Augustine: Confessions Books I-IV [Paperback]

Sheed's translation of this classic of Western and Christian culture is truly beautiful. He went beyond presenting an accurate translation; beyond a clear translation. He gave us a translation that is accurate, clear, and sonorous. The footnotes, introductions (one by famous Augustine scholar Peter Brown), and index make this a solid scholarly edition. This is a translation I will reread often.

Sacred Scripture gives us persons like the prophet Isaiah, who cry out, "Woe is me, I am doomed!" He knows he is a sinner, especially realizing that he is in the presence of God. Saint Paul tells us "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Of these I am the foremost." Peter, in the gospel, falls on his knees in front of Jesus exclaiming, "Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man." What the three have in common is not simply that they acknowledged their sinfulness. In doing so they began the process of becoming great people, eventually saints. Acknowledging our sins & sinfulness is therefore not a morbid exercise in futility. It is the beginning of true self-understanding. It is an invitation to greatness!

St. Augustine was also one of these. Early on in the "Confessions," he recalls when he was an adolescent that he stole pears, not to eat (he had better himself), but only for the sake of stealing, saying the only pleasure in doing it was that it was forbidden: "the malice of the act was base and I loved it--that is to say ... I loved the evil in me--not the thing for which I did evil, simply the evil" (Book 2, 4). Also, because there was another person involved, the sin was more attractive: "O friendship unfriendly, unanalyzable attraction for the mind, greediness to do damage for the mere sport and jest of it, desire for another's loss with no gain to oneself or vengeance to be satisfied."

"I went away from Thee my God, in my youth I strayed too far from Thy sustaining power, and I became to myself a barren land." He says: "Who can understand sins?" This is after discussing the CAPITAL SINS and their futility, for example:
AVARICE wants to possess much, where God possesses all.
ANGER cries for vengeance, but only God's vengeance is just.
ENVY tries to excel, but who can excel before God?

Father De Bergamo, in the introduction of Humility of Heart, calls these the innate springs of evil within us, from which all other sins arise. All that we are, we have received from God, except for our sinfulness, deeply imbedded in our nature. Then he names the characteristics of his soul, i.e. the SEVEN CAPITAL SINS: PRIDE, COVETOUSNESS/AVARICE, LUST, ANGER, GLUTTONY, ENVY/JEALOUSY, AND SLOTH.

Part of the greatness of St. Augustine was his ability to analyze this and show how it works. Any of these can get out of hand (addictions & compulsions). For him it was predominantly lust (but compellingly all, except perhaps gluttony); for the alcoholic it is usually some combination of pride, anger, & gluttony; for each person, it can be different.

But, EVIL IN HIM?--Yes! St. Augustine knew very much about Original Sin--what we inherited from our first parents. Yes, Baptism took care of it for us: the sin, but not, however, the effects. No, Baptism did not do much about these. It doesn't take very much thinking for us to see how much these affect each of us, and the world around us. Even our modern society realizes that these can get so out of hand that they can exercise a real control over our lives. We have support groups that attest to this. We have "THIS ANONYMOUS" and "THAT ANONYMOUS." And we all know that these groups really work. Why? Because the people admit that they are helpless over that which has its hold on them (they become humbled) and they know that they must turn to God who alone can cure them.

Any person struggling with compulsive or addictive behavior can find comfort in the writings of St. Augustine. He knew what sin was. He knew how it worked. He described it! He knew that any of the capital sins could dominate us and be the source of evil in us. It starts, he says, by just giving into them--that's where the evil begins: WE WILL TO DO EVIL! If repeated enough, we develop habits. Habits, if continued, can turn to compulsions. Compulsions, not resisted, become necessities. He says later (Book 8): "The enemy held my will, and out of it he made a chain and bound me. Because my will was perverse it changed to lust, and lust yielded to habit, and habit not resisted became necessity." And, "With the object of the experiment as myself I was able to see how the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. (see Romans 6, 7, and 8). He was held captive by the "law of sin."

No surprise! We can all see this in us to some degree. We can pervert our will so that any of our passions can have a hold on us. St. Augustine describes these as "chains which bound him," and though he wanted to love God, his will struggled greatly because his sins "held him bound," like a "captive!"

He understood, first hand, what St. Paul meant in Romans 7:13, ff., about being a "prisoner to the law of sin in his body's members." That is, St. Augustine describes, "the law of sin is the fierce force of habit, by which the mind is drawn and held even against its will, and yet deservedly because it had fallen willfully into the habit" (Book 8,5). So, he knew he was licked, that was his first step! His second step he got from his "sponsor," St. Paul, who himself could say "what a wretched man I am" in Romans 7:24 and also the answer for St. Augustine: "Who then should deliver me from the body of this death, but Thy grace only, through Jesus Christ Our Lord!"

St. Augustine was willing to pray for help: Lord that I may know me; and I may know Thee." We see in this what Father Scupoli, in The Spiritual Combat and a Treatise on Peace of Soul (Tan Classics), that the SPIRITUAL LIFE consists in: "knowing the infinite greatness and goodness of God, together with a true sense of our own weakness and tendency to evil ... and in renouncing our will to follow His." The battle always includes: DISTRUST IN SELF, CONFIDENCE IN GOD accompanied by PRAYER. This is no different than "believing that we are powerless," that help must come from "a power greater than ourselves," and then asking for help.

Like it or not, we are all involved in this battle. Only if we have HUMILITY will we be able to see our own helplessness and turn to God who can and will help us. Saint Augustine's "Confessions" will enable us to recognize this in ourselves and respond, as did Saint Teresa of Avila, as she describes in Teresa of Avila: The Book of Her Life (a new translation):
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"O my God, I am amazed at the hardness of my heart amidst so many succours from Thee. I am filled with dread when I see how little I could do with myself, and how I was clogged, so that I could not resolve to give myself entirely to God. When I began to read the "Confessions," I thought I saw myself there described, and began to recommend myself greatly to this glorious Saint. When I came to his conversion and read how he heard that voice in the garden, it seemed to be nothing less than that our Lord had uttered it for me: I felt so in my heart. I remained for some time lost in tears, in great inward affliction and distress. O my God, what a soul has to suffer because it has lost the liberty it had of being mistress over itself! And what torments it has to endure; I wonder now how I could live in torments so great: God be praised Who gave me life, so that I might escape from so fatal a death! I believe that my soul obtained great strength from His Divine Majesty, and that He must have heard my cry, and had compassion upon so many tears."

This is an extremely welcome second edition of F.J. Sheed's 1943 translation, which is both close to the original in wording and style (unlike, say, the Chadwick or the Pinecoffin translations) and yet a fine piece of English (unlike the 19th-century translations I have seen). This new edition has several advantages over the original edition: very few changes have been made to the text, but it includes both sets of chapter numbers (the omission of one set in Sheed was a major drawback), useful notes and index, and a magisterial introduction by Peter Brown, the 'doyen' of Augustine and late antique studies in the English-speaking world. This is surely the best English edition of the work to date.

A case could have been made, however, for a little more revision. Sheed found himself in difficulties over the constant addresses to God in the work -- should one use the traditional second person singular ('Thou') or the normal modern idiom ('You')? Sheed decided to use 'Thou' in more obviously prayer-like contexts, and 'You' in more discursive ones. But now that 'You' is generally used in modern liturgy it would surely be better to use 'You' throughout this text -- rather than introducing a distinction that is totally absent from the Latin.

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