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HeyJ •• (2014),
LVII pp.pp.
(2016), ••–••
678–691

GOD AND THE SOUL: AUGUSTINE ON THE

JOURNEY TO TRUE SELFHOOD
TERENCE SWEENEY
Loyola Marymount University, USA

In the past century, the decentering or opacity of the self has been of increasing importance in
philosophy, whether in existentialism, psychoanalysis, or post-modernism. This is often seen as
a new development after the confidence of Enlightenment and 19th century thought. While there
are certainly new trends in these schools of thought, they are not without precedent: Augustine
wrestled with the problem of selfhood and self-knowledge. In fact, he saw it as one of the two
primary issues for the intellect, claiming in his Soliloquiorum that he sought only to know ‘God
and the soul.’1 The similarities of Augustine’s search to contemporary concerns, especially
those of Christian existentialists, is marked and important. Augustine, in writing his spiritual
exercises, reveals to his readers the groundwork needed to return to true selfhood. We should not
treat Augustine’s philosophy of form and his existential concerns as unrelated but reflect on
them as revealing our existential predicament. Further, we must recognize the epistemic
problem of ourselves as known-unknowns; this is the hint that leads us to become persons on
the way to self-knowledge. Recognizing this, we can see that the necessary condition for
knowing oneself is that we must come to ourselves, stop wandering, and start the journey to
selfhood. We come to ourselves as lost but able to perceive the rough contours of our way home.
The way home is a turn from created goods to our inner selves where we find the Selfsame who
calls us to become selfsames. By reflecting on the beginning of the journey to true selfhood,
Augustine shows that we can establish the conditions for selfhood by becoming and remaining
peregrini, focused on the mystery of our self and our God, while ever seeking to return to our
true home with God who is the very self of our selves.

I. THE MYSTERY OF SELFHOOD

When Augustine says he want to know the soul, does he mean this as an academic pursuit? Is
he referring to soul in general or his soul in particular? The answer initially seems unclear. In
the Soliloquiorum, Augustine states he wants to know the soul and God, but only pages later he
prays ‘Oh God, who art ever the same, let me know myself and Thee.’2 It seems that these two
expressions are of a different sort: one desiring knowledge of soul and the other of myself. The
two statements are oriented differently. Augustine states his intellectual goal in a manner not too
different from a statement of intent or an abstract for a paper; whereas, the second expression
is a prayer spoken to God. One seems to seek a kind of academic knowledge of the nature of the
soul in the form of an abstract scientific search. The other is an impassioned plea more
reminiscent of a psalm than an academic abstract. These seemingly distinct epistemic goals are
part of what makes the Augustine’s Confessionum so bewildering to some. Why does Augustine
combine books 1–9 with books 10–13? The first part seems to be autobiographical, a story

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about the self seeking self-knowledge; whereas, the last books are structured more like an
academic discourse on the nature of the soul in time and on the book of Genesis.
Is this distinction between the desire for self-knowledge and the desire to know the soul an
accurate one? The opening nine books of the Confessionum are not devoid of philosophical
reflection nor are the last four books purely ‘academic.’ The self is a soul, thus knowledge of
soul would help in self-knowledge, and knowledge of the self as instantiation of soul would help
in understanding soul. However, this account still keeps this knowledge on a scientific abstract
level. We should not merely think of the self as a specimen that is better understood by knowing
the genus, or that knowing the specimen will give use greater data about the genus. For
Augustine, it does not seem that the problem of self/soul knowledge is scientifically abstract
like this.
It may be helpful to introduce a distinction made by Gabriel Marcel. Marcel indicates that
there are two basic forms of questions that face a human person. He calls the first kind a
problem. A problem is an issue or question in which the self of the questioner is not in question.
They are not implicated by the problem and can abstract themselves from the question.
Mysteries on the other hand do implicate the self; they are questions in which the questioners
are at question themselves. To question the nature of the soul is to inquire about one’s very self.
The question and the possible answers impact the person asking. Augustine’s intellectual
interests were oriented to what Marcel would later call mystery. This is part of the reason that
some 20th century scholars have cited Augustine as an existentialist. 3 Augustine took seriously
many themes that 20th century existentialist considered however he also believed in the essential
soul. Nonetheless, he did not detach the soul from an earnest account of the self; he kept the
intellectual and existential united.4
The intellectual goal to know nature of the soul and the prayer to know the self are not
distinct; they are an expression of a person trying to understand the mystery of the self who is
a soul. In this, the prayer for self-knowledge informs the statement of intent about knowing the
soul. Further, it is notable that in the Soliloquiorum, Augustine, as he learns from Reason,
moves from a more abstract desire to know the soul to a more existential desire to understand
his self. The strict separation of the intellectual and the existential is not present in Augustine’s
thought (although Augustine sees this divide in the curious).
In mystery, the intellectual goal of knowing the soul and the prayer to know the self are two
sides of the same coin. Augustine describes this mystery as an enigma. ‘I became a great enigma
to myself and I was forever asking my soul why it was sad and why it disquieted me so sorely.
And my soul knew not what to answer me.’5 The soul disquiets itself because it is a mystery to
itself; the solution cannot be found by reading academic texts that elucidate problems (although
that can help). It cannot be inquired into as ‘men proceed to investigate the phenomena of
nature. . . for they wish to know simply for the sake of knowing.’6 Robert Vallee rightly points
out that ‘Augustine is a thinker who is quickly bored with problems and fascinated by mysteries,
the mystery of himself and his world no less than the mystery of his God.’7 Those who are
dominated by curiosity only seek the solution to problems and ignore mysteries, which are the
questions toward which the mind should be oriented.
In this, an essentialist without an existential orientation reduces the soul to a problem and
thus a matter of curiosity. One can be curious about the soul, itching to know its arrangement
without recognizing the need for conversion. Augustine contrasts individuals who are curious
about problems (and thus problematize the soul) with those who are studious (and thus
recognize the mystery of the soul): ‘both have a keen desire to know, the curious man. . . about
things which do not concern him, and the studious man. . . about things which do concern him.’8
Augustine is not an abstract philosopher; he philosophizes with his soul on the line. He is
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looking for the revelation of the self and of God; this is his philosophical prayer. Augustine
critiques those ‘who love truth when it reveals itself’ and ‘hate truth when it reveals them.’9
Those who are curious about the essence of the soul may discover true things about the soul but
do not discover the truth about themselves. As Augustine notes, ‘much that they [the curious]
know is true, but they do not religiously seek the Truth’ and thus they do not find the truth about
themselves or of God.10 They have missed the mystery of the self-soul. In T.S. Eliot’s words,
they ‘had the experience but missed the meaning.’11
Augustine’s search for knowledge of soul and self is a search into the mystery of the self who
is a soul. In this sense, his philosophy could be described an existential essentialism. Further-
more, his writing is a spiritual exercise for himself and for his readers. Pierre Hadot, in
Philosophy as a Way of Life, writes:
‘Above all, the work, even if it is apparently theoretical and systematic, is written not so much
to inform the reader of a doctrinal content but to form him, to make him traverse a certain
itinerary in the course of which he will make spiritual progress. This procedure is clear in the
works of Plotinus and Augustine, in which all the detours, starts and stops, and digressions of
the work are formative elements.’12

