Lecture from week 3 of the first year module Introduction to the Study of Religions and Theology at the University of Manchester, 9th October 2012.

1. The many
conversions
of Saint
Augustine
Dr Jamie Wood
RELT10311 – Intro to the Study of
R&T
Lecture 3, 9th October 2012

2. Aims of lecture
 Help you to think
about conversion as
a religious
phenomenon
 Introduce you to
Augustine, perhaps
the key figure of late
ancient (and
medieval) church
 Prepare you for the
first assignment (on

3. Structure of lecture
 Thinking about conversion
 Introducing you to Augustine, his
world and his writings
 Comparing conversions:
Augustine‟s sources
 Break
 Augustine‟s conversions
 Later influence of Augustine
 Conclusion

4. What is conversion?

5. Conversion
 Change
 Movement from one state to another
 Realisation of potential
 Event
 Process
 Intellectual
 Lifestyle
 Religious?
 Social or individual?
 Done by someone or to someone?

6. Conversion in the OED
 14 different meanings (34 sub-
definitions); not including compounds
 I. Turning in position, direction,
destination.
 II. Change in character, nature, form,
or function.
 8.a. The bringing of any one over to a
specified religious faith, profession, or
party, esp. to one regarded as true, from
what is regarded as falsehood or error.
(Without qualification, usually =
conversion to Christianity.)

7. Theories of Conversion (1):
James
 Psychological analysis of conversion
 The divided and unhappy self becomes
unified and happy
 2 types of conversion:
◦ Gradual
◦ Instantaneous (more affectively intense than the
gradual type; result of a more active
subconscious)
 Sharp distinction between „institutional‟ and
„personal‟ religion,
 Only the convert's immediate experience is
of interest
◦ Problem: severing the personal from the
institutional prevents James from appreciating
how a convert's immediate experience is
intimately connected with the ongoing life of a
community and how stories about conversion
reflect common life

8. Theories of conversion (2): Nock
 Draws on James work
 Similar focus on the individual
 But positioned it within broader religious
context; esp. to explain success of Christianity
in the Roman world.
◦ „conversion‟ to Christianity (or Judaism) involved
something very different from the adoption of other
religious options
◦ adopting an additional religious affiliation is 1 thing,
but renouncing all previous religious associations
for exclusive participation in a new one v. different
 Conversion a move from an inferior to a
superior religion: realisation of truth of new
religion:
 „the reorientation of the soul of an individual, his
deliberate turning from indifference or from an
earlier form of piety to another, a turning which
implies a consciousness that the old was wrong and
the new is right.‟
 Arthur Darby Nock, Conversion: The Old and the New in Religion

9. Theories of conversion (3): Berger & Luckman
 Sociological analysis
 Socialization: social process by which individuals are
inducted into society
◦ Primary socialization: begins at birth; continues until an
individual has taken over and understands the world to
which they belong
◦ Secondary socialization: presupposes primary
socialization, transmits „role-specific knowledge‟
 Resocialization: process by which deviants or outsiders
are inducted or re-inducted into society (e.g. correction
of criminals; induction of immigrants)
 Berger and Luckmann:
◦ In conversion to a new religion individuals undergo
resocialization because a radical transformation of their
understanding of social reality occurs;
◦ Similar to primary socialization BUT it is more complex and
difficult because the original social world must be
cognitively displaced and destroyed in order to give the
person a new social identity.
 Peter Berger & Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of
Reality (London: Penguin, 1966)

10. Who was Augustine?
 Roman/ African
rhetorician turned
bishop
 Late 4th-early 5th century
CE
 Theological
heavyweight
 Merging of Graeco-
Roman rhetorical
tradition with Judaeo-
Christian scriptural

11. Augustine‟s world (1): No place like
Rome
 Christian Roman
Empire:
◦ Banning of paganism at
end of 4th C; but then
problems with heretics
 A Roman Empire of
two halves: East and
West
 Africa perhaps the
most important
province in the West

12. Augustine‟s world (II): Rocking
Rome
 378: Roman
Emperor killed
by barbarians in
battle
 410: the city of
Rome sacked by
barbarians
 430: as
Augustine lay
dying,
barbarians had
overrun Africa
and were
besieging his

13. The Roman Empire

14. Augustine‟s early life
 Born 354
 In Thagaste, small city in
Numidia (modern Algeria)
 Middling family
◦ not mega-rich, but not poor
either
◦ have slaves, but sometimes
unable to attend school/
university
 Father: pagan; mother: Xtian
 Excellent student (except
Greek)
 Patronage from local
aristocrat who paid for

