Thursday, August 9, 2012

Prevenient Grace at Work in Augustine



Throughout Augustine’s Confessions Augustine paints a picture of his spiritual journey in life. Not only does he tell his story of how he came to salvation, but he goes deeper than this and describes his life and his inner struggles during his conversion process as well as his sanctifying process that took place after he was finally converted. Augustine’s Confessions depicts the Via Salutis, or the Way of Salvation. Augustine’s Confessions is Augustine’s own personal story of his experience on the road called Via Salutis. Augustine’s Confessions show that God worked in his life long before he sought Him in a part of the Via Salutis known by many as God’s prevenient grace.
Augustine begins his confessions by recounting his life as a child. In this way, he shows how his spiritual journey began as a child, unable to care for itself. He speaks of how his life as a newborn infant had been described to him. He does not remember his life as an infant, naturally, but he believes what he has heard about himself based on what he has seen in other children and what he has learned from the very nature of people. He describes his infancy as having been very blessed, for he had always been adequately cared for by his mother and his nurses. They watched over him, sang to him, taking care of his every need. He describes this love of a mother for her child and compares it to the love God has for mankind, His own children. He says to God, “I only know that the gifts Your mercy had provided sustained me from the first moment: not that I remember it but so I have heard from the parents of my flesh, the father from whom, and the mother in whom, You fashioned me in time” (I, ll. 3-6). When he was an infant, Augustine’s own mother and nurses allowed him to drink milk from their own breasts, giving him both nourishment and warmth. He describes this as an act of God’s grace upon him long before he had ever reached out to God. He says to God, “It was by Your gift that I desired what You gave and no more, by Your gift that those who suckled me willed to give me what You had given them: for it was by the love implanted in them by You that they gave so willingly that milk which by Your gift flowed in the breasts” (I, ll. 10-4). He shows that God was showing him grace, even when he had nothing to offer Him, nor recognized his own need for salvation. God’s grace was evident in the way God had brought Augustine into the world, and how He had provided Augustine with everything he needed as an infant. This idea of God reaching out and showing grace and love to Augustine before he himself reached out to embrace God is a part of the Via Salutis. It is something that may be referred to as prevenient grace, or grace that goes before. This grace is what began the Via Salutis in the life of Augustine.
Augustine continues his confessions by speaking of his life after having grown up from being an infant. He describes his childhood and how he had gone to school and learned about many different things. His childhood is also an example God’s prevenient grace as a part of the Via Salutis. He says, “I disliked learning and hated to be forced to it. But I was forced to it, so that good was done to me though it was not my doing” (I, ll. 102-3). Augustine recalls that as a schoolboy, he did not like being forced to learn, and that he only wanted to learn certain things. God, however, acted in grace, and caused him to be taught things that would be beneficial for him later in life. One such task was learning to read in languages such as Greek and Latin. As a boy, Augustine saw this as a way of being able to partake in the great literature of the Greeks and Romans. He was able to read the Odyssey and the Aeneid. He loved the Aeneid, and he says that he wept over Dido, who killed herself for the love of Aeneis. However, he also says that this weeping was foolish, for he wept over the death of nothing while yet his own soul was chained in death. He says, “Nothing could be more pitiful than a pitiable creature who does not see to pity himself, and weeps for the death that Dido suffered through love of Aeneas and not for the death he suffers himself through not loving You, O God […]” (I, ll. 30-3). He says that he ought to have wept for his own loss. Augustine shows how he had experienced a great longing for something as a child. He had longed for a love deeper than what he knew. He searched for it in the Aeneid and other great works of literature, but he did not find what he was looking for in them. He found love, but not the love that would make him truly satisfied; he only found love that left him feeling empty. In this way, Augustine shows once again the act of God’s prevenient grace to him taking place as a part of the Via Salutis. Augustine recognizes that God had been calling out to his own heart, showing him that he needed Him to fill it with His love, but Augustine did not fully understand and he tried to fill the place in himself that needed God’s love with other loves.
Augustine tells of how as an adult there was within him a sense of right and wrong that he was ashamed of. He knew that he did not follow what his moral conscience told him, yet the knowledge of good and evil was always with him wherever he went. He studied rhetoric and became a great scholar, but no matter how he increased in knowledge and man’s wisdom he could not escape his moral consciousness that had been with him since he was a boy. When his fellow scholars would ridicule beyond measure a new student, treating him shamefully, Augustine could not escape the feeling that this was wrong. He says, “Yet I was much in their company and much ashamed of the sense of shame that kept me from being like them” (III, ll. 48-9). He hated what his companions did, and yet, he felt himself drawn to them and enjoying their company at the same time. Augustine’s interests were divided in a way. He wanted to do what he knew deep down inside was right, but he wanted more to do whatever he wanted with whomever he wanted. This divided interest caused him to partake both in the sinful ways of his companions, as well as to draw the line and step back when he was made too uncomfortable. However, even when he did not go along with everything his companions did, he felt ashamed of himself for being plagued by such moral convictions.
He began to study the Bible in order to understand what the Scriptures said. However, he was not impressed with the words of the apostles as they were not nearly so eloquent as the poetry he had read as a boy of the Romans and the Greeks. He says to God, “My conceit was repelled by their simplicity, and I had not the mind to penetrate into their depths” (III, ll. 81-2). The Scriptures, however, were not without effect. They caused Augustine to be humbled to a certain extent, or to at least realize that he needed to become humble in order to fully grasp the mystery of Christ. He did not want to be humble, though, so he continued on in his life of sin; yet he could not escape what he had read and what his Christian mother had taught him. When his mother came to see him, he confessed to her that while he had not become a Christian, he no longer held to the belief of the Manicheans.
Augustine also writes of his failed loves in life. He writes how he lost his mistress, and how he could not bear to wait for the woman he would marry. He had a deep desire within him to love and to be loved. He searched for ways to relieve this feeling of longing in the love of women, but he was not satisfied even by this. It was after he had come to this point of losing the closest thing he had to love in his life that he was able to see how unfulfilling all of this actually was. He says, “When my most searching scrutiny had drawn up all my vileness from the secret depths of my soul and heaped it in my heart’s sight, a mighty storm arose in me, bringing a mighty rain of tears” (VIII, ll. 56-8). While all of this caused Augustine to recognize his own emptiness, it was God’s prevenient grace that once again came through and led Augustine to the point of repentance and forgiveness. God’s prevenient grace led him to read in the book of Romans where these verses stuck out immediately and spoke to his own riotous condition, saying, “Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and impurities, not in contention and envy, but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and make not provision for the flesh in its concupiscences” (VIII, ll. 90-2). It was this prevenient grace of God that led him to read these verses and allowed for him to be reconciled to God. In his Confessions, Augustine shows how God’s prevenient grace as a part of the Via Salutis had been given to him throughout his life up until the point in time when he was finally reconciled to God.

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