Confessions

Although Augustine had begun to accept that God must by definition be “imperishable, inviolable and unchangeable” (115), he continued to struggle to conceive of how that might be, unable to imagine anything so great yet immaterial. The nature of evil continued to trouble him as well. Though slowly his conception of human will brought him to an understanding that sin arises solely within humans, independent of God’s infinite goodness, he could not fathom why an all-powerful, benevolent God would have allowed this to be. Still, fearful of an early death and an eternity of damnation, Augustine increasingly trusted in this conception of God.

Augustine at last abandoned astrology when his friend Firminus told him how he had been born at the exact same time as an enslaved child of a neighboring household. Astrology dictated they be assigned the same horoscope predicting the same future, and yet the enslaved boy had remained deeply disadvantaged while Firminus flourished. This inconsistency was irreconcilable for Augustine, who used Firminus’s story to dissuade others from astrology. Grateful at his release from these beliefs, Augustine regrets that his pride, though decreasing, still made him unready for full Christian enlightenment.