With avid intensity, I seized the sacred writings of Your Spirit and, especially, the apostle Paul. Where, at one time, I used to think he contradicted himself and the text of his words disagreed with the testimonies of the law and the prophets, the problems simply vanished. The holy oracles now presented to me a simple face, and I learned to “rejoice with trembling” (Psalm 11.7). I began reading and found that all the truth I had read in the Platonists was stated here together with the commendation of Your grace, so that he who sees should “not boast as if he had not received” both what he sees and also the power to see. “For what has he which he has not received” (1 Corinthians 4.7)? Moreover, he is not only admonished to see You, who remain ever the same, but also healed to make it possible for him to hold on to You. So also the person who, from a distance, cannot yet see, nevertheless walks along the path by which he may come and see and hold You. – Augustine (354-430), from Confessions (400), 7.21.27, in Henry Chadwick’s (1920-2008) 1991 translation.
Category Archives: Henry Chadwick
The Lord in His Sovereignty
But you, Lord, ruler of heaven and earth, turn to Your own purposes the deep torrents. You order the turbulent flux of the centuries. Even from the fury of one soul, You brought healing to another. Thereby, You showed that no one should attribute it to his own power if, by anything he says, he sets on the right path someone whom he wishes to be corrected. – Augustine (354-430), from his Confessions (400). From Henry Chadwick’s (1920-2008) 1991 translation, p. 168.
The Birthpangs of Conversion
My God, in my thanksgiving, I want to recall and confess your mercies over me. Let my bones be penetrated by your love (Psalm 85.13) and say, “Lord, who is like you?” (Psalm 34.10). “You have broken my chains; I will sacrifice to you the sacrifice of praise” (Psalm 115.16-17). I will tell how you broke them. Let all who adore you say, when they hear these things, “Blessed is the Lord in heaven and in earth; great and wonderful is His name” (Psalms 71.18-19; 134.6).
Your words stuck fast in my heart and, on all sides, I was defended by you. Of your eternal life I was certain, though I saw it “in an enigma and as if in a mirror” (1 Corinthians 13.12). All doubt had been taken from me that there is indestructible substance from which comes all substance. My desire was not to be more certain of you but to be more stable in you. But, in my temporal life, everything was in a state of uncertainty and my heart needed to be purified from the old leaven (1 Corinthians 5.7-8). I was attracted to the way, the Savior Himself, but was still reluctant to go along its narrow paths. And you put into my heart and it seemed good in my sight (Psalm 18.15) that I should visit Simplicianus. It was evident to me that he was a good servant of yours; your grace shone in him. I had also heard that, from his youth, he had lived a life dedicated to you. By this time, he had become an old man and, after a long life of saintly zeal in pursuing your way, he appeared to me a man of much experience and much learning. So, indeed, he was. Accordingly, I wanted to consult with him about my troubles so that he could propose a method fitted for someone in my disturbed condition, whereby I could learn to walk in your way.
From: Confessions by Augustine; translated from the Latin by Henry Chadwick (Oxford: The World’s Classics, 1991), p. 133 (8.1.1). Confessions, one of the great works of Western literature and the first surviving Christian spiritual autobiography, was published in around AD 400, when Augustine was 46.
Henry Chadwick (1920-2008) was Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge University, and General Editor of the Oxford History of the Christian Church and Oxford Early Christian Studies, among many other publications. He died on June 17, 2008, just six days before his 88th birthday.
Augustine on Music
Augustine mentions, more than once, that he was vulnerable to being moved by the sound of music. At Milan where, at first, he used to come to the cathedral to admire Ambrose’s oratorical skill, he found himself not only impressed by the content of the discourses but also gripped by the psalm chants. He knew that fitting music is capable of bringing the meaning of words home to the heart. When he was a young man, he found music indispensable to his life as a source of consolation. In his maturity, there was little time for that anyway, but he remained persuaded by Plato’s thesis that, between music and the soul, there is a “hidden affinity,” occulta familiaritas (Confessions, 10.49). No other art is equally independent of at least four of the five senses and so controlled by mathematical principles. What power of the mind is more astonishing than its ability to recall music without actually hearing any physical sounds? The observation seemed, to Augustine, a striking demonstration of the soul’s transcendence in relation to the body.
From: Augustine: A Very Short Introduction by Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 47.
Augustine’s “Point of Decision”
At the end of July, 386, in the garden of the house in Milan where he was living with his mother and with his former pupil, Alypius (a competent lawyer who, in 386, was still shedding Manichee beliefs and, later, became bishop of Thagaste), Augustine finally came to the point of decision. His health had become poor, with asthmatic trouble on his chest and loss of voice; whether this was a symptom of his malaise or a contributory cause of his decision cannot be determined. He decided to abandon his teaching post and, therewith, ambitions for a secular career. The crux was the abandonment of all intention to marry. Could he bring himself to live without a woman? From an African friend working in the court bureaucracy, he learned of the existence of a community of ascetics living in Milan and of the renunciation of wealth by Antony, the Egyptian hermit, whose biography had been written by Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, and was quickly translated into Latin for Western readers. If they could achieve continence, then he could, also. Or was his will too weak?
According to the narrative in the eighth book of the Confessions, written fourteen years later, he picked up his copy of St. Paul, opened it at random and, in the manner of those who sought guidance for the future from Virgil, took guidance from the first text he saw – the concluding words of Romans 13, contrasting sexual wantonness with the calling to “put on Christ.” He described his decision in exquisite literary language, with echoes from the poet Persius, a striking phrase from Plotinus, and a symbolic allusion to the fallen Adam in the garden of Eden. He recounted how he heard, as it were, a child’s bidding him to “pick up and read” (tolle, lege). How much of the narrative is plain prose and how much is literary or rhetorical decoration has been a matter of controversy. That there is a literary element is certain. It is also certain that, in Milan, at the end of July, 386, he made a decision to abandon marriage and secular ambition and to be baptized. He resigned his city teaching post.
The conversion was no sudden flash, but the culminating point of many months of painful gestation. He himself was later to compare the process of conversion to pregnancy…
From: Augustine: A Very Short Introduction by Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 26-27.
Henry Chadwick (1920-2008) was an English church historian, whose specialty was the patristic period. His older brother, Owen Chadwick (born in 1916) is also a church historian. Henry Chadwick’s elegant translation of Augustine’s Confessions was published in 1991.
Augustine on Alypius’s Integrity
One thing, alone, almost led him astray because of his passion for books. He could have manuscripts copied for his own use at special government rates. He deliberated on the justice of this, and decided on the better choice, judging it more expedient to keep integrity, which would forbid it, than to use the power by which it was an allowed perquisite.
This is a small matter. But “he who is faithful in little is faithful also in much” (Luke 16:10-22). The word which proceeds from the mouth of your truth will never be empty (cf. Isaiah 55:11): “If you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will give you the true? And, if you have not been faithful with someone else’s property, who will give you your own?” (Luke 16:11-12).
That was the character of the man who then attached himself to me and used to debate with me, hesitant what manner of life ought to be adopted.
From: Confessions by Augustine; translated from the Latin by Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 1992 [1991]), p. 103. Translating Confessions 6.10.16.
Posted in memory of Henry Chadwick (June 23, 1920 – June 17, 2008), one of the best patristics scholars of the second half of the 20th century. His translation of this famous spiritual autobiography is a very elegant piece of work, and one of my favorite translations. Having just discovered that Chadwick died last year, just six days before his 88th birthday, I thought I would post this excerpt in his honor. (Another favorite translation of this work is R. S. Pine-Coffin’s, from 1961.)
