Years ago, my husband asked me what he should read to better understand the theology of St. Augustine, which I was studying at the PhD level. I, of course, told him to read Confessions. When he had finished I asked him which book was his favorite – and he chose book 11! This answer is definitely not a typical one. First-time readers of the Confessions often find it quite perplexing that Augustine should spend an entire book discussing time. Why does Augustine spend so long on this subject, and why does he do it at this point in the work?

First, it is important to note that Augustine’s work, though often classified as an autobiography, is almost the opposite of one. He begins the work (“Great are you, O Lord, and exceedingly worthy of praise; your power is immense, and your wisdom beyond reckoning” Conf. 1.1.1; tr. Boulding) with words that are not his own. They are those of Scripture, and they are words that do not refer to himself, but rather to God. The entire rhythm of the Confessions is one of praise to God through the words of Scripture, and at points Augustine uses multiple scriptural citations one after another in rapid succession, using them to build his narrative. The fact that the work ends with an interpretation of Scripture (in books 11-13), then, is not so strange. Augustine is no longer talking about himself in the words of the Bible, but the words of the Bible take over the story entirely, dictating to us how we should think about our own lives.

Book 11 is the beginning of this scriptural journey, and the entire book is an interpretation of the words “in the beginning” with which the Bible begins. What does it mean to be “in the beginning,” and for us to be creatures with a beginning and end? In other words, what does it mean to be time-bound and finite? Augustine’s aim in this book, then, is not so much to provide a theory of time (although he does do something like that), but to allow the reader to feel the full force and weight of their fleeting earthly existence. Time and eternity are things that we perhaps do not think about much in our everyday lives, but to Augustine they are essential. To think about time is to think about mortality. And to think about mortality is to be humble – which, for Augustine, is absolutely essential in coming to understand God and ourselves. After all, it is pretty hard for me to pretend that I am in control of everything and that the world revolves around me when I realize that I cannot even slow down time for one single moment; indeed I can hardly understand what this thing called time is. I am not master or arbitrator of my own life; I barely even know what it is (a point Augustine emphasizes throughout this book).

These themes are evident in the way that Augustine opens book 11:

Eternity belongs to you, O Lord, so surely you can neither be ignorant of what I am telling you, nor view what happens in time as though you were conditioned by time yourself? Why then am I relating all this to you at such length? Certainly not in order to inform you. I do it to arouse my own loving devotion toward you, and that of my readers, so that together we may declare, Great is the Lord, and exceedingly worthy of praise” (11.1.1).

Here Augustine reprises the very first line of his work, hoping that in contemplating time and our journey through it we may see the truth of our own lives just as he did his: that everything belongs to God (even time and life itself), and we ought to praise him for it. Perhaps you, like my husband, will find something in book 11 that stirs your soul to wonder at God and the fragility of human life.