It appears theoretical or systematic because there is form; it is an exercise because the self is
involved. Augustine’s more systematic writing (like De Trinitate) and his more personal writing
(like in books 1–9 of the Conf.) must be read as spiritual exercises for the essential soul.
A spiritual exercise is not an academic pursuit, nor is it merely an existential or personal
quest of self-actualization. It is the exercise of a self, who is a soul, trying to understand itself
and become the soul it is and is meant to be. The writing is both an exercise for the writer and
an invitation to the reader. It is not the claim to have figured out everything for ‘the modesty of
a mind admitting incapacity’ is a necessary part of the spiritual exercise.13 In addition, for
Augustine, the combined spiritual exercise of seeking the self and God is not an arbitrary
combination. These are not separate searches in which we try to understand two wholly
different subject matters. Nor is this search for one thing; rather, the desire to know God and the
self interpenetrates. The reasons for this will be clearer in the course of these reflections.

II. IS THE SELF-SOUL ACTUALLY A MYSTERY?

It may strike one that, for Augustine, the self’s knowledge of itself is not a mystery at all. In fact,
at times in Augustine’s writings he appears to present the human person as capable of solving
the mystery of selfhood with ease. In De Libero Arbitrio, Augustine claims that all one must do
to live the good life is ‘to do nothing but will it.’14 In De Trinitate, he writes ‘The mind knows
nothing so well as that which is present to itself, and nothing is more present to the mind as it
is to itself.’15 In fact, the mind does more than merely know itself, ‘the mind always remembers
itself, always understands itself, and always loves itself.’16 What then of the Delphic command
to ‘know thyself?’ Augustine writes that the mind ‘knows itself at the very instant in which it
understands the word thyself.’17 It seems from these passages and others that for Augustine
self-knowledge was not only achievable but comparatively easy for the mind which is present
to itself.
However, in other texts Augustine considers himself a great enigma. He sees within himself
parts that are unknown: ‘You cannot lay bare the lurking places of your mind.’18 Augustine
argues that the mind’s vastness is due to its memory and that the mind is memory. He describes
memory as full of ‘hidden and unsearchable caverns’19 and says that ‘in my memory too I meet
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myself.’20 The mind is a vast place full of unsearched areas and within this unknown interior, the
self meets itself. Where in the memory do we meet ourselves? The vastness is so great that
Augustine says of himself ‘I do not even know what I do not know.’21
Augustine is detailing a double layered problem: we are ignorant of our own ignorance.
However, if the self was truly an unknown-unknown, then there would be a total crisis of
self-knowledge, a kind of epistemic blindness that conceals our own inability to see. For
Augustine this is need not be the case. The self can at least know itself as unknown. This is why
Augustine can say of the Manichean Faustus that ‘He was not entirely ignorant of his own
ignorance’ and mean it as praise, faint though it may be.22 To have some awareness of one’s own
ignorance is a sign of self-knowledge. The self is a known-unknown.
How can we understand these two contrary accounts? Are we an easily known soul on an
unsearchable self? There are several factors at play that indicate that the latter account is the
fuller and more accurate one; however, the two accounts need to be taken in concert. First, it
should be reiterated that the self is not wholly unknown. In fact, if it were, it could not begin a
search for itself. If it were fully unknown, we could not seek it or know it if we found it. Nor
would one seek self-knowledge if one already had complete self-knowledge. The problematic
self relates to Plato’s claim in the Meno that a person ‘cannot search for what he knows—since
he knows it, there is no need to search—nor for what he does not know, for he does not know
what to look for.’23 The self is not an unknown-unknown, but rather a known-unknown and
therefore searchable.24
Augustine notes that when we remember or recall, what we remember was not totally lost or
else it could not be recalled. The self has forgotten itself but not wholly. Augustine further notes
that when something has been totally forgotten, one cannot be reminded of it but must have the
idea reintroduced. If the self were ‘utterly blotted out of the mind, we should not remember it’
and therefore could not seek it.25 The fully forgotten self has fallen into oblivion. This oblivion
is the hell of the self wholly outside itself and therefore wholly separate from God. However,
this is not the state of the soul in the world. We remember our self enough to desire to seek it
or at least be reminded of it. This sense of divide from self is the hint that God gives us. It can
be the intimation that leads one to stop wandering and start wayfaring. He writes that God ‘gave
my memory the hint of the answer that I was later to arrive at for myself.’26 This hint makes the
self a mystery for itself because it becomes a known-unknown. ‘Thou [God] in whose eyes I
have become a question to myself.’27 By making us a question to ourselves, God compels the
self to seek itself. It is this combination of knowing and not knowing, which Augustine calls
‘lightless knowledge or. . . enlightened ignorance,’ that allows our search to begin.28 The paradox
of a knowable unknown is the source of our restlessness, which sets the soul seeking.
This contrast can be clarified further by recognizing Augustine’s uses of conditional claims
