Essay on "Origen and Augustine Confession"

Essay 6 pages (1837 words) Sources: 2

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Origen and Augustine

In Book IV of On First Principles, Origen tackles the problem of erroneous understandings of the Scripture leading to heresy. To clarify his understanding of how the Scriptures should be approached, Origen turns to Solomon in the Proverbs: "Describe [the Scriptures] in a threefold manner, in counsel and knowledge, and that thou might answer the words of truth to those who have proposed them to thee" (qtd. In Origen, 300). Origen interprets this "threefold manner" as mirroring the tripartite classic model of the human being.

Just as human beings have a literal physical existence in the body, the Scriptures have a literal meaning, which Origen describes as its "historical" and "narrative" meaning. This meaning, says Origen, is used to edify the "more simple individuals" (300), such as the widows and orphans that Grapte was instructed to educate.

Those with higher capabilities of understanding may be ready to grasp the meaning of the "very soul of the Scriptures" (300), analogous to the classical notion of the psyche of the human being. This level offers a more sophisticated intellectual understanding of the Scriptures; Origen gives as an example a metaphorical edict from Paul ("Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn") that is not immediately accessible on a literal level but is readily comprehended upon further explanation (304).

Finally, for those who have been perfected in their nature by their relationship with God, there is the spiritual understanding of the Scriptures, analogous to the classical notion of the human pneuma. This meaning is reserved for those have worked, through discipline and chastity, to prepare their spirits to receive the wisdom of God through the Scriptures. This interpretation allows a knowledge of the "heavenly things" of which the historical narrative and the intellectual law serve "as a shadow" (305).

Why did Origen feel the need to offer this three-tiered system of Scriptural interpretation? There were several worrisome issues with Scriptural interpretation that Origen and other early Christian writers faced. First of all, there was a difficulty in explaining the difference between the legalistic God of the Old Testament and the God of forgiveness and love expressed through Christ in the New Testament. Some chose to consider the Old Testament God to be the Judaic creator-god who "ought to be regarded as just only, and not also as good" (293), while the New Testament God is a different god, separate from the creator. This was a dangerous and heretical idea to the early Christian leaders, including Origen, who felt strongly that the unity and universality of one God in the Scriptures must be preserved. In addition, the early Church fathers needed to assert the necessity of the Church to provide spiritual guidance and wisdom while preserving the accessibility of Scripture to all.

Origen's threefold system resolves these difficulties by creating different levels of understanding. By creating a spiritual level of understanding, Origen is able to attribute "erroneous apprehension" such as the notion of a separate Old and New Testament Gods to a reading of the literal, not spiritual, meaning of the Scriptures (295). In addition, Origen's system reinforces the need of the Church and of theological exegesis to bring the simple to a correct understanding of the "body" of the Scripture, to bring the capable to an understanding of the "soul" of the Scripture, and to bring the deserving to an understanding of the "spirit" of the Scripture. Finally, Origen not only sees his system as providing a way of resolving conflicts in the Biblical text, but he sees the conflicts in Biblical texts as evidence for the need for multiple tiers of understanding.

St. Augustine begins Book I of his Confessions with a litany of praise for the Lord, praise that he deems a natural desire in humans. This urge to exalt the Creator and to find joy in Him is summed up in Augustine's famous claim: "You have formed us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in You" (Augustine 17). This statement is the perfect introduction to a work that essentially recounts the restlessness of Augustine's own spirit, and his struggle to find peace with his God.

Augustine's account of his restlessness starts with his recollection of his boyhood and education, when no subject could hold his interest or attention: "I would never learn, unless under compulsion; and no one can act well against his will, even if what he does happens to be good" (30). This tension between acting good and being good of his own will would become, as he grew, more of a moral problem than an academic one.

Moral restlessness became the hallmark of Augustine's life as an adolescent and young man. Augustine found the embodiment of this restlessness in the famous episode of the pear tree, in which he steals fruit from a neighbor's tree even though he has no desire for the fruit itself -- only a desire to sin. Augustine characterized this act as "a kind of truncated liberty…producing a darkened image of omnipotence" (49).

After tasting this "liberty" in sin, Augustine attempted to find a cure for his restlessness in romantic pursuits, but seeking the truth outside of the Scriptures only made his restlessness worse. He compared his feeling of desperation during this period to the tortures of hell: "For want of truth I toiled and tossed, for I was seeking you, my God…by means of the bodily senses" (61).

Even when Augustine left the perilous ways of physical sin and turned towards a relationship with Christ, his spirit was not yet at rest. He struggled through difficult theological questions of time, the Virgin birth, will, and especially the origin of evil. But it was these intellectual difficulties most of all that made Augustine acknowledge the weakness of his own mind and spirit and turn to God for his enlightenment. Had he been able to resolve on his own "the writing of such dark secrets" in the Scriptures (258), he would not have needed to lay his intellect at the feet of Christ in the same way that he laid his will at the feet of Christ.

While the restlessness in the opening quote is prevalent throughout the Confessions, the "rest" in God that the quote promises is elusive. But the elusiveness of this rest is one of the fundamental qualities of Augustine's faith, and the reason behind his writing the Confessions. At the end of his text, Augustine points out that there is no relationship between work and rest for God, for God in his perfection is "always at work and always at rest" (349). But men, whose work can only be very good by virtue of the fact that it -- like all things -- comes from God, cannot rest from the pursuit of perfection until they "may rest in [the Lord] in the Sabbath of eternal life" (Ibid).

In the end, the restlessness that marked his childhood and youth continues to accompany Augustine for the duration of his life. The restlessness itself is not the sin -- the sin is the mistaken goal that the restlessness seeks. Restlessness in the search of God is what defines the pious life, and that sort of restlessness can only be give and sustained by God, from whom it must be "asked…sought…knocked for." Only in God's time and through God's grace will it be "received…found…and opened" (350).

Of all the difficulties with which Augustine confesses to have struggled in his Confessions, the one that plagued him more than anything else was concupiscence. "Concupiscence" comes from the Latin meaning "to exist in a state of sexual or physical desire." For Augustine, the desires of the flesh defined his adolescence and youth, and served as the greatest barrier between him and God.

Augustine's struggles with bodily desires began early in his adolescence with "the muddy cravings of the flesh and the bubblings of first manhood" (40). In fact, it was sexual desire that led to his first separation from his young faith. In Book II, he bemoans the loss of his chastity: "How far was I banished from the delights of your house in that sixteenth year of my flesh when the madness of lust…held complete sway over me" (42).

Augustine spent the majority of his youth indulging this concupiscence. He spent his time in Carthage, where he was surrounded by the "sizzling and frying of unholy loves," seeking what he thought was love in the form of physical gratification (52). For nine years after that, when he was a teacher, he lived a life in which he was "seduced and seducing," becoming "the prey of various desires" (69). He even lived in romantic union with a woman for some time out of wedlock, and had a son by her. Even after this woman was separated from him so that he could prepare himself for marriage, he found others with which to indulge his sexual desires (133).

Although his faith eventually brought him… READ MORE

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