What Does St. Augustine's Libido Dominandi Mean

Aurelius Augustinius, St. Augustine, was born in 354 A.D. in Tagaste, a town in North Africa. Born just over a century before the fall of Rome, Augustine would live his entire life within the Roman empire. Augustine was a great Christian thinker and wrote numerous works which survive today, and offer us a vivid glimpse into the period. His works and thoughts on Christ, the nature of God, the role of the Church, and myriad other topics, shaped much of medieval thought. He would remain a major influence for 1000 years after he died. Two of his works stand out as possibly the most important of his writings: City of God, and Confessions. Augustine's Confessions is the first ever

After the fall of Rome and the pagan attacks that blamed Christians for it, St. Augustine set out to meet the challenge. In 413 he started the City of God which was completed in 426, twenty-two books later. In his books, St. Augustine divides the human race into two parts, “the one consisting of those who live according to man, the other of those who live according to God. And these we also mystically call the two cities, or the two communities of men, of which the one is predestined to reign eternally with God, and the other to suffer eternal punishment with the devil.”(E &

The City of God is written by Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, in the early fifth century of the current era. The writings of Augustine deal with the intellectual problems Christians faced. Augustine lived in a time where the Roman Empire was in decline. King Alaric sacked Rome with his army of Visigoths. Augustine wrote about how Christians should lead their lives for the purpose of God. His writing engaged people to live a spiritually driven life, and not one driven by earthly desires. People were not to worry about the invading armies which threatened the falling Roman Empire, since they did not change their path to a great life after death.

His lust contradicts the divine will, where sex is only functioned as the tool of procreation (Confessions, Book II, Chap. 2). Even after Augustine arrives at Carthage, where he is supposed to study, he is surrounded by a hissing cauldron of lust (Confessions, Book III, 1). The increased level of devotion to sex and more undisguised ways Augustine utilizes to express his horny minds indicate his developing enthusiasm in lust. He says, “to love and to have my love returned was my heart’s desire, and it would be all sweeter if I could also enjoy the body of the one who loved me” (Confessions, Book III, 1). Not as later when he realizes that truth of God and knowledge of wisdom are more important, he still adores the shallow fleshy satisfaction. At the early stage of his life, Augustine uses sex to satisfy his personal demand and commits this sinful act against God. He prioritizes his personal satisfaction beyond his pursuit of God. Similarly, Aeneas arrives at Carthage and is trapped in the love of Queen Dido. He falls into the abyss of love and lust, where he commits illicit sex with Dido in the cave (Aeneid, Book IV, 219). He experiences transient diversion from his purpose to build his lineage in Rome. His people build city walls for Carthage instead for

Young Augustine weeps for the woman who dies for her love, as an older Augustine weeps over his complete ignorance and incontinence. Young Augustine is ignorant of the presence of God in his life, and is compelled not to weep for his own spiritual distance from God, but instead for a tragedy that, in the mind of the older Augustine, is incomparable to the tragedy of being without God. The older Augustine is compelled by his advanced knowledge of the Lord’s proximity to lament his previous lack of control over his habits, proclaiming “I had no love for you and ‘committed fornication against you’ (Ps. 72:27); and in my fornications, I heard all round me the cries ‘Well done, well done’ (Ps. 34:21; 39:16) … I abandoned you to pursue the lowest things of your creation.” (Conf. 16). This reveals that Young Augustine lives an entirely habitual life, never thinking of God or his importance, instead concerned with material and worldly concerns such as reputation and honor. This state of pure habit does not leave space for Young Augustine to have continence, and leaves him to act out his life according to passion and emotions.

Overheard at Nova: “St. Augustine is a bonehead. A misogynistic, uneducated pig, calling man the image of God while subjugating woman to be only the glory of man.”

Augustine yearns to be a great rhetorician and studies the textbooks of rhetoric in order to become the best in the art of eloquence. Incidentally, he stumbles on a book of Cicero that leads in an unexpected direction. After reading Cicero’s Hortensius, Augustine begins to reestablish a relationship with God, as he says, “It altered my outlook on life. It changed my prayers to you, O Lord, and provided me with new hopes and aspirations…I began to climb out the depths to which I had sunk, in order to return to you.” (III.4, pp58-59). Among all his companions, only Augustine is able to see beneath the surface of Hortensius’ eloquence and embrace its truth. This is important to highlight because Augustine’s focus on the literary work’s content rather than its style indicates an awareness that is not found anywhere else in Book III. Augustine’s language is able to show that he sees the truth of Hortensius with the use of “hopes and aspirations”, and the positive connotation conveyed through these words contrasts with the negative implication of lust. For the first time in the book, Augustine sees beyond his lust and metaphorically begins to “climb out the depths” of the hissing cauldron in the first sentence. Nonetheless, his transfiguration is uncomplete because it is missing God Himself. Augustine explains this when he says, “These were the words which excited me and set me burning with fire, and the only check to this blaze of enthusiasm was that they made no mention of the name of Christ.” (III.4, pp59). The only things that checks Augustine’s enthusiasm for Cicero’s book is that it “made no mention of the