attached to or related to his statements regarding the ease of self-knowledge. For instance,
consider the quotation cited above from De Libero Arbitrio, in which Augustine says that the
good life requires nothing but willing it. The key to the passage is that the person must wish ‘to
live rightly and honorable. . . before all fugitive and transient goods.’29 Once one has done this,
the good life will come easily. However, it is precisely this which it is so difficult or impossible
to do. In the Confessionum, he states that ‘willing means willing wholly.’30 The soul has been
scattered by its desires, and the weight of them makes it hard or impossible to will wholly. As
Augustine notes repeatedly, the soul is led by its desires but desire is like a weight. If we are
pulled in the wrong direction it is difficult (or impossible without help) to redirect our desires
to the true and eternal and away from the fugitive and transient.
Further, Augustine follows up his claims about the know-ability of the self in De Trinitate by
indicating major epistemological and ethical problems (which are, for Augustine, much the
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same thing). All we need to know ‘thyself’ is to know what ‘thyself’ is, but this is precisely the
crux of the issue. We misidentify ourselves! We desire transient goods and thus identify
ourselves with them, ‘from this arise its [the soul’s] shameful error, that it can no longer
distinguish the images of sensible things from itself, so as to see itself alone.’31 Due to this error,
we become less real, less ourselves. We identify ourselves with things and thus are outside of
ourselves. We attend to things and so fail to attend to our attending, which is the self. The self
is attention as knowledge and love. In failing to attend to this, we sink ‘into being less and less. . .
by desiring to seek knowledge from these things that are without. . . it [the soul] thinks of itself
so much the less.’32
The double meanings in this sentence are important: quantitatively and qualitatively. The
soul thinks less of itself in a quantitative way. It thinks of itself less often – its attention is
directed elsewhere. Augustine writes it is ‘one thing not to know oneself and another thing not
to think of oneself.’33 The command to know thyself is primarily a command to pay attention –
to think of oneself more. The soul also thinks less of itself in that it does not recognize the
quality of the soul in contrast to lesser goods. By identifying with these desired images, it binds
itself to them and, as such, thinks it is of the same nature as them. ‘The mind errs when it binds
itself to these images. . . [and thus] regards itself as something of this kind.’34 If one identifies
one’s self with transient goods, one thinks of his or her identity as being the same as those
transient goods. In so doing, one does not even know what a ‘thyself’ is (the nature of soul)
which as Augustine makes clear is required to know thyself. When one ‘knows’ yourself in such
a condition one is really knowing things that are not one’s self. Such a person is outside of
himself or herself and therefore is not the same as his or her self.
It would be easy to know one’s self if one was not distracted from the self, if one were not
outside the self. However, our distraction, the weight of our desire, is difficult or impossible to
correct. We can barely remember that we are more than we think we are. When we are
reminded, we are struck with how different we are from our true self. We discover that we are
not present to ourselves. This incongruity with one’s true self is the hint we need; because, it
points us to the destination that Augustine believes we must all set out for. Self-presence is not
a given; it is this self-presence that has been lost and must be worked for.
Susan Mennel, in “Augustine’s ‘I;’ ‘Knowing Subject and Self,” helpfully reads Augustine’s
philosophy of self through the lens of Jacques Derrida. She argues that Augustine does not
maintain a knowing subject in the manner that Derrida and others reject. Mennel writes ‘again
and again, Augustine explores the boundaries of consciousness and again and again he finds, not
the self-present knowing subject of philosophy, but the changeable, unknowable self, deeply
embedded in time and language.’35 Mennel’s account is helpful for showing the problem of
presence in Augustine’s thought; however, she does not fully account for the Augustine’s
positive description for self-presence. Augustine does find an unknown self embedded in time
and language, but this spurs him to turn inward, transcend the self, and find the immutable God
who is present to the self.
Mennel reads Augustine as deconstructing Neoplatonism, and this reading is based on her
attempt to demonstrate the supposed ‘irreconcilable differences’ between ‘Hebraic and Hellenic
strains of Western thought.’36 Such an impulse is valuable because it emphasizes the radical
quality of Hebraic thought. However, Mennel’s reading fails to take seriously how much
Augustine was indebted to Hellenic thought. Augustine both reconciles and revolutionizes
Greek philosophy and Hebraic scripture. The strength of Augustine reflections are that he
overcomes the differences of Hellenic and Hebraic thought and helps forge a new Christian
intellectual synthesis from them. Inheriting the Hebraic tradition, Augustine thought that the
self suffers under a diaspora from its true homeland. He also utilizes the Hellenic tradition,
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arguing that the self could develop a knowing-presence to the soul through the presence of the
transcendent and immanent God. His language continually weaves and transforms these two
strains. Augustine’s road to selfhood depends on his conversion to Hellenic Platonism and his
deep reflection on the Hebraic Psalms.

