The omnipotent God who works good even from evil, what sort of goods will He grant us when He has freed us from all evils?
I’ve read a couple of translations of Augustine’s most famous work, his Confessions, but I decided I wanted to get into some of his shorter, more doctrinal work. He authored a lot of treatises over his lifetime on subjects that ranged from pragmatic practicalities to philosophical explorations of ideas. This one is somewhere in the middle as he addresses issues surrounding continence, which I think can accurately be updated to more modern terminology by saying “self-control.” In this treatise, Augustine explores the nature of sinful desire, temptation and the strength to overcome those things. Augustine spends a lot of time here talking against the Manicheans because, unlike even a lot of Christians today, Augustine did not see the “flesh,” ie. the human body and its desires, as being necessarily opposed to the soul and its spiritual pursuits. The Manicheans at the time taught that the body was entirely evil and the soul entirely good; Augustine didn’t believe either of those things and he makes his cases here really smartly and cleverly. He really writes refreshingly about these things and I think part of the reason he has endured as an author is because he is so often pragmatic and graceful when it comes to things like the bodily desires. Obviously, he believes sex is only allowable within the marriage bond, but he stills seems strikingly ahead of his time when he talks about how the desire for sex is natural and that the pleasures of it are to be enjoyed. It’s not that the natural desires of the “flesh” are wrong; it’s just that the flesh should be controlled by the soul and the mind. So, he sees giving into temptation as a sin, not just of the flesh, but of the spirit and soul which yields control to the flesh. And he also discusses another one of the major themes of his work: the heart. For him, self-control is not, in and of itself, necessarily virtuous; there is no great spiritual gain to be had simply from controlling oneself. Again, this really goes against a lot of more traditional elements of Christian doctrine and it’s probably part of the reason he’s as beloved by Protestants as by Catholics; he believes that it is the motives of the heart that give any religious action its power and glory, so, while he isn’t anti-ritual by any means, he wants to be very clear that taking any spiritual discipline to the level of ritual is to rob it of its goodness. It’s very easy to see, really, why he’s endured and not just endured, but continued to be a downright beloved figure for a lot of people. He writes here with a lot of grace extended to the weaknesses of humanity and a purpose of not shaming people for their desires, but encouraging them only to master their desires. He’s writing about these things with, frankly, more nuance than a lot of Christian authors of today. It should be noted that I read the translation by Sister Mary Francis McDonald from the early 1950s and that it runs a bit over forty pages in total. It’s a brisk, likable, very readable translation; I’m definitely looking forward to getting deeper into Augustine’s treatises. This one certainly carries wisdom that reaches all the way up to the present day. 3 ½ stars.
tl;dr – beloved religious writer was ahead of his time in his writings on self-control, temptation and discipline; likable, smart and very readable, this short treatise is a delight. 3 ½ stars.