Confessions Wisdom and Knowledge Quotes

Actually, Augustine, you bring up a good point. When we don't have the answer to some question—like, in this case, what happened when we were in the womb?—how are we supposed to go about finding it? Are some things just unknowable? Having God around as this Magic Eight Ball who knows everything suggests that the answer exists, even if we don't have access to it. Basically, God's existence suggest that, theoretically, everything has an explanation that could be revealed to us. Yet, when Augustine asks God for an answer, what kind of answer does he expect? It's not like God is going to beam down an answer directly to him, à la Star Trek. Instead, the sheer act of asking God shows us the limits of human knowledge. Deep.

Translation: it's more important to believe in God than to understand him. Okay, but this statement raises some questions. Like, why doesn't Augustine follow his own advice? You will recall that one of the major obstacles preventing him from accepting Christianity is that God's immateriality doesn't make sense to him. Maybe Augustine has learned from his mistakes; or maybe he assumes that he's smarter than most people and doesn't want that to prevent their conversion. So, he's actually subverting knowledge to spirituality here.

It seems pretty intuitive that we have an easier time learning our native language than trying to learn one in school later on, right? So what does this have to do with Augustine's conversion? Think about it: Augustine is basically saying that when we are not afraid, and actually want to learn something, we are more receptive to it. Hm, maybe this might have something to do with how we should approach learning about God…

You might say that this is when Augustine hears his "calling," or at least his first one. In fact, you might say that it's Augustine's desire for wisdom that ultimately leads him to God.

Augustine means that when he was with the Manichees, he couldn't conceive of purely spiritual things. He could only think of physical things—like whether matter was good or evil. We know that Augustine is big on proving stuff, at least early in his life, so he likes the certainty that the "sense of the flesh" can provide. But the wisdom of God is more of a mental exercise than a physical one. You don't go out to search for God in the world, you search for God in yourself. Which is a lot less tiring than jogging up a bunch of stairs.

Augustine has said before that it's more important that people believe than understand. Well, Augustine is going about it backwards. After all, what's the important thing to aspire to: God's creation, or God Himself? Remember, Augustine likes to tell us that knowledge in and of itself is useless because it only serves worldly ambitions, like being the smartest person in the room. (We're looking at you, kiddo.) The important knowledge is knowledge that relates to God.

Whoops, looks like Augustine misread the Scriptures. You'll notice how he says that he still doesn't understand how God can exist without substance, but he accepts this idea nonetheless. So we're seeing Augustine revise some of his "I have to absolutely positively understand before I believe" attitude.

What does it mean that such wisdom "needs no light besides itself"? This quote kind of reminds us of when Augustine talks about having his back to the light, so that he can only see what it illumines. In fact, that's the exact word he uses both there and here. Augustine is also talking about how God is unchangeable and has always existed… In other words, the light of God's wisdom was always there and always will be, and will be the source of all other "light."

Look how Augustine contrasts eternal wisdom with this "one fleeting instant" of his own understanding. See, humans can't escape the constraints of time, which actually affect their understanding of everything. Oh yeah, and Wisdom is capitalized here because he's referring to God, or God's Wisdom, rather than just the general idea of wisdom.