III. COMING TO MYSELF

If the self does not know itself and in fact is outside of itself, how can this be remedied? Clearly
conversion, a turning of the self, is needed, but how is this to be brought about? The journey to
the self begins with the hint at the heart of the paradox above. Somehow despite distracting
ourselves, despite paying attention to the wrong things, despite the crisis of forgetfulness, we
have been reminded of something. In the parable of the Prodigal Son, it is said that at the lowest
moment in the prodigal’s existence that ‘he came to himself.’ (Luke 15:17) This passage was of
special importance to Augustine. The soul has gone out of itself and in a moment of realization
comes to itself. This is only the beginning; the prodigal son must now begin his journey back
home.
What can account for this ‘coming to one’s self?’ Robert Vallee rightly points out ‘the
topography of the human heart is complex. The movements of the heart open a vast field of
questions, aporiai and hermeneutical tensions. Nevertheless, no mystery is more mysterious
than the soul’s awakening. The soul is a vast deep and is only explicable as inexplicable.’37
Vallee recognizes the mysterious quality of awakening. How could one explicate the transition
from sleep to awakening? We woke from forgetfulness; the awakening happened right before
we woke. If we cannot remember the exact moment before we woke up this morning, how could
we recall the moment before our spiritual awakening? Yet, Augustine does try to understand this
mystery without claiming a full grasp of it.
Part of the answer to this mystery lies in Augustine’s famous passage from Book 10 Chapter
XXVII. Augustine writes: ‘Thou were within me, and I outside; and I sought Thee outside and
in my unloveliness fell upon those lovely things Thou hast made.’38 Augustine was outside of
himself and far from God, wallowing in created things which are good in themselves but which
he turns into swill for himself. Nevertheless, it is important to note that, even at the lowest, the
human person is looking for happiness. What is happiness? Augustine states that happiness is
‘to be joyful in Thee and for Thee and because of Thee, this and no other.’39 Who then could be
said to be happy in this world? Augustine does not answer this question directly, but he does
maintain that we all seek happiness. Augustine, like the prodigal son, was seeking happiness in
his wandering. Even in his darkness, he was still looking for God and himself. The problem is
that he did not know what God and self are. This is the crisis of self-knowledge we noted in the
passages from De Trinitate. In this life, we are searching for God and soul, but we do not know
what we are doing, and thus get lost in the realm of forgetting by attending to the outside.
Augustine ‘was kept from Thee [God] by those things.’40 Those things are created things and
thus are ontologically dependent on God. ‘Had they not been in Thee, they would not have been
at all.’41 Augustine was thoroughly distracted from the true search, or as Eliot describes, the
prodigal is ‘distracted from distraction by distraction.’42 And yet, the things we distract our-
selves with are created goods. There is no Manichean god who made things to distract us. God
made them. The things in the world are in God and are only distractions because we make them
so. However, even as distractions, their goodness can cause them to be signs for us.
After noting that these things are in God, Augustine writes that ‘Thou didst call and cry to
me and break open my deafness.’43 Augustine’s language to describe this call uses all five of the
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senses. While this in part indicates metaphorical mental senses, which perceive God, it is clear
that Augustine wants us to realize that even physical senses give us the hint of God’s presence.
This has a further implication. Even the worst sinner still has some hint or intimation of God and
the self. The restlessness of our heart is a sign that we are not at home. ‘I walked through dark
and slippery places, and I went out of my self in the search for You and did not find the God of
my heart.’44 The person walking through dark and slippery places is lost but still wants
happiness. They are looking for God and themselves in the wrong place, but they are looking.
This looking, as a kind of restlessness, is a clue. The person may not know this, they may have
almost totally forgotten themselves, but they are looking.
Augustine refers to this as a kind of wandering. He writes ‘being a wayfaring spirit, I did not
return to you but in my drifting was born on towards imaginings which have no reality either
in You or in me.’45 Augustine does not use his term for the true searcher here: peregrinus.
Peregrinus is a term for a person who is a foreigner, a stranger in a strange land who knows they
are a foreigner and are striving to return home. The prodigal son becomes a peregrinus when he
comes to himself and starts to return home. However, in this passage Augustine say the self is
spiritus ambulans, a walking or traversing spirit; they are ambulando ambulabam, a wandering
wanderer.46 This is the spiritual wandering which Augustine describes by saying ‘I had spilt out
my soul upon the sand.’47 We pour ourselves out as a drifter does, going from place to place
without ever realizing two related truths: we are homeless and we have a home. Forgetting this,
we are borne towards imaginings with no reality; we move toward the oblivion of totally
forgetting God and self.
The fallen soul starts to head towards things which are ‘invented’ by their ‘own folly playing
upon matter.’48 In this state, the fallen soul becomes like ‘those, who love the journey rather than
the return home or the journey’s end, are to be sent into distant parts. . .. Never reaching home.’49
Their soul would be an unknown-unknown and therefore one could neither search for it nor
recognize it. If one gets to this state, it may be that one would have fallen completely, for what
could remind them if they have forgotten their homeland completely. It is not clear if Augustine
thinks this oblivion of the soul occurs in this life but it would be the case in Hell, ‘the distant
parts.’ However, the wandering soul has not fallen to the depths of oblivion. The wandering
wanderer is still driven onto something, this drive is a clue and so are the things we pour
ourselves out onto. Fallen souls are wandering wanderers in the world of things that God made,
things which point to God. The restless wandering, and the world wandered in, point to God.
The partial forgetting can be overcome.
This is what inspired Augustine’s reflections on Psalm 136 ‘By the waters of Babylon, there
we sat down and wept, when we remember Zion. . .. If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right
hand whither! Let my tongue cleave to the roof if I do not remember you, if I do not set
Jerusalem above my highest joy!’ (Psalm 136:1) Augustine understands Babylon as our place of
exile and the river as a symbol of mutability. What could be worse than to come to love our
wandering in mutability? As Robert O’Connell writes ‘whoever finds wayfaring sweet, does not
love his homeland’50 and thus cannot find their way to their homeland.
In this place of exile, the worst thing that could happen is to totally forget Jerusalem, the
place where we stand with God. To forget fully would be to ‘gain the whole world’ (to be
dissipated in time and space) and to lose (totally forget) one’s soul and one’s true home. To
avoid this, the soul, when it stops wandering and looking, must recognize itself as peregrinus.
The soul needs to seek its true home and journey to it. This requires the discipline to constantly
remind oneself that one is on the way and not at home yet.
How can the soul transition from being a wandering wanderer to being a peregrinus? This
can occur by realizing what we actually desire, happiness with God, and that we are looking for
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it in the wrong place. Surprisingly, created things serve as reminders precisely in that they are
created. They ‘remind’ us inasmuch as we understand them as created. The shift in attention
occurs in and through the very things we distract ourselves with but only if we come to see them
as created. How can those things that we had enjoyed as distractions become the instrument that
God uses to remind us of ourselves? How can the wandering wanderer become a peregrinus by
the very things that indirectly caused him or her to wander? They cannot act as reminders if we
have fallen into the non-being of invented vanities; however, up until then, they can be signs.
Augustine describes this distracted search earlier in Book 10. It is precisely the truth that
created things are in God that allows them to point to God. In Chapter VI, Augustine describes
himself interrogating the world, asking all the things he wanders amongst ‘what is this God?’
and they all answer ‘We are not your God; seek higher.’51 God is our highest love and the things
of the world remind us that they are not our highest love. Augustine begs the things of the world
to ‘tell me something of Him’ and they ‘cried out in a great voice: ‘He made us.’ ’52 What was
this strange dialogue? ‘My questioning was my gazing upon them, and their answer was their
beauty.’53 The word translated as beauty is species, which in Latin means both beauty and form.
The perception of the beauty/form of things is what attracts our attention. When we perceive
beauty rightly, we listen to the created things and look higher.
How does Augustine describe this looking higher? He writes, ‘I turned to myself and said,
‘and you, who are you?’ ’54 The things of the world (which are in God) tell the searcher of God;
in so doing, they compel the searcher to ‘come to himself.’55 This dynamic once again reaffirms
the interpenetration and mutual dependence of Augustine’s two epistemic desires to know God
and soul. The beauty of the world tells him that God made the world and this telling induces him
to turn inward. A true inward turn requires that the self no longer focus on the body but on the
soul: on the interior homine, the true self. The revelation of beauty is the revelation of form. In
seeing form in things, we look for the form in ourselves. This requires that we look within to
find our soul which is our self.