15. Education @ Carthage
 Capital of Roman Africa (2nd most
important city in Western Empire)
 A moved to Carthage twice:
◦ Studies in rhetoric after primary education
in Thagaste
◦ After the death of close friend in Thagaste
becomes teacher there
 2 bad experiences:
◦ A „cauldron of illicit loves‟; the Wreckers
(this is when the assignment reading is
set)
◦ Students too rowdy and decamps for

16. The boy done good: Rome and
MilanRome – ancient capital of the empire

◦ A moves to Rome from Carthage, hoping
to find better behaved students
◦ But students in Rome don‟t pay their fees
◦ Augustine (or his contacts) finds sponsor
who secures him a professorship in Milan
 Milan – current imperial city
◦ Professorship; close to imperial court
◦ Mother tries to organise an advantageous
marriage for him; he has to send his long-
term concubine (Wills calls her „Una‟ – „the
one‟) back to Africa 
◦ Lives with African friends Alypius and
Nebridius pursuing truth through study
◦ 386 CE: conversion of Augustine in Milan
(seminar reading)

17. Throwing it all away? Going home to
Africa
 Leaves professorship
 Lives an ascetic life,
rejecting the world
(seminar reading)
 Death of his son and
mother
 Returns to Africa
 395/6 CE: becomes
Bishop of Hippo Regius
 30 years of office
◦ Preaching, writing, problem
solving

19. 3 Announcements
1. PASS
2. Theology
Network Group
3. Meeting about
Study Abroad
options: 2pm
today in Roscoe
4.4
◦ Email John Zavos if
you are unable to
make it

20. Groupwork: Augustine‟ sources?
 Take a handout
 In groups of 3-4, read
ONE of the conversion
accounts (either Paul or
Antony)
 Answer the questions
 Be ready to feed back
the most significant
points of your
discussion
 You have 10 mins

21. The conversion of Paul
 MOTIVATION OF CONVERSION
◦ Miraculous appearance of the lord (zapping him!)
◦ He was scared = fear plays a role
◦ He felt helpless
◦ He was blinded (blinding opens his eyes to the
truth)
 ISSUES OF AUTHORSHIP
◦ Paul was converting people himself = he may
have an interest in selling a particular model of
conversion
◦ Acts presents a more detailed version of P‟s
conversion to that which Paul himself wrote
(which is more reliable?)
◦ Some facts within the accounts don‟t match one
another

22. The conversion of Antony
 MOTIVATION OF CONVERSION
◦ No family ties = means he can convert
◦ Reflecting on the examples of others helps (in
Gospels)
◦ Listens to someone else reading aloud from
the Bible (compare with Augustine, who has
read Life of Antony)
 ISSUES OF AUTHORSHIP
◦ Not a first-hand account; written by Athanasius
(uncompromising orthodox bishop); may be
using his depiction of Antony to put across
particular points
◦ Problems of translation from Greek to Latin?
◦ Written some time after Antony‟s death by an
outsider

23. The Confessions: An
introduction
 397- 400 CE: A writes the
Confessions when he is a bishop
(i.e. not contemporary with the
conversion)
 Themes:
◦ A spiritual/ intellectual journey
(predetermined end point)
◦ An African‟s tale? A sub-elite story?
◦ Central role Monnica (his mother)
 What is it?
◦ A bestseller
◦ A guidebook/ model for others
◦ An attempt to understand how his life
had turned out the way that it did

24. Early „conversions‟ or intellectual
development? The Manichees
 A becomes interested in Manichee sect in
Carthage during his studies
 Almost 10 years as adherent of dualist
Manichee doctrine
 Mani (ca. 216-276 CE), Iranian founder of
the sect:
◦ Emphasis on ongoing struggle between good
and evil
◦ Claimed God was not omnipotent and
struggled against the opposing substance of
evil
◦ Believed human soul was of the same
substance of God
◦ Division between „Elect‟ and „Hearers‟
 Confessions and other of A‟s writings
refute many of these views, e.g. anti-

25. Intellectual adventures:
Neoplatonism
 Neoplatonism: late antique development of the ideas
of Plato
 Key figure is Plotinus
 Enfuses Augustine's conception of God and Creation;
e.g.:
1. God as a spiritual substance inherent in all things:
◦ everything exists only to the extent to which it participates
in God:
◦ „in filling all things, you [God] fill them all with the whole of
yourself‟ (Augustine, Confessions, book I).
2. Evil has no actual existence:
◦ things are evil according to a hierarchy of being in which
some are closer to God's supreme and infinite being
◦ evil is a relative/ comparative quality
◦ view that goodness of individual things varies but
everything is part of a whole from God's point of view,
allowed Augustine to answer Manichee challenges about
the source of evil

