From a cursory reading of our
Ferguson’s Church History volume one, you might assume that St. Augustine was
converted merely by the words of a young child singing.[1]It
is a little surprising that it took Augustine as long as it did to come to
faith in Christ, since his mother was a Christian. Some believe that he may
have at one point believed in Christ, but merely walked away from his faith because
of his intellectual nature. He also had
been involved in heresy or what some may call pseudo-Christianity in Manichism.
It has been noted that there were even conversations with Ambrose before his
conversion.
Gary
Wills asks the question and answers it like this, “If Ambrose did not play the
leading role in Augustine’s conversion, who did? Simplicain- Ambrose’s own
mentor….”[2] Wills says that Simplician helped Augustine in
four crucial ways. He received Augustine while Ambrose shrugged him off, he recommended
he read Paul’s letters, he introduced him to Christian Neoplatonism in Milan,
and lastly he pointed Augustine to the conversions of others.[3]It would
be during this time frame he would escape his surroundings that he would be in
his garden and hear the voice of a child saying “Pick up and read.”[4]
There are some who say that this was merely an inner voice that Augustine heard
and others argue that it was the voice of God. Wills cites Courcelle as saying,
“…the child’s voice that Augustine now hears must also be a psychic event, not
literal—Courcelle even used the textual variant to say the voice came from God’s
house (divina domo) not from a nearby
house (vicina domo). Either way
Augustine heard the Lord speak to him that day and from the words of Romans
13:13-14 his life would be forever changed.
Augustine
had become extremely disenfranchised with the whole Manichian movement, while
being a part of it had its benefits such as getting him rank in the government;
he knew that something was amiss. Augustine also began to learn about monasticism
and the ascetic lifestyle they led. And since he was tired of committing the
sins of the flesh such as debauchery, this lifestyle became very interesting to
him. [5]
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