What pleased me in Cicero's book was his advice not to admire one or another of the schools of philosophy, but to love wisdom itself, whatever it might be, and to search for it, pursue it, hold it and embrace it. (Confessions III.iv)
At the age of 19, Augustine read Cicero's Hortensius, a work now lost to us. As you might gather from the title, the work was an exhortation to philosophy. Which sounds good so far. What Augustine got from the book, however, was the idea that he should love wisdom itself, "whatever it might be". A rather adventuresome 'voyage of discovery', so to speak.
What was this general love of wisdom? It seems akin to the popular claim to be "spiritual" in a generic sense. That is, the appeal of this course is that one doesn't have to be actually committed to one thing or another, but just love the idea of wisdom. The verbs Augustine uses to describe this initial excitement about wisdom will be used again later in the Confessions, when he sees that Wisdom is not a "whatever", but has a definite shape, form and name.
Augustine's mother, Monica, had been a faithful Christian. With the sound of the name of Christ in his ears and memory, he decides to give the Scriptures a go, thinking that he might find this "wisdom" somewhere in them. His reading of Scripture is less than successful at this point (III.v). Compared to the eloquence of Cicero's style, these books of the Christians are a bit rustic in flavour. Like many before him and since, his pride kept him from understanding what the Scriptures had to say.
There is something essential about the attitude with which one approaches Scripture. Augustine has it right: one needs to stoop the neck in humility in order to gain the heights of Scripture. The young Augustine is unwilling, and so unready, to gain from reading revelation. Like his desire for the outward beauty of the body in lust, so also he is attracted to the more beautiful language of Cicero. He is judging people and books by their "outward appearance", rather than by their inward content.
Augustine - the Lenten blog project series
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