Confessiones

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Augustine is baptized by Ambrose of Milan

The confessions ( Latin: Confessiones ) are autobiographical considerations by the Christian doctor of the church, Augustine . They were created between 397 and 401 AD. Augustine was then bishop of Hippo Regius in the Roman province of Numidia , today Annaba in Algeria .

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General

The Confessiones contain a great deal of information about everyday life in the late Roman era, portrayed from the perspective of a man who comes from an elevated material situation. The usual amusements, schooling, the relationship to the family as well as to one's own sex and to the opposite sex are vividly presented, albeit mostly in a negative manner. Through the consistent use of the personal pronouns "I" and "You", every reader is put into the role of the protagonist who addresses his god. Therefore there is little that is too personal and therefore non-transferable.

The work begins with Augustine's personal development towards the Christian faith (books 1–8) and towards the end contains more and more philosophical considerations (books 9–13), especially on the subject of time (book 11). The conflict between Manichaeism and Neoplatonism and Christianity, which is also reflected in the life of Augustine, can be understood on the basis of the Confessiones .

Various aspects can be cited as the basic lines of the Confession:

  • The book is written as praying praise to God.
  • Man is fundamentally a sinner. Therefore it is mainly about "confessions" of sins.
  • One finds rest only in God.
  • Faith is a pure gift of grace.
  • Belief and understanding belong together.
  • God is eternity, truth, love and the good origin of all things.
  • Sin is a perversion of being, i.e. a turning away from the good, since the bad / bad is understood as a lack of the good ( privatio boni ).

To individual books

8th book

Book 8 contains the conversion story , dated pretty much around August 1, 386. Self-knowledge is a prerequisite for conversion. In the run-up to his conversion, Augustine experienced a conflict of will (cf. Rom 7) with self-accusations. Augustine is aware that his conversion will imply an ascetic-celibate lifestyle, which is particularly evident in his conversion text Rom. 13: 13f. it becomes clear:

"Not in feasts and drinking feasts, not in fornication and in bed, not in quarrels and envy, but rather attract the Lord Jesus Christ and do not worry about the flesh and his desires." . Section)

He comes across this place because a child's voice calls out to him: "Great lay, great lay" (take and read). In this context, the metaphor of light stands for clarity and certainty. The doubtful struggle is over.

"[There] the light of certainty streamed into my heart, all darkness of doubt had disappeared." (8th book, 12th chapter / 29th paragraph)

9th book

The vision of Ostia (9th book from chapter 10 / section 23) represents an important mystical-poetic element of the 9th book. It is about the mutual rapture of Augustine and his mother Monika shortly before their death. It is about the "future eternal life of the saints". The ascent to God is related to the relativization of the visible. Eternal wisdom is touched for a moment when everything else is silent (Book 9, Chapter 10 / Section 25).

10th book

As a starting point, three theses become clear:

  1. Knowledge of God is self-knowledge and vice versa.
  2. There is no knowledge of grace without knowledge of sin.
  3. These insights can be communicated to others so that they can also have such insights. That is why Augustine writes his book.

Experience of God is described analogously to sensual impressions, even if the sensual affections are external, while love of God is internal (Book 10, Chapter 6 / Section 8). On the one hand, he differentiates between God and the world in an anti-pantheistic demarcation, on the other hand, between the world and the self (10th book, 6th chapter / 9-10th section).

While searching for God, Augustine comes across the question of memory . But God is not an object that I could remember in an empirical sense. The search for God is the search for the blessed life ( beata vita - 10th book, 10th chapter / 29th section). Through this interlocking of the question of God with the question of happiness, Augustine is now concerned with finding the blessed life in memory.

"Because without knowing it, we could not love it" (10th book, 10th chapter / 29th section).

The good life is already remembered in advance in a kind of innate idea. Everyone loves the good life and therefore the truth. Because the joy of the good life is the joy of the truth (10th book, 23rd chapter / 33rd section). So God is not out of memory (Book 10, Chapter 25 / Section 33), because man senses him in his pursuit of joy and truth. Nevertheless, the explicit concept of God then comes from an externally revealing self-communication of God (Book 10, Chapter 27 / Section 38).