IV. THE SELFSAME

This is not the only account of ‘coming to oneself’ that Augustine describes. The beginning of
the journey, when we stop being wandering wanderers and become peregrinus, when we stop
just looking and start seeking, is depicted in Augustine’s description of his reading ‘some books
of the Platonists.’56 In these books, Augustine finds the same meaning presented in the opening
chapter of the Gospel of John. This is one of the conversions recounted in the Confessionum. It
is markedly similar to the description of how recognizing the species of created things causes
Augustine to ‘come to himself.’ The source of this turn is the realization that God and the soul
are incorporeal and that the God of the Platonists is the Logos of Christianity. Augustine, in
realizing this, writes of ‘being admonished by all this to return to myself’ (just as the created-
ness of created goods led him to turn to himself.)57 What does Augustine find there? ‘I saw your
unchangeable Light shining over that same eye of my soul, over my mind.’58 This is a central
idea throughout Augustine’s writings: God is within but also above. ‘It [God] was above
because it made me, and I was below because made by it.’59 The coming to one’s self is always
simultaneously a coming to God who is within and above.
At the center of me lies not me but God.60 Therefore, even when Augustine was outside of
himself, God was still within. This is why he admonishes us: ‘do not go abroad. Return within
yourself.’61 What will we find if we head deeper and higher? God. The heart of our hearts, the
light of our mind, the very self of ourselves, is God – within and above. He is both within
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because he is the ground of our being, and above because He made us. His being above also
guarantees that He is common to all—immanent and transcendent. The key sense in which God
is at the center of our being is that He is the ground of being and the light of our thinking. Upon
God all thing depend for their existence. And, for humans, God is the light without which
intellection is impossible.
Augustine, in discovering this, realizes he was with-out himself, far from the center of
himself, ‘far from Thee in in the region of unlikeness.’62 What is this region of unlikeness? This
region of unlikeness can be understood in a few ways. First, by confusing ourselves with that
which we are not, we are unlike ourselves. We misunderstand ourselves, thinking we are like
things that are unlike us. In addition, we are in the realm of extended multiplicity. We have
poured ourselves out on mutable things, which differ from each other, differ from one time to
another, are not the same as us, and are not the same as God. In this the soul has lost its unity.
We are in ‘that broken state in which my very being was torn asunder because I was turned away
from Thee, the One, and wasted myself upon the many.’63 The self has lost the unity of its self.
We are outside of ourselves, we do not know ourselves, and we are no longer one. This is what
we realize when we come to ourselves.
How can we return inside, know ourselves, and become one again? Augustine writes that ‘if
I abide not in Him, I cannot abide in myself.’64 What the peregrinus discovers in coming to
himself is that God is at the center of himself. The return to the father’s house is the return
deeper to the God who is the self of our self. We must turn our attention deeper. If I do not live
with the God within, then I do not live with myself.
What does God at the heart of the self say shall happen if we abide in Him? ‘Into Me you
shall be changed.’65 What can this mean? Augustine writes that ‘thou didst cry to me from afar:
I am who am. And I heard Thee, as one hears in the heart.’66 Far from our self, we hear the Self
of our self call us. What does God tell us? ‘I am who am.’ We discover that the ground of our
being is immutable and eternal, the One who is pure unity, and God who is always the same as
Himself. God is the Selfsame. Augustine prays to God saying: ‘Thou art the Selfsame. . . . man
is all wandering and whirled about with empty fantasies in the emptiness of his heart.’67
God is Selfsame. He abides in Himself eternally and immutably. He is never outside Himself;
He never wanders. His love and knowledge of Himself is always equal to Himself. As Augustine
writes, ‘The Infinite is Itself Its own object so that by Itself It is and Knows Itself and suffices
to Itself immutably the Selfsame in the super-abundant magnitude of Its unity.’68 God is One, the
source of all unity, the source of the unity of the soul. He is the source of the self’s determination
because within the self lies ‘a trace in me of that most profound Unity whence my being was
derived.’69 God, as the One is the source of our unity because in his perfect unity, he lies within
us, providing us with our integrity.
However, He is not identical with any one person for He is also above us. To find God in our
self does not mean the self is God but that we have a trace of God in us. In other words, I am
not God but without God’s presence in me, I would not be at all and without God’s light, I could
not reason. This trace should not be understood as a piece of God as the Stoics and Manicheans
thought. The trace is not a spark of the Divine Fire but is the incorporeal God in and above our
self. It is expression of our ontological dependence on God and our need for the divine light to
be able to think. God is immanent within our soul and transcendently above our soul. Once
again, we see the within and above dynamic and the interconnection of Augustine’s dual search.
What about the second half of the sentence? Man is ‘all wandering and whirled about with
empty fantasies in the emptiness of his heart.’ This is both a recognition of the difference
between Creator and created and of our existential situation. The contrast between the Selfsame
and our wandering and whirling is striking. God abides in Himself whereas we are wandering
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TERENCE SWEENEY 687

