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Book 2
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Confessions, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Faith and Conversion
Sin and Salvation
Interpreting the Bible
God, Goodness, and Being
Time, Eternity, and the Mind
Summary
Analysis
[1] Augustine went to Carthage, where he found “a hissing cauldron of lust.” Unaware that God was his true need, Augustine looked around for someone to love. When he did fall in love, his love was mixed with much bitterness and trouble. [2] In Carthage, Augustine loved to attend the theater. He reflects that he enjoyed the sorrows that stage-plays made him feel, as he pitied actors for their made-up afflictions. The sadness he felt was shallow and artificial, and it only made his sin worse.
Augustine’s vivid description of Carthage as “a hissing cauldron of lust” captures his sense that the big city afforded more (and more scandalous) opportunities for sin than his provincial hometown did. His remarks on the theater reflect his later views as a bishop, when he discouraged his flock from attending stage-plays not only on the grounds that plays often showcased sinful content, but that by their nature, fictional plays are untruthful.
Themes
[3] God was merciful to Augustine from afar, even while Augustine continued to wallow in sin. At this same time, Augustine was studying law, and he conceitedly relished his position as the top student in the school of rhetoric. He spent his time with a group of companions called the “Wreckers,” who loved to trick and make fun of others. Augustine found their antics horrible, even though he wished he were more like these fellows.
By noting God’s mercy toward him during this low point in his life, Augustine advances his argument that even when he wasn’t interested in following God, God was actively seeking him and protecting him, meaning that even human wickedness can ultimately be used by God for good purposes. Meanwhile, the fact that Augustine hung out with the “Wreckers” and wanted their approval suggests that he hadn’t matured much since his pear-stealing days in Thagaste.
Themes
[4] In the course of his vain ambition to become a good speaker, when he was 19, Augustine studied Cicero’s Hortensius. This book, which commends the study of philosophy, changed Augustine’s life. He began to yearn for eternal truth. Reading Hortensius “inflamed” Augustine with “love of wisdom”—not merely with the various schools of philosophy, but with the pursuit of wisdom itself. Yet, Cicero’s work didn’t mention Christ, and even at this stage in his life, Augustine couldn’t fully embrace anything that lacked Christ.
Themes
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[6] Augustine began hanging around with “sensualists” (Manichees), who spoke outwardly of the Persons of the Trinity while having no inward grasp of the truth. Even as this group droned on about truth and offered him God’s beautiful material works as if they were the truth, Augustine yearned for “Truth itself.” Deceived, he consumed this counterfeit truth even though it did not truly nourish him. Augustine tells God that God is not the sun, moon, stars, or any other created work that people can see. That being the case, God must also be far from the images people create in their minds, which are less certain than the things they can see.
Themes
Augustine tells God that even “the fables of the poets” and pagan myths contained more truth than the sensualists’ stories of the five elements and “the five dens of darkness.” Yet Augustine believed the sensualists, misguidedly seeking God through his physical senses rather than through the mind, as God intended human beings to do.
Themes
[7] Augustine gave in to foolish arguments that asked him questions about evil’s origins and God’s bodily features. Because he was so ignorant, such questions troubled him. All the while, he was moving further away from the truth, not getting closer to it. He didn’t yet know that “evil is nothing but the removal of good until finally no good remains.” He couldn’t have known this when he didn’t know that God is a spirit, or what the Bible means by saying that human beings are made in God’s image.
Themes
Augustine also knew nothing of God’s law, which does not differ according to time or place. Nowadays, he observes, people tend to judge the biblical patriarchs as sinners, judging according to human standards and customs instead of divine law. They do not understand that good men were permitted to do things in ancient times that are not permitted in the present, even though the standard of justice remains the same in all ages. It is not that justice is variable, but that times change.
Themes
[8] Augustine holds that certain categories of sin, like sins of violence and “sins against nature,” must be condemned always and everywhere, but that offenses against human codes of conduct differ according to the conventions of different communities or societies. God’s law is always higher than human convention, though, and his creatures must obey his commands, just as, within human governments, lesser authorities yield to greater.
Themes
God himself, though, cannot be tainted or hurt by human sin. God punishes sin because, by it, people corrupt their own nature. That’s what happens when people abandon their creator and make a wrongful use of creation. Only through confession and repentance, then, can people come back to God.
Themes
[9] Besides those Augustine has just discussed, there are also the sins of those who go astray while following the right path. Such sinners at least show promise. And it’s sometimes the case that people appear to others to be sinning, yet in reality, onlookers don’t understand the intentions or circumstances behind the act. Meanwhile, God’s commands must always be obeyed, no matter how inexplicable they might seem at the time.
Themes
[10] As a young man, Augustine didn’t know any of this, and he mocked God’s prophets, all the while believing the sensualists’ ridiculous ideas, such as that a fig shed tears when plucked from a tree. [11] Nevertheless, God rescued him because his faithful mother, Monica, prayed and wept over his spiritual state. God even consoled Monica through a dream that, one day, Augustine would share her faith. This happened nine long years before Augustine’s conversion.
[12] Augustine recalls another way that God answered Monica’s prayers. Monica asked a learned bishop to talk with Augustine and persuade him of his errors, but the bishop declined, encouraging Monica to keep praying instead. He said that Augustine wasn’t ready and that in time, Augustine would discover his errors through his own study. When Monica persisted, the bishop replied that it wasn’t possible that “the son of these tears should be lost.”
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