Quest, Questions, and Christ in Augustine's Confessions

Khaled Anatolios Quest, Questions, and Christ in Augustine's Confessions It sounds distinctly modern to say that the human person is characterized by the stance ofquestioning and by the capacity for self-questioning . To cite one prominent example, Martin Heidegger claims that Dasein is the only being that can pose its own being as a question .1 Among modern Christian theologians, Karl Rahner characterizes the human person in terms ofthe capacity to "place oneself in question"; moreover, he claims that the human being not only poses questions about the world and herself but is a question to which the corresponding answer is the message ofChristianity and, ultimately, the person ofJesus Christ.2 In both Heidegger and Rahner , the capacity to question is also an openness and a seeking (Ersuchen) and thus, the structure ofevery question is a quest.3 This modern emphasis on question and quest as radical anthropological categories opens up the way for a rereading ofAugustine's Confessions in a way that is further testimony to its perennial contemporaneity . Indeed, in this classic work we have not only the categorical assertion ofsuch themes, but their dramatic exposition in the genre of an autobiography.4 So form and content are wedded in a LOGOS 3:2 SPRING 2ooo 48 LOGOS way that is hardly matched in the more materially systematic exposition ofa Rahner or a Heidegger. Ifwe open to almost any page of the Confessions, we will find thatAugustine's account ofhis quest for God proceeds literally by way of questioning. To my knowledge, there is no other"autobiography" that tells the story ofa life through such a preponderance of questions. While the full effect ofAugustine 's questioning account ofhis own quest can be experienced only through the actual reading of the text, our present object is to explore the general structure of his quest, focusing particularly on the role and meaning ofquestioning within this quest.5 In pursuing our analysis, we will follow the tripartite structure ofthe book: the first part is the autobiographical narrative of conversion in Books I—IX; the second part isAugustine's confession ofhis present state in BookX; the thirdpartis the exegeticalreflections ofBooks XI-XIII.6 Books I-IX In this first sectionAugustine presents the narrative ofhis search for God and his struggle to free himselffrom sin and error, culminating in the visions of Milan and Ostia. We are primarily concerned with the role ofquestioning inAugustine's story ofhis quest. His retelling of the story of his conversion is in large part a history of his questioning .We will focus first on how the experience ofsin poses a question for Augustine, and then we will attend to his questioning in search of God. Within the typological structure in which Augustine casts his personal history of conversion, Book I represents the stage of original sinfulness as manifested in his infancy. In Book II, he presents the story of his conscious and willful appropriation of human sinfulness . Significantly, Augustine's description of his fall is prefaced by the"explanation"thatthe underlying motivation for his"hellish pleasures " was "to love and to be loved." The search for love is primary even in the fall ofhumanity. But in sin, this search is distorted, mud- QUESTIONS AND CHRIST IN AUGUSTINE S CONFESSIONS49 died by clouds of"carnal concupiscence."In this situation humanity's relationship to God is described in terms of deafness and estrangement from God. God is perceived as silent, although by redeemed hindsight Augustine recognized that all along God was very near, "always with me." What especially concerns us in this book is Augustine's questioning about his own sinfulness. This questioning comes to a climax in his reflection on the incident of the pear.7 At least in his "hellish pleasures" there were some "fleeting experiences ofbeauty" and carnal satisfaction. But in the stealing ofthe pears, the sin is more thoroughgoing ; it seems to be sin for its own sake: "my pleasure . . . was in the crime itself."8 Augustine finds himself unable to understand this phenomenon. But what is striking in his presentation of the incident is that Augustine explicitly attributes this present act of questioning his past experience ofsin to divine inspiration. Ofthe act itself...