Catholic Thought discussion

Augustine is eager the meet the visiting Manichean bishop Faustus, who had a great reputation. In his readings he had encountered truths which posed discrepancies to Manichean writings, and he was hoping Faustus had the answers. He was quite disappointed, as Faustus wasn’t nearly as well educated as he had assumed and his reputation was based more on eloquence of speech than learning. He is starting to have serious doubts about the sect. “(13) I had found nothing better than this sect to be content with it for the time being, unless some preferable option presented itself.”

Augustine gets an opportunity to teach in Rome and he accepts. His mother Monica, who is still fervently praying for his conversion, doesn’t want him go but he manages to sneak away. “(18) I liked to excuse myself and lay the blame on some other force that was with me but was not myself. But in truth, it was all myself.”

His resistance to Christianity, however, is weakening. “(21) While still at Carthage I had been influenced in a preliminary way by the lectures of a certain Elpidius who disputed the Manichees face-to-face. … [The Manichees] alleged that the New Testament writings had been falsified by some unknown persons bent on interpolating the Christian faith with elements of the Jewish law; but they produced no incorrupt exemplars themselves. … I gasped for the pure and unpolluted air of your truth, but found myself unable to breathe it.”

After some time he accepts a position as master of rhetoric in Milan. This is quite extraordinary. The footnotes in my edition state:

” Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (ca. 340-402) was urban prefect of Rome, 384-385, when this request from Milan, now the imperial see, came. Augustine is being elevated to the official imperial rhetor – the emperor’s “speech writer” and minister of propaganda – testifying not only to how illustrious be had become, but also to how ensconced in the pagan scene he was.”

In Milan is also Bishop Ambrose, and one senses we’re reaching a pinnacle, a turning point in Augustine’s conversion. “(24) I realized that the Catholic Faith, in support of which I had believed nothing could be advanced against Manichean opponents, was in fact intellectually respectable. This realization was particularly keen when once, and again, and indeed frequently, I heard some difficult passage of the Old Testament explained figuratively; such as passages had been death to me because I was taking them literally.”

What we’ve been anticipating for some time, he leaves the Manichees. “(25) I resolved therefore to live as a catechumen in the Catholic Church, which was what my parents had wished for me, until some kind of certainty dawned by which I might direct my steps aright.”

I have to say it's such a relief to be reading this happier part of the book. His tone sounds so much more cheerful as he's coming slowly but surely round to the true faith. His poor mother....

Well, the sneaking away part was pretty bad. Nobody likes to be deceived, and if your own son does it, I would not be too happy, to say the least.

Of all the chapters I’ve read so far - I've completed the first seven - I think Book V may be the most interesting to me. I first read the chapter and when I stepped back I found I didn’t remember a blessed thing. I must have slept walked through, and so I went back and read it a second time. So glad I did. I found his engagement with Faustus fascinating, and how the fallacies of the Manicheans gets pulled out, how through that discussion Augustine loses faith in the heresy, how Augustine sets out for Rome because the students were so disruptive in his class, how Augustine finds the students in Rome to be just as troublesome, and so he sets out for Milan to teach. There he meets the future saint, Bishop Ambrose, and begins to become intrigued with the Catholic faith. The scope of the chapter is vast but also nuanced. Notice the contrast in Bishops that bookends the chapter: Faustus from the Manicheans and Ambrose from the Catholics.