{xxx} Notes on the Translation

Three aims have determined the character of this translation. First, I have sought philosophical precision. This means, among other things, that conceptual connections are made evident by the use of more connective words (such as “for”) than is usual in contemporary English, and that I keep to a consistent translation of a particular word in passages where that word, or the concept it represents, is being subjected to analysis. For example, in Augustine’s analysis of the divided will in Book 8, I translate voluntas consistently as “will.” To translate voluntas variously as “urge,” “whim,” “volition,” “impulse,” and “inclination,” as one of the most widely used English translations does, is to obscure what Augustine is up to.

Second, as I discuss in the introductory section on intertextuality, I have sought to translate in such a way that Scriptural language and Augustine’s own language interpenetrate seamlessly. See the last paragraph of the Introduction for the implications of this aim for the prose style of this translation.

Third, I wanted the language of the translation to be as musical as possible. I have taken great care over the rhythm and cadence of the language. Sentences are often long, because successions of short sentences sound choppy.1 (My first aim likewise promotes long sentences: keeping together what is conceptually connected is an essential part of philosophical precision.) I have a strong preference for Germanic vocabulary over Latinate vocabulary: Germanic vocabulary tends to be livelier and more vivid, Latinate vocabulary stodgier and more technical-sounding. God is almighty rather than omnipotent; he enlightens rather than illuminates; Augustine marvels at God’s deeply hidden oneness rather than his profound latent unity.

The translation of certain particular words calls for some comment. Dominus is “Lord.” A recent translator argues for “Master” on the grounds that it “seems impossible that Augustine consciously and fervently prayed to a dominus in the symbolic form of a political ruler, instead of a householder like so many highly respected adult males he knew—and like himself.”2 On the contrary, it seems impossible to me that his thoughts about God were so narrowly anthropomorphic, that his God was the same sort of chap as Augustine himself, just with a rather larger household. Augustine’s theological imagination was thoroughly informed by “the throned God of imagery starting in the Hebrew Bible,”3 and I am convinced that when he addressed God as dominus he had very much the same thing in mind that present-day ­Christians have when they address God as “Lord.”

{xxxi} I have translated sinus as “bosom” only in the Scriptural expression “bosom of Abraham”; elsewhere the word obviously has incongruous overtones for a contemporary reader. One surely cannot say, for example, that the bodily creation enfolds all perceptible natures “in its huge bosom” without raising a laugh.

For viscum I have settled on “honey-trap.” Strictly speaking, viscum is bird-lime, “a glutinous substance spread upon twigs, by which birds may be caught and held fast” (OED); it is made from the berries of the mistletoe, which is also called viscum in Latin. But “bird-lime” is an obscure word, and “honey-trap” gets the two essential elements of the image: it’s a trap, and it’s sticky.

Catholicus is an insuperable problem because for most of us “Catholic” means Roman Catholic (as opposed to Protestant, Orthodox, etc.) whereas Augustine uses catholicus to describe an adherent of authentic, non-heretical, mainstream Christianity (as opposed to Manicheanism, Donatism, etc.), and we have no straightforward way of conveying that meaning in English. So I translate catholicus as “catholic,” with a lowercase “c,” and trust the reader not to import connotations that have no place before the Great Schism of East and West and the Reformations of the sixteenth century. Ecclesia, when it refers to the Body of Christ (as opposed to a local assembly of that Body, or a building in which such an assembly worships), is always “Church,” with a capital “C.”

Despite my usual allergy toward cognates, caritas is always “charity”4 and cupiditas often “cupidity”; caritas is never just “love” and cupiditas seldom “desire.” These are both technical terms for Augustine: charity is “the motion of the soul toward enjoying God for his own sake, and oneself and one’s neighbor for God’s sake,” and cupidity is “the motion of the soul toward enjoying oneself, one’s neighbor, or any bodily thing for the sake of something other than God” (De doctrina christiana 3.10.16).

