The New Gospel

Whatever I understood of the arts of grammar and rhetoric, of dialectic, geometry, music and arithmetic, without much difficulty or tuition from anyone, I understood because my swift intelligence and keen wits were your gift: you know, O Lord my God.

It was because we were weak and unable to find the truth by pure reason that we needed the authority of sacred scriptures; and so I began to see that you [God] would not have endowed them with such authority among all nations unless you had willed human beings to believe in you and seek you through them.  

… as in the case of visible objects which we have not seen, we trust those who have … so in the case of things that are perceived by mind and spirit (which are remote from our own interior sense), it behooves us to trust those who have seen them … 

The reason why we believe he [Jesus] was born of the Virgin Mary is not because he could not exist in true flesh, and be seen by men in any other way, but because it is so written in Scripture, which unless we believe, we can neither be Christians, nor be saved.  

There is still another temptation, one more fraught with danger.  In addition to the [lust] of the flesh, which lures us to indulge in the pleasures of all the senses and brings disaster on its slaves who flee far from you, there is also a [lust] of the mind, a frivolous, avid curiosity … It masquerades as a zeal for knowledge and learning, and since the eyes are paramount among the senses in acquiring information, the inquisitive tendency is called in holy scripture [lust] of the eyes … From the same motive, efforts are made to scrutinize the natural world that lie beyond our sight; knowledge of these is of no profit, yet people want to know them simply for the sake of knowing.

Since, therefore, we are considering what ought to be believed in the sphere of religion, we do not need to inquire into the nature of things as did those whom the Greeks call physikoi [pre-Socratic philosophers of Ionia], nor need we fear that the Christian is ignorant of something they have discovered or think they have discovered concerning the properties and number of the elements, the movement and order and phases of the stars, the shape of the heavens … the measurement of time and space, the indications of imminent storms and hundreds of other such things.  This is because they themselves have not discovered everything … and in those matters which they boast of having discovered, much is a matter of opinion rather than knowledge.  For a Christian, it is enough to believe the cause of created things, whether in heaven or on earth, visible or invisible, is nothing other than the goodness of the creator who is the one true God … and that he is a Trinity, that is, a Father, the Son begotten of the Father, and a Holy Spirit who proceeds from the same Father and is one and the same Spirit of Father and Son.  

Admit even a single well-meant falsehood into such an exalted authority [Scriptures], and there will not be left a single section of those books which, if appearing to anyone to present difficulties … will escape, by the same baneful principle, from being classified as the deliberate tact of an author who was lying.  

Even you, my soul, are better than that [material reality], for you impart energy to the mass of your body and endow it with life, and no corporeal thing can do that for any other corporeal thing.

If Christ had not been put to death, death would not have died.  The devil was conquered by his own trophy of victory.  The devil jumped for joy, when he seduced the first man, and cast him down to death.  By seducing the first man, he killed him; by killing the last man [Jesus], he lost the first from his snare … By the very death of Christ the devil was overcome: he took, as it were, the bait [Jesus] in the mousetrap [the cross].

It is from pagans, rather, that you’ve taken the teaching of a single divine principle as a source of all things.  You’ve changed their sacrifices into your love-feasts, their idols into your martyrs (whom you pray to like they pray to idols!).  Like the pagans, you appease the dead with wine and feasts.  You keep gentile holidays—the first of each month, the January new year, the summer solstice.  And your way of living has remained just like theirs. 

I went on talking like this and weeping in the intense bitterness of my broken heart.  Suddenly, I heard a voice from a house nearby – perhaps a voice of some boy or girl, I do not know – singing over and over again, “Pick it up and read … I stemmed the flood of my tears and rose to my feet, believing that this could be nothing other than a divine command to open the Book and read the first passage I chanced upon … I snatched it up, opened it and read in silence the passage on which my eyes first lighted: ‘Not in dissipation and drunkenness, nor in debauchery and lewdness, nor in arguing and jealousy; but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh or gratification of your desires’ [Romans (13:13-14)].  I had no wish to read further, nor was there need.  No sooner had I reached the end of the verse than the light of certainty flooded my heart and all dark shades of doubt fled away.  