and whirling. Once again the image is not of a peregrinus but of a wandering wanderer. We are
not going anywhere, we are just going. We go out of ourselves and down from God. Where are
we wandering off to? Empty fantasies. The threat is falling out of real being into a kind of total
forgetting of self, of Zion, of God. And our hearts? They are empty. Why? Because, the self, as
attention, has vacated itself. If it wanders off completely, than why would the Selfsame abide?
The self would be sent off to distant regions.
The pain of the discovery that God is the Selfsame and that we are not is the spur to transition
from being a wandering wanderer to being a peregrinus. We see the restlessness of the human
heart and the rest of the Selfsame. What must we do? Abide in Him and then we shall abide in
ourselves. As with the prodigal son, when the peregrinus comes to himself, he realizes he must
head to the Father’s house. To abide in one’s self, one must abide in God. To abide in God is
to abide in one’s self. God is the Selfsame precisely because He abides in Himself. The self,
who abides not in itself, must be like God, must be a selfsame.70 Our goal is to know our self
and to love our self in such a manner that our knowledge of our self and our love of our self is
equal to our self.
Augustine is not claiming that this realization, this coming to oneself, will involve a full
transformation of the decentered self into a selfsame. Nor is this moment necessarily without
preliminary groundwork. It is notable that the Confessionum recounts various conversions.
There is not one conversion moment in which all is solved. The conditions of selfhood have
been laid, the impetus to return to the Selfsame has been sparked, the inward turn initiated.
However, the weight of our imperfections constantly pulls the soul back down and we then need
to come to our self again. Peregrini can find themselves wandering wanderers if they do not
remember that they are strangers in a strange land seeking their true home. The search for
knowledge of the self as soul is ongoing. John Cavandini explains: ‘There is no “self” with a
stable boundary at which one might gaze securely, but an ongoing transformation, and ongoing
enlargement of the heart, ongoing and increasing reference to the Love which is the highest
res.’71 In this life, we are always in progress and in motion—wayfarers trying to become
selfsames with the Selfsame. The peregrinus must remain, in the words of Gabriel Marcel,
‘acutely conscious that his condition is that of a traveler.’72

V. CONCLUSION

Augustine has shown the structure of the beginning of the journey to selfhood, of the coming
to oneself needed to start our return. The journey will require many things, including but not
limited to: desire of the good, true, and beautiful, askesis of sinful desires, a faith which inspires
study and not curiosity, growth in understanding, collecting (cogitate) oneself together, binding
(religio) oneself to God, and above all, the grace to begin and continue.73 From the moment the
soul comes to itself, it begins a long and difficult journey. As Philip Carey makes clear ‘for
Augustine, the road to happiness is long and arduous—but at the end of it we find a homeland
that is natural to us.’74 All of this means, we must keep going. The peregrinus does not arrive
home by merely realizing he or she is not at home. The Confessionum demonstrates that this is
not something accomplished all at once. Even after Augustine’s conversions, his reflections on
memory and time show a man journeying to himself and to his home. This journey will take him
to the depth of his being to find the very Source of being. However, the conditions for selfhood
have been laid in this coming to himself. For Augustine, the spiritual exercise of writing the
Confessionum is meant to aid his reader in having this moment. He is trying to help us realize
we are an enigma, that the lovely goods we pour ourselves into are telling us to turn inward, and
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GOD AND THE SOUL: AUGUSTINE ON THE JOURNEY TO TRUE SELFHOOD 11

in turning inward we turn up to the Selfsame who is the ground and goal of our self. In other
words, Augustine wants us discover that to reach the journey’s destination, we must begin the
journey.