Vanus and vanitas are translated in various ways (“empty/emptiness,” “trifling,” “pointless,” and so forth), but I have not avoided “vain” and “vanity,” in order to capture the echo of the frequent complaint of the writer of Ecclesiastes: “Vanity of vanities (or, in Augustine’s text, vanity of those who work vanity), all is vanity.” Think “vain” as in “all my work was in vain.”

I have retained the traditional “firmament” for firmamentum. Neither “vault” nor “dome” allows the flexibility of imagery that “firmament” (perhaps precisely because of its obscurity) allows, and Augustine is always mindful of the first syllable of the word. The firmament is firm, solid, stable; vaults and domes are just roofs of a ­particular kind.

I have taken some care to avoid unnecessarily gendered language regarding humanity. Wherever possible I translate homo as “human being” rather than “man,” and I sometimes recast singulars as plurals so that I can use “they” rather than “he” (or “she,” or “he or she”). The expression filii hominum, traditionally “sons of men,” is “children of men”—admittedly a halfway measure, but “children of human beings” {xxxii} is simply too ungainly. Fratres are not just “brothers” or “brethren,” but “brothers and sisters,” except at 9.7.15, where I use “brethren” because men and women would not have sung together in a mixed assembly.5

I have, however, retained gendered language for God. Although Augustine could hardly be clearer that God has no body and is accordingly neither male nor female, his language for God is, as both Christian tradition and Latin usage made inevitable, largely masculine. Recourse to the contemporary expedients of using “God’s” rather than “his” and “Godself” rather than “himself” would portray Augustine as having concerns that he simply did not have. Fortunately, there is a good deal more second-person address than third-person description of God, so the masculine language is less pervasive than one would expect. Occasionally Augustine will use feminine pronouns in referring to the Incarnate Word as Wisdom (the Latin for wisdom, sapientia, is feminine), and I translate accordingly; perhaps the use of feminine pronouns for Jesus (who does have a body and is unproblematically male) will go some way toward mitigating the effect of the generally masculine language for God.

I capitalize “Wisdom,” “Truth,” “Way,” and other such words when they refer to God the Son, and “Gift” and “Charity” and other such words when they refer to God the Holy Spirit.

Scriptural references are given to Augustine’s Bible. Most English translations of Scripture number the Psalms according to the Hebrew text, which has a different numbering from the one Augustine knew. For the sake of space I have not included marginal citations according to the Hebrew numbering, but I have included such citations in parentheses in the Scriptural Index. Where Augustine’s text of Scripture differs from ours because he is using the Old Latin Version (an umbrella term for a number of Latin translations of Scripture before Jerome produced the Vulgate), I add VL (for vetus Latina, “old Latin”). Where the difference between Augustine’s text and ours impedes understanding, I explain in a footnote.

I give no citations to any “books of the Platonists” (7.9.13). Any such citations must be to some degree speculative; we probably no longer even have those works in the Latin versions that Augustine knew. But there is a reason I find much more compelling than that. On nearly every page of the Confessions, and many times on most pages, we find the words of Scripture: quoted exactly, slightly adapted, developed, extended, the object of comment, meditation, argument, and analysis. Nowhere, not once, do we find such a treatment of the works of the Platonists; and when Augustine does tell us what he learned from the Platonists, crucially important though it was, he tells us in the words of Scripture. So I have given credit where Augustine thinks credit is due, and kept silent where Augustine thinks it best to keep silent.

1. Of course, strings of long sentences can be wearying, so I avoid those as well.

2. Ruden xxxii.

3. Ruden xxxi.

4. With one exception: at 7.10.16 I use “love” in order to capture the elegance of “O eternal Truth and true Love (caritas) and beloved (cara) Eternity.”

5. Also of relevance to that passage: church music at that time, as for some centuries afterward, was monophonic (that is, sung in unison, not harmonized), so I avoid the anachronism of speaking of its “sweet harmony.”