Week 9: Book VIII — The Garden, the Voice, and Conversion

1.Augustine visits Simplicianus, who tells him the story of the great orator Victorinus — how this proudly pagan intellectual, famous throughout Rome, eventually could not bear to deny Christ before His angels. When publicly invited to profess his faith quietly, in private, to spare his embarrassment, Victorinus insists on doing it before the whole congregation. What does this detail reveal about what genuine conversion does to pride?

2.He hears of Victorinus and is "on fire to imitate him" — but then adds that he is "bound... not with another's irons, but by my own iron will." He traces the chain: "of a forward will, was a lust made; and a lust served, became custom; and custom not resisted, became necessity." At what point in this chain is it easiest to break free — and why does Augustine say he missed his chance at each stage?

3.Pontitianus visits and tells the story of two imperial officers who, reading the life of Antony, immediately abandon their careers and give themselves to God — and whose fiancées, hearing the news, dedicate themselves to virginity. Augustine is overwhelmed with shame: "those unlearned start up and take heaven by force, and we with our learning, and without heart, lo, where we wallow in flesh and blood!" What does this shame reveal about what was keeping Augustine from conversion — was it ignorance, or something else?