Towards the end of the 10th book he comes to speak of Jesus Christ as mediator of redemption, who is at the same time priest and sacrifice for people (from 10th book, 42 ​​/ section 67).

11th book

The 11th book contains philosophical reflections on time in the form of a self-talk with repeated prayers to God . One of the first central questions is what God did before creation (11th book, 12th chapter / 14th section). His answer is that he did nothing. God was before time (11th book, 13th chapter / 16th section) and only created it (11th book, 14th chapter / 17th chapter) - therefore the question is superfluous because it before that time there was also no then (11th book, 13th chapter / 15th section). Augustine juxtaposes time and eternity from Plato and Plotinus.

In experiencing the present (in the sense of forgetting about time, if you don't even notice how much time is passing) you can sense eternity. Ontological statements (“there is” / “it exists”) can be made about things, but not about time. Neither the future, nor the past, nor the present can be grasped in this sense. Augustine knows intuitively what time is, but as soon as he is asked about it, he does not know how to explain it. This means that conceptual objectifications of time are not possible. We therefore talk about time in metaphors of space (long, short).

Augustine also deals with the thesis that the three times past, present and future do not even exist (11th book, 17th chapter / 22nd section). This is also true insofar as the past and the future only exist as the present (11th book, 18th chapter / 23rd section). Hence he comes to the compromise conclusion:

“There are three times, the present of the past, the present of the present and the present of the future. Because these three are in the soul in a certain sense, and I do not find them anywhere else: the presence of the past as remembering, the presence of the present as looking, the presence of the future as expecting ”(11th book, 20th chapter / 26th section).

He also deals with how time can be measured (11th book, 22nd chapter / 27th section). This does not work through celestial bodies (11th book / 29th section), but only in "my spirit" (11th book, 20th chapter / 26th section). When asked what time is in itself , he comes to the conclusion that time is a kind of expansion (11th book, 23rd chapter / 30th section). Time is a mark of creation so that God himself is outside time and our understanding of time cannot be applied to him (11:40).

Time is not to be found objectively present in the world, but time is a relaxation of the mind - it is therefore an anthropological intersubjective phenomenon. Our mind is the creator of temporality:

  • Remember - the past
  • Look - present
  • Expect - future

12-13 book

In books 12 and 13, Augustine interprets the biblical story of creation as a praise to the “glory of God”. One of his main theses is that God is unchangeable: He is eternal and immortal and does not change his will (12:11), which is also related to his independence from time (12:12). In today's dogmatics, this doctrine of God's apathy is largely rejected. Furthermore, he discusses different interpretations of sentences from Gen. 1. This is followed by fundamental hermeneutical considerations: The whole divine law (i.e. the holy scriptures) aims at love (12:41), which is why it would be paradoxical to dispute over the texts (12.35). Because different opinions do not necessarily have to contradict each other:

ita cum alius dixerit, 'hoc sensit quod ego', et alius, 'immo illud quod ego', religiosius me arbitror dicere, 'cur non utrumque potius, si utrumque verum est'

“So if someone said, 'Moses meant what I meant,' and another, 'No, what I mean,' I believe, more in keeping with the fear of God, I would say, 'Why not both, if both is true? '"(12, 31st chapter / 42nd section)

The goal of creation is eternity, the restful, peaceful Sabbath (13th book, 35th chapter ff.).

Programmatic of the title

As Augustine later remarks, the title word has two meanings: Confessio peccati, meaning “ confession of guilt ” and Confessio fidei, meaning “ creed ”. A third meaning is often interpreted into it: the Confessio laudis , the praise of God. Confiteri means in its literal sense to admit, solemnly confess, proclaim, praise. A step out of the reservation of the inside into the public. The theme of the work is the wrong ways and the completion of the striving for union with God, as expressed in the well-known sentence at the beginning of the work:

"Our heart is restless until it rests in you, O Lord." (Inquietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in te, Domine., Conf. I 1)