27. Ambrose of Milan and Christian
reading
 Ambrose was Catholic Bishop of
Milan, the imperial capital
 Ambrose's method for
interpreting the bible (esp. the
OT) has big impact on
Augustine, who was previously
put off by its simple and
apparently literal language.
 Ambrose interprets the
scriptures in an abstract, spiritual
sense
 Allowed Augustine to overcome
Manichee objections to specific
phrases in the text.
 Ambrose baptized Augustine
alongside Adeodatus, his son,

28.  Augustine, Confessions, VI. iii (6, 8): I was also
pleased that when the old writings of the Law and
the Prophets came before me, they were no longer
read with an eye to which they had previously
looked absurd, when I used to attack your saints as
if they thought what in fact they did not think at all.
And I was delighted to hear Ambrose in his
sermons to the people saying, as if he were most
carefully enunciating a principle of exegesis: „The
letter kills, the spirit gives life‟ (2 Cor. 3: 6). Those
tests which, taken literally, seemed to contain
perverse teaching he would expound spiritually,
removing the mystical veil. […] Already the
absurdity which used to offend me in those books,
after I had heard many passages being given
persuasive expositions, I understood to be
significant of the profundity of their mysteries. The
authority of the Bible seemed the more to be
venerated and more worthy of a holy faith on the
ground that it was open to everyone to read, while
keeping the dignity of its secret meaning for a

29. This week‟s seminar reading
Discussion of: Augustine, Confessions, 8.6(13)-8.12(30),
trans. H. Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991),
pp. 141-154
 Overview:
◦ Layering of narratives within the story is
significant
◦ Account of renunciation of sexual desire (and the
„world‟ and service to the state)
◦ Account of impact of reading the Life of Antony
on a fellow African
◦ Leads to self-examination by A and his friends
◦ Importance of education
◦ Augustine hears mysterious voice in the garden:
„pick up and read‟ – very spiritual description
◦ This is the moment of his definitive conversion to

30. Assignment 1
 With reference to
Augustine,
Confessions
III.iii(6)-III.vi.10
(trans. Chadwick,
pp. 38-41), explain
Augustine‟s
concept of
“conversion” and
comment on it in
relation to
Augustine‟s other
conversion
narratives.

31. Assignment 1
 Early in the Confessions
 A is talking about his studies in
Carthage and his rowdy fellow students
 His first reading of Cicero‟s Hortensius
opens his mind to rhetoric and
philosophy – a personal/ intellectual
conversion?
 Reads the bible and finds it lacking in
style by comparison
 Joins the „wrong crowd‟ – a social
conversion?
 QUESTION: Where is Christianity in
this extract? What does A say he is

32. Questions about assignment
1

33. Later Influence of Augustine
 Theological-political influence:
 Sex and original sin
 Church-state relations
 Forced conversion/ treatment
of heretics
 Writings such as the City of God
and the Confessions have
lasting influence
 His sermons and letters are still
being discovered and revealing
a lot about

34. Ubiquitous Augustine
 Probably the most quoted/
cited/ discussed Latin author for
the entire middle ages
 Isidore of Seville, Etymologies,
6.7.3:
◦ „Augustine, with his intelligence
and learning overcomes the
output of all these, for he wrote so
much that not only could no one,
working by day and night, copy his
books, but no one could even read
them.‟

35. Bibliography on Augustine and
conversion
 E. V. Gallagher, „Conversion and Community in
Late Antiquity,‟ The Journal of Religion 73 (1993),
1-15
 J. J. O‟Donnell, Augustine: Confessions (1992),
see esp. introduction and sections 1-3:
http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/jod/augustin
e/
 P. Frederiksen, „Paul and Augustine: conversion
narratives, orthodox traditions, and the
retrospective self„, Journal of Theological Studies
n.s. 37 (1986), 3-34
 C. Bennett, „The Conversion of Virgil: the Aeneid
in Augstine‟s Confessions‟, Revue des Etudes
Augustiniennes 34 (1988), 47-69

36. A‟s conversion journey: an
overview 1. Rhetoric and philosophy (your
assignment)
2. Manichees (also mentioned in
assignment)
3. Neo-Platonism
4. Christianity (Thursday‟s
readings)
5. Catholic (orthodox) Christianity
 Note: A‟s story of these
conversions is always infused by
the knowledge that he will
eventually get to 5 (so he
describes the earlier conversions
with this in mind)

37. Conclusions
 Conversion can be both a personal/
intellectual/ spiritual experience and a social/
communal process
 Augustine‟s account of his own conversion is
not historical fact, it is autobiographical
invention
◦ He is interpreting his past in the light of the
present (as a Christian bishop)
◦ He was the greatest rhetorician of his day – so
we need to be careful when using him as
evidence; he has particular messages to sell
◦ He is promoting a model of what he thinks
conversion should be, not necessarily what it was
for him
◦ His conversion to Christianity is presented as
both a one-off event and a drawn-out process of