Throughout Confessions, Augustine, in retrospect, rejects many of the texts he came across in his life. He first exhibits this when he describes how wrong it was to have reacted emotionally to the Aeneid. He “wept over Dido, who ‘died pursuing her ultimate end with a sword’” (Conf. 1.21), while at the same time he failed to realize he was “dying by [his] alienation from [God]” (Conf. 1.20). Here Augustine laments the fact he wept over Dido’s death while at the same time worsened his own condition by ignoring God and his own sinfulness. He is highly critical of himself in the way he approached the Aeneid as a child, describing himself as having “abandoned [God] to pursue the lowest things of [God’s] creation” (Conf. 1.21). Because the Aeneid leads Augustine further away from God it cannot have any significance in one’s life.

"We who carry our mortality about with us, carry the evidence of our sin and with it the proof that you thwart the proud." (Augustine 39) This quote from the first book of Saint Augustine's "The Confessions" is a reflection of how Augustine brought Pagan meaning to interpret Christianity as a part of his life. In fact, it has direct correlation to the Holy Bible in the first letter of Peter: "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." (Peter 5:5) The parallel that lies between these two quotes is a manifestation of the parallel that lies between Augustine and Paul's theology. It is clear from readings that Augustine found Paul's theology to be a practical tool while examining his own life. Just as Augustine has utilized the

To bring this all together, Augustine uses details and parallels between some biblical references to

One of the opening lines of his Confessions may provide a clue: “Man is one of your creatures, Lord, and his instinct is to praise you” (21). This suggests that man possesses an innate instinct to seek God and spiritual enlightenment. It implies that man, as a product of God, will inherently desire knowledge of and a relationship with his creator. Augustine continues by saying: “The thought of [God] stirs [man] so deeply that he cannot be content unless he praises you, because you made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in you” (21). This suggests that though man may struggle on earth, should he decide to turn to God he will experience peace and rest in the Lord. Here Augustine also states that unless man has found God, “he cannot be content,” implying that those who have not found God will feel a constant inner void.

There are several themes within the passage that shows Augustine’s worldview. For example, in the first line of the passage, he understands the concept of loving God later in life: “I have learnt to love you late”(Conf. X.27). This quote suggests that Augustine is now able to see why is mother was so skeptical in giving him is baptism early in his childhood. He commits to sin on numerous occasions, but comes back to find God again. In Book II, Augustine’s actions are paralleled with the prodigal son: “I strayed still farther from you and you did not restrain me.

It is obvious from The Confession that Augustine was a man who struggled endlessly to extricate himself from the bondage of sin, but the more he tried, the more he failed and sinks deeper into its abyss. And with every failure, comes a sense of disappointment and despondency, until he had a strange experience. In AD 386, while sitting in his garden, Augustine heard a voice from some children playing not far away urging “him” to pick the book—the Bible, and read. What he read from Apostle Paul’s letter to the Roman Christian in Chapter 13 transformed, not only his understanding of the hopelessness and despair man encounters in trying to solve the problem of sin on his own, but he saw the provision that God has made to remedy the consequences of sin and the grace he has graciously provided to live a life that is acceptable to God. That moment was the turning point in Augustine’s life and how he developed his sotoriological

The book expresses three main concerns. One is Augustine’s frank and detailed acknowledgment of his personal sinfulness and the power he came to recognize as God’s provident grace—protective, creative, salvific—in every moment of his life. He also wrote in order to confess his own Christian faith and clearly repudiate any supposed lingering connections on his part with Manichaeism. Finally, The Confessions are a heartfelt paean of praise and thanksgiving in honor of God’s glory.

At this point in his life, Augustine is recognized for doing many things for the Church as a priest, author, and defender of faith. As an author he wrote Confessions, his spiritual autobiography, and City of God, his great work describing the Christian philosophy throughout history. In this magnificent work,