 12.267, 15.270), linking them in divine unity with Father and Holy Spirit as “the omnipotent Trinity” (13.11.266). But Augustine also expands upon the Christological terms, writing of man’s dependent relationship to Christ: He writes of “the charity of Christ” (13.7.264), of God “in his Christ creat[ing] a heaven and earth, the spiritual and carnal members of His Church” (13.12.267), of the faithful Church as “the Spouse of Christ” (13.13.268), of “the sensual man like a little one in Christ [who] must be given milk to drink, until he is able to take solid meat” (13.18.272), of “the evangelists as souls made continent by imitation of those who imitate Your Christ” (13.21.276). Thus, in introducing the term “Christ” in this meditation of creation, Augustine reminds the reader that the Creator/Created relationship of Genesis is not past history of Adam and Eve but personal present to present-day man.

Henceforth, Augustine’s use of Christology in the Confessions points to man’s relationship to Christ. As mentioned earlier, this Christology is not a rigorous, systematic approach nor examples from the historical life of Jesus Himself, as seen in the Gospels, for the framework of the Confessions is very much from the historical life of one man, i.e., Augustine. But in Books 1 through 9, in which Augustine writes about his personal past from infancy up to his conversion, Augustine uses Christology as touchstones in his spiritual journey towards Christ. In Book 10, in which he writes during his personal present as Bishop of Hippo, Augustine delves into the Christological term “Mediator” as the link between Man and God. Finally, in Books 11 through 13, in which Augustine meditates upon Creation, while moving intellectually among the sphere of the second Person of the Triune God as He creates, Augustine grounds himself with the humanity and grace of Christ and reminds himself and the reader of our present relationship with Christ, as members of the City of God in pilgrimage. Thus, “through the humanity of Thy Son” Augustine turns to God, is able to meditate upon the higher things, and ministers to Christ’s flock in humility and prayer.

Works Cited

Augustine. City of God. Trans. Henry Bettenson. 1972. New York: Penguin, 1984.

Augustine. Confessions. Trans. F. J. Sheed. 1942. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 1993.

[1] All number citations will be Book, Chapter, and page number, as the Sheed translation does not have paragraph numbers.

[2] I executed extensive word searches in E. B. Pusey’s translation of the Confessions, found on http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/Englishconfessions.html. The terms “Christ,” “Son,” “Word,” “Mediator,” “Redeemer,” and “Jesus” yielded no results for Book 2.

[3] Per the word search check in E. B. Pusey’s online translation of Augustine’s Confessions.

[4] One is reminded of that portion of the Nicene Creed pertaining to the second Person: Et in unum Dominum Jesum Christum, Filium Dei unigenitum. Et ex Patre natum ante omnia saecula. Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine, Deum verum de Deo vero. Genitum, non factum, consubstantialem Patri: per quem omnia facta sunt.