Cumulative essay portion of final

3 hours for exam

Study guide gives good idea of essay prompt

Outline Lecture Seventeen—Harnessing Willpower: St. Augustine

I) The Trouble with Stealing Fruit Simple joy of transgressing and breaking rules
a) Problem of insufficient willpower when it comes to weaknesses and proclivities
i) What good is all the wisdom in the world when we have so little willpower?
ii) Augustine and the Pears
(1) “Loaded with fruit that was desirable neither in appearance nor in taste”
(2) “Foul was the evil, and I loved it” (II, 4)
(a) Like Adam and Eve eating the apple out of temptation simply because they
were told not to
(b) Rebel in each of us that can bring about a thrill
(3) “Oh friendship too unfriendly!”
Referring to the bonding that occurs with people that break rules together.
(a) Could be peer pressure or it could be seeking respect
(b) Seeking “honor among men and deceitful riches” in the “City of Men”
(i) All temptations are found in the city of men
(ii) Sex, pursuit of prestige, greed, intellectual vanity
1. Very relevant to Augustine
2. When one is so gifted you need even more willpower not to be
arrogant and prideful
3. Those who consider themselves the wisest are the most at risk for a
greater fall because they think they are bigger or smarter than they
really are
(c) Confessions is a study on the universal concessions of weaknesses and
willpower vs. temptations and control of impulses
b) Augustine’s “City of Men” vs. “City of God”
i) The worldly trappings of sex, prestige, wealth, and even intellectual vanity
ii) Added vulnerability of someone like him with so many talents at his disposal!
(1) Why those who consider themselves “wise” fall the hardest
(a) Augustine very much in danger of this
iii) Can willpower be sought only from within or must we harness it from without?
c) The Protestant View: Martin Luther on Free Will (1483-1546)
Common thought on the role of free will on temptation
i) Rejects any reliance on so-called “free will”
(1) No individual can secure his or her own salvation, you can only rely on faith
alone
ii) “Free-will” only makes us more vulnerable to the “assaults of the devil”
(1) Free will is a delusion and if we rely too much on it we are more in danger of sin
and transgression from the devil
(2) When one exercises free will it is a transgression against God
(3) Only way is absolute faith in God
iii) “The just shall live by faith alone”
 (1) “Works” vs. Faith
(a) Faith is the belief, works is what he dismisses
(b) Rules, regulations, fasting, giving alms
(i) Can’t barter way into salvation
(ii) Only comes down to absolute faith in scriptures
(2) Truth lies only in the Scriptures and the faith they inspire within
(a) No room for free will or ways where people can strengthen his or her
willpower
(b) No point of reference for Augustine to increase his willpower