Demons also have such a very prolonged lifespan that they gain a much more extensive experience of things than we human beings can come by, given the shortness of our life … They have in fact at their disposal marvelous and invisible means of persuasion; the fine, rarified nature of their bodies enables them to penetrate the bodies of human beings unperceived, unfelt, and to mix themselves into their thoughts.

Yet allow me to speak, though I am but dust and ashes … I do not know whence I came into this life … I do not know where I came from.  But this I know, that I was welcomed by the tender care your mercy provided for me … The comforts of human milk were waiting for me

Even were we to suppose that no prior prophetic witnesses existed pertaining to Christ and the Church, what person would not be immediately impelled to believe that the divine splendor had burst forth upon humanity, when he sees how false gods are now abandoned and their images smashed, their temples destroyed or put to another use, and the empty rituals for so long part of human habit discontinued, while the one true God is invoked by the whole human race?  And all this took place through one man who was mocked, arrested, bound, scourged, beaten, insulted, crucified, scorned and put to death!

Where could a living creature like this have come from, if not from you Lord?  Are any of us skillful enough to fashion ourselves?

It is from pagans, rather, that you’ve taken the teaching of a single divine principle as a source of all things.  You’ve changed their sacrifices into your love-feasts, their idols into your martyrs (whom you pray to like they pray to idols!).  Like the pagans, you appease the dead with wine and feasts.  You keep gentile holidays—the first of each month, the January new year, the summer solstice.  And your way of living has remained just like theirs.

For a man does not therefore sin because God foreknew that he would sin.  Nay, it cannot be doubted but that it is the man himself who sins when he does sin, because He Whose foreknowledge is infallible, foreknew not that fate, or fortune, or something else would sin, but that the man himself would sin, who, if he wills it not, sins not.  But if he shall not will to sin, even this did God foreknow.  

I was as sure of having a will as I was of being alive … When I wanted something, or did not want it, I was absolutely certain that no one else but I was wanting or not wanting it.  

There was therefore never any time when you [God] had not made anything, because you made time itself.

… not one of the slanderous disputes to be found in the works of philosophers who disagreed among themselves, in any of the vast number of books I have read, had ever been able to wrench away from me the belief that you [God] exist, whatever may be your nature (and of this I was ignorant) and that the course of human affairs concerns you.  

… two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self

… as if any law ever regulated the duration of the punishment by the duration of the offence punished! … Must the criminal be confined only for so long a time as he spent on the offence for which he is committed? … or that murder, adultery, sacrilege, or any other crime, should be measured, not by the enormity of the injury or wickedness, but by the length of time spent in its perpetration.

Hell, which is called a lake of fire and brimstone [burning sulfur], will be material fire, and will torment the bodies of the damned [for an eternity], whether men or devils — the solid bodies of the one, aerial bodies of the others.  

 And who is not terrified by this repetition [in the New Testament], and by the threat of that punishment uttered so vehemently by the lips of the Lord Himself?

The more enjoyment man [Adam] found in God, the greater was his wickedness in abandoning Him; and he who destroyed in himself a good which might have been eternal, became worthy of eternal evil.  Hence the whole mass of the human race is condemned; for he who at first gave entrance to sin has been punished with all his posterity who were in him as a root, so that no one is exempt from this just and due punishment, unless delivered by mercy and undeserved grace [of God] … But many more are left under punishment than are delivered from it, in order that it may thus be shown what was due to all.

If Christ had not been put to death, death would not have died.  The devil was conquered by his own trophy of victory.  The devil jumped for joy, when he seduced the first man, and cast him down to death.  By seducing the first man, he killed him; by killing the last man [Jesus], he lost the first from his snare.  … By the very death of Christ the devil was overcome: he took, as it were, the bait [Jesus] in the mousetrap [the cross].

