In book ten (specifically chapters twenty-seven through forty-three) of Confessions, Bishop Augustine reveals a connection to the first nine books. Although Augustine speaks frequently of hope, towards to the future, he also recollects the memory of sin and struggle between options. Thirteen years have now passed since the death of his mother, Monica, which he recorded in book nine. Now as Bishop of the Catholic Church in North Africa, Augustine shepherds and teaches the community whom he is writing. Book ten is a transition, but as Carl Vaught writes, “Augustine has still not reached the end of his journey.”[1]

The Bishop recollects willfulness and the dissipation into many things. His remorse is that he not only missed out on being filled with God, and God filling him, but that he sought finite things that lead to nothingness. Augustine’s hope is turned to the one and only true mediator, who is both man and God, Jesus Christ. Though Augustine received Christ’s forgiveness in book eight, Augustine looks to the future in hope to be filled with him, healed by him, and continually praise him.

Augustine begins chapter twenty-seven, “Too late have I loved you, O Beauty so ancient and so new, too late have I loved you! Behold, you were within me, while I was outside: it was there that I sought you, and a deformed creature, rushed headlong upon these things of beauty which you have made. They kept me far from you, those fair things which, if they were not in you, would not exist at all. ”[2] 

Augustine’s mind regrets seeking finitude and contingent things rather the only true being who is necessary, who is God. Before this chapter, Augustine rhetorically asks God, “When then did find you, so that I might learn to know you?” [3] He also said, “Everywhere, O Truth, you give hearing to all who consult you.” Augustine speaks of both the transcendence, omnipresence and omniscience of God. Vaught writes that this is “the experiential correlate of the transcendent side of God” in which Augustine experienced in chapter seven when God took him up. Augustine sought God’s mysterious transcendence in book seven. ‘When first I knew you, you took me up, so that I might see there was something to see, but that I was not yet one able to see it.’”[4] Augustine’s description, in book ten, of God as the provider of hearing, recalls chapter eight, in which Augustine hears God through the voice of the child. Augustine wrote in book, eight, “I interpreted this solely as a command given to me by God to open the book.”[5] God provision to Augustine, included Augustine ability to hear the voice of the Lord.

During chapter book ten, chapter thirty, Augustine wrote,  “In truth, you commanded me to be continent with regard to ‘the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the ambition of the world.” You have commanded me to abstain from concubinage, and in a place of marriage itself, which you permit, you have counseled something better.’”[6] This portion of chapter ten, connects with multiple parts earlier of Augustine’s struggle including some of book six: “Since it would be two years before I could have here whose hand I sought, and since I was not so much a lover of marriage as a slave to lust, I procured another woman, but no, of course as a wife.”[7]

In chapter six, Augustine was filled with lust. During book ten, Augustine also refers to the theme of rest and restlessness, a theme he recollected from the beginning of Confessions. In book one, chapter one, he had stated his confession, “our heart is restless until it rests in you”[8] and in then in chapter five, he asks God, “Who will give me help, so that I may rest in you?”[9] Now, even though he has received rest in God, Augustine in book ten still seeks and writes of the abundant grace he is seeking. He also speaks of lustful movements in his sleep, still hoping that God can give him a better rest even at his present age.  Augustine writes, “Is not your hand, O God all-powerful, powerful to heal all diseases of my soul, and by your more abundant grace to quench even the lustful movements of my sleep. Lord, more and more will you increase in me your gifts, so that my soul, freed from the clinging mire of concupiscence, may follow me to you, so that it may not rebel against itself so that even in sleep it will not commit those base corrupting deeds.[10] Even now, Augustine wants God to heal his soul so that he can enter into better sleep.

The themes of “rest” and being “filled” by God have been remembered in book ten. Also the threefold sin of 1 John 2 and “concupiscence” have been focused upon again. In book ten, chapter forty one, he wrote,  “Thus, therefore, I have considered the sickness of my sins in that threefold concupiscence, and I have called your right hand to bring me health.[11]” Throughout his mentions of these sins, one can also remember earlier scenes in Confessions, although Augustine may not cite them specifically. For example, Carl Vaught sees a connection in chapter thirty-one to Augustine’s pear-stealing episode. Vaught writes, “Here Augustine faces a problem that reminds us of a pear-stealing episode (2.4.9), where this problem can be understood as a condition that makes the earlier problem possible and that reflects its structure at the distinctly reflective level. In the orchard, Augustine loves the act of stealing rather than its object (2.4.9), but now he discovers that this act presupposes the passages from emptiness to self-accentuation.” [12]

Perhaps, more significantly is Augustine not only recalling the three fold sins, but also mentioning his need of a true mediator. In chapter forty-two, Augustine speaks of multiple false mediators of prayers, rites and then powers of the air. Augustine then later calls this false mediator sin. However, a reader could think of Augustine’s transition from Manichaeanism and Platonism, and yet still in need of perfect mediator, even though he is intellectually converted in book seven. Vaught wrote, “The devil disguises himself as an angel of light and be becomes counterfeit version of the Light of Truth that Augustine encounters in Milan (8.12.29), and that he sees again when he moves beyond his memory to the God beyond the mind (10.17.26).

The devil who identifies himself with counterfeit light is able to lure those who are proud because he imitates God by not having a body (10.42.67); and since the typical Neo-platonist wants to escape from the body, it is natural that the mediator they seek does not have one.”[13] In book seven, after Augustine has been intellectually converted, he knows that he needs a mediator. In chapter eight, Augustine  experiences the true mediator through faith, who is Jesus Christ.  Vaught also correctly sums up the summary of this “filling” and “Mediation” in chapter ten. Vaught says, “Earlier Augustine says that even though he catches a glimpse of God, he is unable to be filled with him (7.17.23). Now he says that he wants to be filled by participating in the sacraments of the Church and by interpreting Scripture (10.43.70). [14] Book ten concludes, with Augustine praising the one who gives rest and fill. That one is the true mediator Christ, who has redeemed with his blood. Augustine, now as bishop, can celebrate that filling of Christ, and share it with others in his community.