Book 1 -- Infancy and boyhood
One thing I found pretty interesting this week was Augustine's idea of innocence. The passage of interest is in XIX where he states
Is this [speaking of his childhood sins] boyhood innocence? It is not, Lord. I cry Thy mercy, O my God. Yet as we leave behind tutors and masters and nuts and balls and birds and come to deal with prefects and kings and the getting of gold and estates and slaves, these are the qualities which pass on with us, one stage of life taking the place of another as the greater punishments of the law take the place of the schoolmaster's cane. Therefore, O God our King, when you said, of such is the kingdom of heaven, it could only have been humility as symbolized by the low stature of childhood that you were commending.
Most of what he is confessing in the first book are things I think we all would have a hard time classifying as sin. They are just things we do when
young and then grow out of. Augustine seems to be saying here that it is
just the particular manifestation of sin that we grow out of. The core
problem is still there and we just trade on type of sin for another. It's all ultimately the same.
I also found his brief speculation on where the soul is before birth interesting. He asks in VI "whether my infancy followed upon some earlier age of my life that has passed away before it". He quickly chalks this up to the mystery of God without making any definite statements about it. It's still an interesting question though: where was I before I was born? Or is that just a meaningless question? I suppose you can't exist without existing, but is birth the beginning of existence?
A footnote in my text mentions that Augustine entertained several different theories about the origin of the soul in his life, but never commits to a specific one.
There was also a sentence that sounded funny to my modern ears when he was talking about learning what his infancy was like.
for You have left man to learn these things about himself from others, to accept much that touches him so closely on the word of his womenfolk.
Maybe it's just the word "womenfolk" but it gave me a chuckle to read it.