But what am I loving when I love you? … a light, voice, fragrance, food and embrace for my inmost self, where something limited to no place shines into my mind, where something not snatched away by passing time sings to me … where there is savor undiminished by famished eating, and where I am clasped in a union from which no satiety can tear me away.  This is what I love, when I love my God.  

What are you, then, my God? … ever active, ever at rest … seeking though you lack nothing … you are jealous yet secure, you regret without sadness, you grow angry yet remain tranquil … you take back what you find although you never lost it … you are never in need yet you rejoice in your gains … you made him [man], though the sin that is in him is not of your making … you are the disposer and creator of everything in nature, but of our sins the disposer only … 

But to whom am I telling this story?  Not to you, my God; rather in your presence I am relating these events to my own kin, the human race … And why?  So that whosoever reads them may reflect with me on the depths from which we must cry to you.

This, therefore, is the cause why we should prefer these [Platonists] to all others, because, whilst other philosophers have worn out their minds and powers in seeking the causes of things [Pre-Socratics, Aristotle?], and endeavoring to discover the right mode of learning and of living [Socrates?], these, by knowing God, have found where resides the cause by which the universe has been constituted, and the light by which the truth is to be discovered, and the fountain at which felicity is to be drunk.

So I was seeking the origin of evil … “Look, this is God, and these are the things God has created. God is good … Where then is evil; where does it come from and how did it creep in?  What is its root, its seed?” 

You will rarely find phrases in the Psalms that do not refer to Christ and the Church.

So I arrived at Carthage, where the din of scandalous love-affairs raged cauldron-like around me.  I was not yet in love, but I was enamored with the idea of love, and so deep within me was my need that I hated myself for the sluggishness of my desires.  In love with love, I was casting about for something to love … I was inwardly starved of the food which is yourself, O my God … the more empty I was, the more I turned from it [the food of God] in revulsion.  My soul’s health was consequently poor.  It was covered with sores and flung out of doors, longing to sooth its misery by rubbing against sensible things; yet these were soulless, and so could not be truly loved … I secretly entered into an enjoyable liaison, but I was also trammeling myself with fetters of distress, laying myself open to the iron rods and burning scourges of jealousy and suspicion, of fear, anger and quarrels.

Loving and being loved were sweet to me, the more so if I could also enjoy a lover’s body; so I polluted the stream of friendship with my filthy desires and clouded its purity with hellish lusts; yet all the while, befouled and disgraced though I was, my boundless vanity made me long to appear elegant and sophisticated … [all the while I was] laying myself open to the iron rods and burning scourges of jealousy and suspicion, of fear, anger and quarrels … I was held spellbound by theatrical shows full of images that mirrored my own wretched plight and further fueled the fire within me.

Although, therefore, lust may have many objects, yet when no object is specified, the word lust usually suggests to the mind the lustful excitement of the organs of generation.  And this lust not only takes possession of the whole body and outward members, but also makes itself felt within, and moves the whole man with a passion … so that the pleasure which results is the greatest of all bodily pleasures.  So possessing indeed is this pleasure, that at the moment of time in which it is consummated, all mental activity is suspended.

Human nature, then, is without doubt ashamed of this lust; and justly so, for the insubordination of these members, and their defiance of the will, are the clear testimony of the punishment of man’s first sin.

The only thing that constrained me from being sucked deeper into the whirlpool of carnal lusts was fear of death and of your [God’s] future judgment.

From the mud of my fleshly desires and my erupting puberty belched out murky clouds that obscured and darkened by heart until I could not distinguish the calm light of love from the fog of lust.

And so the two wills fought it out – the old and the new, the one carnal, the other spiritual – and in their struggle tore my soul apart. 

“Give me chastity and self-control—but please not yet!”