II) Confessions: A Testimony of Redemption

a) Augustine’s Brief Biography (354-430)
i) Born into a lower gentry class family in Thagaste
(1) Modern day Algeria – north African
(2) Mother was Christian (Monica) – father was pagan
ii) Parents’ hope for upward mobility through education and patronage
Sponsorship to become some sort of official
(1) Graduate study in rhetoric in Carthage between 376-383
(a) Art of persuasion
(b) Took lover to Carthage – never married her because she was from a lower
social class
(2) Invited to Italy by a wealthy patron in 383
(a) To Milan
(b) Became teacher in Milan before going to court and becoming an official
(c) Instructing the emperor Valentinian
iii) Returned to North Africa and became the Bishop of Hippo
(1) Wrote Confessions in 397 at the age of 43
(2) 33 baptism
b) The Meaning of “Confessions”
Similar to the Apology – Confessions: Personal testimony to redemption
Reason why there are lots of references to his sins of the past
i) Best understood as a “testimony of redemption” addressed to God
(1) Slow long journey to get from city of men to city of God
ii) Augustine’s confrontation with the deepest and darkest recesses of his heart
(1) “I write of them not because I love them, but that I may love you [more]”
(a) ‘them’ lust, thievery, vanity, etc…
(b) Needs to get over them and confess them before he can actually reach God
(c) Saying that none of us can move forward in Faith until we address the sins we
committed in the past and start a new life to be born again
(i) Confessions are his way of addressing his sins
c) “Love of this World is Fornication Against You”
i) Carnal lust
(1) Premonition: His father’s joy at seeing signs of his puberty in the baths
(a) Got excited about the grandchildren he was going to have
(b) Sign that there would be obstacles in staying chaste from the beginning
(c) Begins to feel certain things towards women
 (2) Inability to distinguish “the calm light of chaste love from the fog of lust” (II, 2)
Fog of lust that obscures true love
Lost virginity at 16
Not yet in love but in love with the concept of love
ii) “In love with ‘love’”
(1) Enamored with society’s idea of “romance”
d) Worldly Ambition as “A Land of Famine”
Worldly ambition
Starts as student and then teacher of rhetoric and looking back he sees himself as a
cheating purveyor of words and arguments
Man who makes a living by being persuasive in speech
Winning debates and recognition but with no substance in those pursuits
Because so skilled he often ended up defending and getting criminals off the hook
i) Teacher of rhetoric in Carthage
(1) Cheap purveyor of words and arguments
(a) More successful he was the more vain he became
(b) Look at how skilled I am I could defend anyone and succeed
(2) Intellectual vanity fed through contests in speech and rhetoric
(a) Desire to cast off that cape of vanity that comes from having a glib tongue
(b) More of that skill you have careful one has to be
(i) Like Daoism: When you have that surge that propels you up is the point
where you must be the most careful of the fall
1. Right when things are perfect everything falls apart
ii) Imperial orator in Milan
Monica was very worried about her son and talked to bishop a lot and he said that she
should wait and as long as he has Monica’s love there’s no way he can be completely
doomed, and that Augustine is just not ready (so trapped in his own vanity that he
wouldn’t listen to anyone)
(1) What is the point of this bureaucratic rat-race?
(a) Became imperial orator in court
(b) At this point he has some kind of epiphany – spending time with Christian
groups and they lead him towards the recognition of the error in his ways
(2) Ego can feed and feed from “the storehouses of this world,” soul will always be a
“land of famine”
(a) He will never succeed unless he finds fundamental worth
(b) The world is storehouse filled with temptation – ego can feed and feed but in
the end the soul will starve
(c) Beginning of path towards redemption
e) The Path to Redemption
i) Age of 33, baptized by the charismatic Bishop Ambrose of Milan
ii) Reconciliation with one’s past
(1) Augustine’s Manichean past
(a) Dabled in different religions before converting to Christianity and one of
those was Manichea
(b) Believed in two opposing forces in the universe, one good, one evil
(i) God is good but his goodness is limited because evil force is just as strong
 (ii) Dualistic view of religion
(iii) Once baptized he couldn’t believe that there were two equal forces
of good and evil and accepted the Christian ideal that God is omnipotent
(2) Christian belief in an omnipotent and all-seeing God
(a) Then why would he allow me to sin as I did? To betray him and fornicate
against him?
(i) Passage where catharsis comes: 332 of reader
So filled with guilt that he is weeping and can’t find any way out of that
Heard voice saying take up and read, take up and read
Immediately countenance was changed and began to wonder if children
ever said such words (might be miraculous experience)
Rose up and took it as command from heaven to take up book and read the
first sentence he saw (like Antony)
Turned to Ethipius and read first line
Passage (just look it up)
At that moment he found God
iii) God’s ultimate grace is found not in what he gives, but in what he forgives
(1) Catharsis and redemption
(a) Place to find willpower is being able to see clearly and see through the fog to
see the truth and not be blocked by temptation
(b) Being able to face one’s temptations and see them for what they are
(2) “God” is the clearest “mirror” that allows him to see plainly the error of his ways
(3) In seeing things as they really are, one gains the will-power to pierce through
illusion
Finding willpower is one of the hardest things in the advances of the human intellect and soul
No cure-all solution

* ML was significant just because he rejected the notion of willpower