The Confessiones describe in a kind of self-reflection phases of Augustine's own spiritual development. This finds expression in praise to God , which form the framework for the entire Confession . The Confessiones are divided into 13 books. Books 1 to 9 contain retrospective reflections up to the year 387. Augustine, who was a bishop at the time of the constitution , ignores historical and political events of those days and focuses on the development of his thinking, searching and questioning. In the 8th chapter of the 10th book there is a description of his state of mind at the time of writing, his personal description of his " sinfulness ", but also the psychological treatise on memory , the following passage of which Francesco Petrarca on the Mont Ventoux revealed his poetic vocation :

“Et eunt homines mirari alta montium et ingentes fluctus maris et latissimos lapsus fluminum et oceani ambitum et gyros siderum, et relinquunt se ipsos. - And people go there to marvel at the heights of the mountains, the immense floods of the sea, the wide flowing rivers, the vastness of the ocean and the orbits of the stars and forget themselves. "

genus

The Confessiones are considered to be the first autobiography that is not just a self-portrait, but also has decidedly historical features. The continuous representation of a context of life is regarded as constitutive of the genre. In addition, the work can also be understood as a song of praise and praise to God. At the same time it is an advertising pamphlet for Christianity and is in the tradition of philosophical advertising pamphlets of the Sophists (designation: Protreptikos ). The basic motive of Augustine is deep gratitude towards divine providence , which has wonderfully ruled over his life. At the same time, it seems that Augustine not only wants to promote Christianity, but also to provide life support for believing Christians. This intention becomes clear when he extensively refutes certain points of criticism that caused him problems, such as the figure of God and the question of the dualism of “good” and “bad”. Confessing one's own guilt and referring to God's grace are intended to give hope to the reader and encourage them in their quest to be a good Christian.

reception

Jean-Jacques Rousseau took Augustine as a model when he called his life confession Confessions .

Jacques Derrida uses the term “circumfession” (in the text of the same name) to refer to both Augustine's and Rousseau's confessions.

Hermann Detering claims in his work O du dear Augustin that the Confessions are a forgery by Anselm of Canterbury .

German translations

There are at least 25 German translations of the Confessions . The most important are:

translator year Web link annotation
Georg Rapp 1838 [1]
Otto F. Lachmann 1888 [2]
Count G. von Hertling 1905 Only the first 10 books
Alfred Hofmann 1914 [3]
Herman Hefele 1922
Wilhelm Thimme 1950 "Transmission"
Hubert Schiel 1950 "Transmission"
Carl Johann Perl 1955
Joseph Bernhart 1955 Close to the original
Hans Urs von Balthasar 1985 "Transmission"
Kurt Flasch and Burkhard Mojsisch 1989

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Henri Marrou : Augustine in personal testimonies and picture documents. Translated from the French by Christine Muthesius. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1958, p. 166.
  2. ↑ Alfred Schindler: Augustine . In: Theologische Realenzyklopädie (TRE) .
  3. ↑ Marcel Sarot: Apathy. II. Dogmatic . In: Religion Past and Present (RGG) . 4th edition.
  4. ^ Günter Niggl: Autobiography , in: Killy Literaturlexikon, Vol. 13, pp. 65 ff.
  5. ↑ Math Osseforth: Friendship in Saint Augustine's Confessions. VU Amsterdam, 2017, pp. 17-20; 263-6 , accessed May 24, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Derrida, Jacques: "Circumfession", in: Derrida, Jacques and Bennington, Geoffrey : "Jacques Derrida - A Portrait", Suhrkamp: Frankfurt / M. 1994 [French: 1991], pp. 11-323. See Schumm, Johanna: “Confessio, Confessiones , 'Circonfession'. On the literary confession of Augustine and Derrida ”, Fink: Munich 2013.
  7. ↑ a b c d e f Augustine research in Würzburg. Christof Müller: Forum contribution. ( Memento of the original from May 30, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved March 22, 2012. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.augustinus.konkordanz.de
  8. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Albert Raffelt (arrangement): Aurelius Augustinus: Confessiones, German = Confessions - University Library Freiburg. In: www.ub.uni-freiburg.de. Retrieved October 26, 2016 .

literature

Web links

Latin editions
German translations