Augustine’s Confessions has a curious structure. It is divided into 13 chapters. The first nine read like autobiography; Augustine tells the story of his life concentrating on all the sins he has committed. He confesses them, and then he points constantly to God who is the real object of Augustine’s attention. Lots of things we can learn and ponder from these nine chapters.
But, then, in Chapter 10, the book takes a rather stunning turn for those reading it for the first time. Chapter 10 is all about memory. Chapter 11 is about time. Chapter 12 is about Creation. Chapter 13 is an interpretation of Genesis 1. Then Confessions abruptly ends.
It isn’t hard to see why the first nine chapters are the popular part. Much faster pace and it is easy to figure out where it is all going. What is with chapters 10-13, though? Why are they there?
My reading group discussing this book was puzzled by exactly this question.
Consider “Time.” Really. Actually consider the nature of time. What is time? Does time exist? Does the present exist? Does the past exist? If the past exists, where is it existing? If the past no longer exists, then how can we remember it and ask about it? The same sort of thing applies to the future. The longer you think about it, the weirder time is.
Is time a created thing? Did God create time or did time predate God? Seems clear that time must be a created thing. So what happened before time was created? That question is, when you think about it, nonsensical. There can’t be a “before time was created.” Before implies time. So if something is before time is created then time is before time is created. The mind reels.
So, if God is outside time, then is God in the present only? Obviously not. God sees all time simultaneously. For God there is no past or future. We can’t describe “God’s time” because time is that thing God created and observes. (I am not sure what observes means either because it implies a location different than the location in which God exists, but space was also created by God, so God is not in a location.)
So, if God is outside time, when I pray for the future, then God knows the future when I am praying for the future. But, God knows the past equally well. For God, there is no difference between future and past. So, can I pray for the past? Can I pray that God will help George Washington make wise decisions? Is that weird? When George Washington was alive, God knew about my prayer for Washington. Why is this weirder than praying for the future? From God’s perspective, praying for the past and praying for the future must be identical.
The longer I puzzle over Augustine’s discussion of time, the more bewildering it gets. T.S. Eliot captured the same thing—this poem (Bunt Norton) could be called the Spark Notes version of Confessions
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
All time is eternally present. That is the key.
Think about the idea of Augustine confessing his past sins. Those sins are not really past in God’s view. They are eternally present to God. So, Augustine repenting of stealing pears 30 years earlier is not repenting of something that happened 30 years ago for God. It is something that always is existing for God.
In this world, we cannot say, “I sinned in the past.” We can say, “I am a sinner.” And it makes no difference which sins you contemplate; your past sins, present sins, and future sins are all the same from the perspective of God.
And suddenly, chapters 10 and 11 of Confessions seems inseparable from chapters 1-9. When time and memory collapse into the realization that thinking about the idea of memory of his past life leads to the thinking about the idea of time and the realization that “past” time is not really past, then our impression of the autobiographical portion changes. Augustine is not confessing his past sins at all. The sins he committed when he was an infant or teenager or last month are not just things in the past. Augustine is not saying “I used to be a sinner.” He is saying “I am a sinner.”
All time is eternally present. All time in unredeemable. If Augustine is a sinner, not was a sinner, but is, then what hope does he have? That is where God walks in. Augustine is spending the whole book noting that it is not exactly true that God has forgiven him for his past sins. Instead, God is forgiving him for his very nature as a sinner.
What then is going on with the last two books of Confessions? Augustine seems to go off track again, by spending many pages thinking about how to interpret the creation account in Genesis. He notes there are obviously many different interpretations of Genesis, and people spend a lot of time arguing about the right way to interpret it.
But, Augustine argues, God is very clever. What if He intended it to be written in a way that there are multiple true interpretations of the text? If so, then if your interpretation of the text leads to a conclusion which is true, and my different interpretation of the text leads to a different conclusion which is also true, we do not need to argue about whose true interpretation is correct. All interpretations which bring glory to God are true.
Thus you may want to read Genesis as a factual account of the mechanism of Creation. If that is how things were created, then Augustine has no problem with that reading. But, Augustine is more interested in the allegorical readings, the readings in which the structure of the first verse and the first chapter of Genesis reveal an extraordinary number of things about God.
At one level, these last two chapters of Confessions are a very useful description of the modern debate about seven day creationism.
But, what is this discussion of how to read Genesis 1 doing in Confessions?
How do we read Confessions? Our temptation is to read it as an autobiography. Augustine has no objection to us reading it in that way because it is, in fact, a true autobiography. But, then Augustine slyly notes in the final two chapters, this is just one way to read the book. After demonstrating that Genesis 1 can be read for the figurative lesson it offers, Augustine implicitly is inviting us to ask another question: is there a figurative reading of the book you just read?
Of course there is. This is not just the story of Augustine and his life. Indeed, for Augustine, that reading may be the least interesting reading of it. It is also a book about the majesty of God, the nature of sin, the work of Christ, the eternal design of God’s plan, and on and on and on.
The last four chapters of Confessions are extraordinarily clever. You thought you were reading an autobiography. But, oh, it is so much more than that. Once you realize it is a deep book, a very deep book, it makes you want to reread it. Again. And again.
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This made me think of this passage from C.S. Lewis’ The Problem of Pain – one of the things I have found most helpful about Lewis is his treatment of eternity, and now I wonder if he learned it from Augustine in the first place.
“We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. I have heard others, and I have heard myself, recounting cruelties and falsehoods committed in boyhood as if they were no concern of the present speaker’s, and even with laughter. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin. The guilt is washed out not by time but by repentance and the blood of Christ: if we have repented these early sins we should remember the price of our forgiveness and be humble. As for the fact of a sin, is it probable that anything cancels it? All times are eternally present to God. Is it not at least possible that along some one line of His multi-dimensional eternity He sees you forever in the nursery pulling the wings off a fly, forever toadying, lying, and lusting as a schoolboy, forever in that moment of cowardice or insolence as a subaltern? It may be that salvation consists not in the cancelling of these eternal moments but in the perfected humanity that bears the shame forever, rejoicing in the occasion which it furnished to God’s compassion and glad that it should be common knowledge to the universe. Perhaps in that eternal moment St Peter—he will forgive me if I am wrong—forever denies his Master. If so, it would indeed be true that the joys of Heaven are for most of us, in our present condition, ‘an acquired taste’—and certain ways of life may render the taste impossible of acquisition. Perhaps the lost are those who dare not go to such a public place. Of course I do not know that this is true; but I think the possibility is worth keeping in mind.”
From The Problem of Pain (Google found it for me here: https://www.biblegateway.com/devotionals/cs-lewis-daily/2047/09/24)
That is really interesting. You are right that it reads like Lewis is talking about Augustine.
I went to go look up that passage in my copy of The Problem of Pain, only to discover that I must have lent out my copy and it never returned. Guess it is time to buy a new copy.