Bibliography

Augustine, Confessionum libri tredecim, Second Edition, Translated by F.J. Sheed. (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett
Publishing Company, Inc., 2006.
———. ‘De Libero Arbitrio libri tres.’ Augustine Earlier Writings. Ed. And Trans. J.H.S. Burleigh. (Philadel-
phia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1953.
———. On the Trinity: Book 8–15. Translated by Stephen McKenna, Edited by Gareth B. Matthews. Cam-
bridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
———. ‘De Uera Religione liber unus,’ Augustine Earlier Writings. Edited by And Translated by J.H.S.
Burleigh. Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1953.
———. ‘De Utilitate Credendi liber unus.’ Augustine Earlier Writings. Edited and translated by J.H.S.
Burleigh. Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1953.
———. ‘Soliloquiorum libri duo.’ Augustine Earlier Writings. Edited and Translated by J.H.S. Burleigh.
(Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1953.
———. Soliloquies and the Immortality of the Soul. Translated by Gerard Watson, Warminster: UK, Aris &
Phillips, 1990.
Carey, Philip. Augustine’s Invention of the Inner Self: the Legacy of a Christian Platonist. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press, 2000.
Casserley, J.V. Langmead. The Christian in Philosophy, London, JUK: Faber & Faber Ltd., 1949.
Cavandi, John C. ‘The Darkest Enigma: Reconsidering the Self in Augustine’s Thought.’ Augustinian Studies
38:1 (2007) 119–132.
Eliot, T.S. ‘The Four Quartets.’ The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909–1950. New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace
& World, Inc., 1971.
Hadot, Pierre. Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault. Oxford, UK: Wiley
Blackwell, Ltd., 1995.
Lewis, Gordon R. ‘Augustine and Existentialism,’ Bulletin of the Evangelical Theological Society, 8:1 (Winter,
1965), 13–22.
Marcel, Gabriel. Homo Viator: Introduction to the Metaphysics of Hope. Translated by Emma Craufurd and
Paul Seaton. South Bend, IN: St Augustine’s Press, 2010.
Mennel, Susan. ‘Augustine’s ‘I’: The ‘Knowing Subject’ and the Self.’ Journal of Early Christian Studies. 2:3.
(1994), 291–324.
O’Connell, Robert. Soundings in St. Augustine’s Imagination. New York, NY: Fordham University Press,
1994.
Plato, Meno, Translated by G.M.A. Grube. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, INC., 1981.
Stock, Brian. Augustine’s Inner Dialogue: The Philosophical Soliloquy in Late Antiquity. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self: the Making of Modern Identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1989.
Vallee, Robert. ‘Augustine’s Confessions and the Impossibility of Confessing God.’ Auslegung. 25:1 (Winter/
Spring 2002), 37–62.

Notes

1 ‘Deum et animam scire cupio.’ Augustine, Sol. 1.2.7; ‘Soliloquies.’ Augustine Earlier Writings. Ed. And
Trans. J.H.S. Burleigh. (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1953), p. 26.
2 ‘Deus semper idem, noverim me, noverim te.’ Sol., 2.1.1; p. 41.
3 J.V. Langmead Casserley, in The Christian in Philosophy places Augustine in the existential tradition
which he says ‘is not really modern at all, but the heir of a long philosophical tradition.’ (p. 45) Casserly’s claim
is predicated on his view that existentialism depends not on an outward examination of the world (‘being a mere
12 GOD AND THE SOUL: AUGUSTINE ON THE JOURNEY TO TRUE SELFHOOD
TERENCE SWEENEY 689

spectator of reality’) but by ‘being real.’ (p. 45) Casserly explains that this ‘being real’ is ‘Self-conscious
existence’ which is ‘reality conscious of itself, and hence, self-consciousness is the indispensable clue to the
solution of the mystery of being.’ (p. 45)
4 Gordon R. Lewis, in ‘Augustine and Existentialism,’ uses Paul Tillich three forms of existentialism to
describe Augustine’s thought. For Tillich, there are three ways of being existentialist: having ‘an existential
point of view (fallenness), an existential content or philosophy (non-essentialist) and an existential attitude
(involvement).’(p. 13) Lewis argues that Augustine is an existentialist on the first and third accounts but not on
the second. Lewis writes ‘Augustine’s existential point of view is... within the frame of essentialist ontology.’
(p. 15) Thus Augustine believes in ‘man-ness’ but ‘is passionately concerned... with... a particular man—
himself!’ (p. 16) A pure essentialist would be unconcerned with either an existentialist point of view or attitude;
whereas, Augustine is concerned with essences and man in particular.
5 Augustine, Conf. 4.4.9; Confessions of St Augustine, Second Ed. Trans. F.J. Sheed. (Indianapolis, IN:
Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2006), p. 59.
6 Ibid, 10.35.55, p. 220.
7 Vallee, Robert. ‘Augustine’s Confessions and the Impossibility of Confessing God’ Auslegung. 25:1
(Winter/Spring 2002), p. 54. Vallee, who later in this essay quotes Marcel directly, is utilizing Marcel’s mystery
problem distinction here.
8 Util. Cred. 1.9.22; ‘On the Usefulness of Belief,’ Augustine Earlier Writings. Ed. And Trans. J.H.S.
Burleigh. (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1953), p. 308.
9 Conf., 10.23.34; p. 208.
10 Conf., 5.3.5; p, 78.
11 T.S. Eliot, ‘The Four Quartets,’ The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909–1950 (New York, NY: Harcourt,
Brace & World, Inc., 1971), p. 133.
12 Pierre Hadot. Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault. (Oxford, UK:
Wiley Blackwell, Ltd., 1995), 64.
13 Conf., 5.2.12; p. 78.
14 Lib arb 1.13.29; ‘On the Free Will.’ Augustine: Earlier Writings. Ed. And Trans. J.H.S. Burleigh.
(Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1953), p. 129.
15 Trin. 14.5.7; On the Trinity: Book 8–15, Trans. Stephen McKenna, Ed. Gareth B. Matthews. (Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 143.
16 Ibid, 14.7.9; p. 146.
17 Ibid, 10.9.12; p. 54.
18 Util. Cred. 1.9.23; p. 310.
19 Conf., 10.10. 13; p. 196.
20 Ibid, 10.10.14; p. 196.
21 Ibid, Conf., 11.15.32; p. 251.
22 Ibid, 5.7.12, p. 82.
23 Plato, Meno, Trans. G.M.A. Grube. (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, INC., 1981), 13.
24 Charles Taylor, in Sources of the Self, writes that the soul ‘can utterly fail to know itself; it can be utterly
mistaken about its own nature, as Augustine thought the he himself had been when he was a Manichaean.’
However ‘we can search to know ourselves; and yet we wouldn’t know where to begin looking or be aware we
had found ourselves unless we already had some understanding of ourselves. Augustine faces the problem of
how we can both know and not know, as Plato did in the Meno.’ (p. 134)
25 Conf., 10.14.28; p. 205.
26 Conf., 4.3.6; p. 58.
27 Ibid, 10.33.50; p. 217.
28 Ibid, 12.5.5; p. 263.
29 Lib arb., 1.13.29; p. 129.
30 Conf., 8.10.20; p. 154.
31 Trin., Book 10: 8, 11; p. 53.
32 Ibid, Book 10: 5, 7; p. 50.
33 Trin., Book 10: 5, 7; p. 50.
34 Ibid, Book 10: 6, 8; p. 50.
35 Susan Mennel, ‘Augustine’s ‘I’: The ‘Knowing Subject’ and the Self.’ Journal of Early Christian Studies.
2:3. (1994), p. 309.
36 Mennel, 323.
37 Vallee, p. 42.
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GOD AND THE SOUL: AUGUSTINE ON THE JOURNEY TO TRUE SELFHOOD 13

