The Confessions - Book VII

Though by now Augustine has somewhat abandoned a dualistic (good and evil are equal combatants) Manichaeism, and though he is dealing with Christianity as he hears it through Ambrsose' sermons, and as he begins to read Scripture, he is also trying to deal with it in the context of the current Neo-Platonic philsophy he is now reading.

He sort of understands that Scripture teaches that God is all spirit, and not any part material. However, since both Manichaeism and Neo-Platonism teaches that God is at least part material, Augustine mightily struggles on this point.

He also mightly struggles on the problem of evil - how to account for evil in the world? He finally reaches the point of believing that God created everything good, and that the evil we see today, including sinful man, is a corruption of the original good that a good and holy God made.

As Augustine studies more Scripture, he begins to realize much that the Neo-Platonists have left out in explaining all of what is around us. For example, they left out any explanation about how Jesus Christ is God in human form, the Word made flesh who dwelt among us. They leave out any praise to God. Worse, they tend to believe in more than one God (polytheism). He did heed their advise to turn inward, and there, inspired by reading Scripture, he found a powerful vision of God, seeing a light "higher than my mind." However, Augustine finds that the weight of sin drags him back from this vision, and a lack of humility keeps him from enjoying God and putting his full faith in Christ.

While Augustine was certainly aware of Neo-Platonism, and certainly influenced by its thoughts, his writings here certainly indicate that he did not accept it whole cloth, and tended to accept its thoughts only so far as he could find it accorded with Scripture.


On to Book VIII
Back to Book VI