Confessions - Part 2

After rejecting the doctrine of the Manichees, Augustine begins looking elsewhere for truth and rest for his restless soul. In his searching he finds the Platonic texts which lead him to search within himself for how he sees the world. Eventually, he comes to accept that superior, unchanging things are preferable to inferior, changeable things. By accepting this, Augustine comes to accept that a changeable thing cannot know the desirability of an unchangeable thing unless the unchangeable has made itself known to the changeable.

In that moment, he caught a glimpse of the reality that is Christ, that he, being God and thus unchangeable, took on changeable flesh thus allowing inferior man to come to a place of union with the superior God. “They see at their feet divinity become weak by his sharing in our ‘coat of skin.’ In their weariness they fall prostrate before this divine weakness which rises and lifts them up,” (128, section 24). Man strives with everything within him to find that thing which is superior and unchanging, that thing which will satisfy beyond all else. Everything earthly is unfulfilling, even if its origins may be traced back to an unchangeable source, such as marriage. However, none of those are unchanging by nature; only God is unchanging. Thus the thought that God would put himself into the changeable flesh of man so that He could lift man from his place of weakness to one of strength startles to no end. What can we do but fall at the feet of him who was divine and became weak for our sake? Only by his hand may we be raised.