38 Conf., 10.27.38; p. 210.

39 Conf., 10.22.32; p. 207.
40 Ibid, 10.27.38; p. 210.
41 Ibid, 10.27.38; p. 210.
42 Eliot, p. 120.
43 Conf., 10.27.38; p. 210.
44 Conf., 6.1.1; p. 95.
45 Ibid, 4.15.26; p. 70.
46 Robert O’Connell notes the distinction between two types of wayfarers in Augustine’s Exposition on the
Psalms. O’Connell writes that Augustine imagines ‘peregrine as falling into two class: first those who have
wandered away...and have yet found (or been found by!) the ‘Way.’ These... have neither destination nor sense
of direction; they roam about aimlessly, pointless. Peregrini, they may not even realize that they are wayfarers!
But then there are those who have come to know the Way... these no longer roam or wander, but direct their
steps along the Way that they know will lead them home—again.’ (Soundings in Augustine’s Imagination, p. 73)
I agree with O’Connell that these are both classes of Peregrini but for the purposes of this paper, I will utilize
wandering wanderer or ambulando ambulabam for the first class, and peregrinus for the wayfarer on the Way.
It is an important distinction that Augustine use to point out the difference between foreigners who think they
are at home, and foreigners heading toward their true home.
47 Conf., 4.8.13; 62.
48 Ibid, 4.15.26; 70.
49 Augustine, ‘De Uera Religione liber unus,’ 1.29.105; Augustine Earlier Writings. Ed. And Trans. J.H.S.
Burleigh. (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1953), p. 279.
50 Robert O’Connell, Soundings in St. Augustine’s Imagination, (New York, NY: Fordham University Press,
1994) p. 73.
51 Conf., 10.6.9; p. 192.
52 Ibid, 10.6.9; p. 192.
53 Ibid, 10.6.9; p. 193.
54 Conf., 10.6.9; p. 193.
55 Brian Stock explains this response to created goods writing: ‘It is possible for the individual to perceive
and to be inspired by the higher intrinsic beauty of God’s nature; however, in order to profit from this aesthetics,
it is necessary for the mind to remain with God, that is, to focus its attention on unchanging interior values.’ (p.
119)
56 Conf., 7.9.13; p. 126.
57 Ibid, 7.10.16; p. 128.
58 Conf., 7.10.16; p. 128.
59 Ibid, 7.10.16; p. 129.
60 Philip Carey in Augustine’s Invention of the Inner Self portrays the vastness of this inner self where we
find God within and above: ‘The inner space Augustine describes is not a little closet wholly shut from light,
but broad halls and fields and vast courtyards. We could in fact picture it as the inner courtyard of a great palace,
for the crucial thing about it is that it has no roof: it is open to the light of the Sun above. In fact, it is the only
place to go to see the Sun shining clearly.’ (p. 123) Notably, Carey’s description of the inner space indicates the
transcendence and immanence of God to the self, a concept that Augustine cultivates from his Neoplatonic
reading of Scripture. Carey, in contrast to Susan Mennel, rightly sees that the light remains one important
metaphor for God’s work in the self.
61 Uera rel, 1.29.72; p. 262.
62 Conf., 7.10.16; p. 129.
63 Conf., 2.1.1; p. 25.
64 Ibid, 7.11.17; p. 129.
65 Ibid, 7.10.16; p. 129.
66 Ibid, 7.10.16; p. 129.
67 Ibid, 12.11.13; p. 267.
68 Ibid, 13.11.12; p. 296.
69 Conf., 1.20.31; p. 20.
70 Brian Stock, in Augustine’s Inner Dialogue, makes an important point about this. ‘This is not a question
of the mind becoming divine (qui solus sufficit) but of a meditative self-awareness, which is a temporary taste
of things to come.’ (p. 119) Stock underestimates the importance of divinization; however, he is right to
recognize that, for Augustine, earthly self-awareness does not entail become fully a selfsame. But it does offer
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a taste of what is to come. This taste is part of what motivates us to keep going. This is what Augustine’s account
of the vision at Ostia portrays.
71 John C. Cavardini ‘The Darkest Enigma: Reconsidering the Self in Augustine’s Thought.’ Augustinian
Studies 38:1 (2007), 132.
72 Gabriel Marcel, Homo Viator: Introduction to the Metaphysics of Hope. Trans. Emma Craufurd and Paul
Seaton. (South Bend, IN: St Augustine’s Press, 2010), p. 146.
73 To become a selfsame in the Selfsame is natural to us, but grace is still needed. For Augustine, this grace
has been at work throughout the process, including in the moment of turning to oneself. In his later thought,
Augustine greatly expands on the importance of grace.
74 Carey, 69.