You know me better than I know myself: Augustine and confession

The most famous maker of confessions of the Christian tradition was of course Augustine of Hippo, who wrote what is possible the first spiritual autobiography of all time. It would be impossible to say that it doesn’t contain passages where he self-justifies, or where he bends the truth to make himself appear better. But it does appear at least that nothing is held back. And, in any case, Augustine is well aware of the tendency of the human person to spin the truth, even subconsciously.

What saves his confession and sets it apart is his theology: it is his vision of the one to whom he confesses that makes his confession real. Here, as an example, is a passage from Book V:

Accept my confessions, O Lord. They are a sacrifice offered by my tongue, for yours was the hand that fashioned it and yours the spirit that moved it to acknowledge you. Heal all my bones and let them say Lord, there is none like you.

If a man confesses to you, he does not reveal his inmost thoughts to you as though you did not know them. For the heart may shut itself away, but it cannot hide from your sight. Man’s heart may be hard, but it cannot resist the touch of your hand. Whenever you will, your mercy or your punishment can make it relent, and just as none can hide away from the sun, none can escape your burning heat.

Augustine knows that he cannot even begin to face the Lord of all things without the grace that God gives him in the first place. It was God’s spirit who moved him to acknowledge God – without the movement of God towards him, Augustine cannot imagine himself moving towards God.

And: ‘If a man confesses to you, he does not reveal his inmost thoughts to you as though you did not know them’. This is crucial feature of the confessions of a Christian person. There is no point hiding from an all-seeing God. To tell your sins to a God who already knows them is not then an act of revelation to that God. You aren’t surprising him. As the Psalmist says:

Before a word is on my tongue

          you, Lord, know it completely.

You hem me in behind and before,

          and you lay your hand upon me.

So what does it mean to confess to such a Lord? It cannot ever be an act of self-justification. There cannot be such an act. It cannot be an explanation, or a diversion. It cannot be anything other than a completely open giving of oneself over to the mercy of God.

This is of course both deeply terrifying and deeply comforting to Augustine. God exposes everything that the self has in it by his burning heat. It is a complete exposure, a stripping away of all our pretenses.

But when you read the Confessions, you are struck by the tender love Augustine has found in God. He is not dismayed or terrified by knowing that he is known by God; the opposite is true. He is completely overwhelmed with relief and love at the thought that God knows him better than he knows himself.

And that’s the truth at the core of the Confessions: actually, it is God who knows us better than we even know ourselves. Whenever we try to tell the story of our own lives, we find that we simply cannot tell the whole truth. We are incapable of disentangling the web of our own motives and reasons. We have faulty memories, and minds incapable of really sorting it all out. Why did Augustine steal the pears? He cannot really say! He is unable to judge himself with truth. He even goes so far as to say: ‘…where were you when I looked for you? You were there before my eyes, but I had deserted even my own self. I could not find myself, much less find you.’

So he must cast himself on the mercy of God of the God who exposes him to himself. When he does so, he is amazed and relieved by what he finds there:

What return shall I make to the Lord for my ability to recall these things with no fear in my soul? I will love you, Lord, and thank you, and praise you name, because you have forgiven me such great sins and such wicked deeds….