Alanta Web Conferencing Released to Beta

I’m pleased to announce that the product the small team at Alanta has been working on for the last 18 months is finally in beta. Now, this is a true beta, rather than a Google-style “forever-beta”, so use at your own risk. But we’ve been dog-fooding it ourselves for the better part of six months, and we decided it was time to let other folks start banging on it. As Matt Mullenwegg said, “If you’re not embarrassed when you ship your first version you waited too long.” And if that’s true, well, we haven’t exactly waited too long.

If you have only a small amount of courage, you can start using it here:  http://alanta.com/

Some Details

Alanta is the first completely in-browser web conferencing and collaboration solution with acoustic echo cancellation. There are other in-browser solutions, like DimDim and TokBox, but because they use Flash, and because Flash has no echo cancellation, they’re basically unusable unless everyone in the conference is wearing headphones. We managed to add echo cancellation by using Silverlight as our platform, which gave us raw access to the audio and video streams, though precious little else. As a result, we ended up having to rebuild the entire web conferencing stack, more-or-less from scratch: but the result is a solution that can offer features nobody else has.  

Some Important Caveats

1. We’re still working through some stability issues with our media server. As a result, sometimes sound will cut out on one or more parties. Our best recommendation is to (a) refresh your browser when this happens, and (b) don’t use this yet for mission-critical stuff. Like I said, this is a real beta.
   
2. At the moment, this is all just running on one aging server for which we’re paying $70 / month. We’re not expecting a ton of usage right out the gate, but if we’re wrong, we might hit some near-term scalability issues.
   
3. We theoretically support Macs, but our testing shows that this support is still pretty iffy. It turns out there are important differences in how various sound card/web cam drivers behave under Silverlight, and these differences seem to be worse on Macs. We’re working to improve this.  Still beta, remember?
   
4. There’s no hard-coded limit to the number of concurrent sessions in each call, but we’ve noticed that our media server starts acting weird after four or five. We’re working on that. Have I mentioned that this is beta?

Some Additional Details

1. This all free at the moment – we haven’t even built the piece to charge folks. We anticipate that we’ll eventually offer a free and several paid levels.
   
2. This is all written in Silverlight. Some folks have wondered about our choice of platform, mostly because of the limited reach of Silverlight compared to Flash. We don’t think this is going to be an issue in the long term: Silverlight had ~25% reach when we started, is now up to ~70%, and is continuing to grow at ~2% a month (see riastats for details).  HTML5 isn’t going to be an option for at least five years, as the W3C/IETF committee tasked with working on realtime web conferencing technologies only spun up last month, and is likely years away from a working spec, let alone widespread browser adoption.
   
3. We built the media pieces basically from scratch. We used CSpeex for our audio codec and ported the Speex preprocessor from C to C# for the heart of our audio DSP, but we rolled our own video codec, media server, and protocol. It would have been nice to use RTP and a concomitant RTP server, but Silverlight doesn’t support UDP, and we have some long-term plans to fix the problems inherent in real-time two-way communication over TCP/IP that required us to control the underlying protocol. Our acoustic echo cancellation is the piece that needs the most long-term work: we’re measuring about 90% echo removal in our tests, which is OK for 2-3 people in a room, and lots better than Flash, but the 10% that remains is still too annoying when it’s multiplied by lots of simultaneous participants.

Because all this is happening is completely in-browser, the next step in our strategy is to offer a simple API that websites can use to add real-time communications to their own sites.  Imagine car dealerships talking with customers in real-time as they’re browsing their site, or Nordstrom’s “personal shoppers” talking with their clients, or, really, any website with a high-touch sales model. Or use it to turn casual games into social games: Scrabulous meets Chatroulette (presumably without the penises).  Or lots of stuff we haven’t thought of yet.  Our bet is that companies will be looking to distinguish themselves over the next few years by adding real-time communications to their websites; and that customers will grow to expect it.

I’d like to offer a special thanks to Andre Kirchner and Roman Buchyn, the two other Alanta developers, and to Alex Ermolaev, our CEO.  You’ve been a great team to work with, and I look forward to conquering the world with you.

URL Rewriting Module Interferes with WCF REST Service Processing

I spent most of yesterday and a good chunk of this morning troubleshooting a problem with a WCF REST service I’ve been trying to create.  Specifically, I had a brain-dead simple WCF service that looked like this:

    [ServiceContract(Namespace = "AjaxRoomService")]
    public interface IAjaxRoomService
    {
        [OperationContract]
        [WebGet(ResponseFormat = WebMessageFormat.Json, BodyStyle = WebMessageBodyStyle.Wrapped)]
        string SayHello();
    }

The implementation looked like this:

    public class AjaxRoomService : IAjaxRoomService
    {
        public string SayHello()
        {
            return "Hello";
        }
    }

And the actual .svc file looked like this:

<%@ ServiceHost Language="C#" Debug="true" Service="Alanta.Web.Services.AjaxRoomService" Factory="System.ServiceModel.Activation.WebServiceHostFactory" CodeBehind="AjaxRoomService.svc.cs" %>

Note that I was using the WebServiceHostFactory, so I didn’t need to have anything in my web.config file.  Simple, right? Everything should have worked, right?  But when I tried to call the service (i.e., by navigating to http://localhost:51150/Services/AjaxRoomService.svc/SayHello), I consistently received a 404 error.

I did my standard Google searches, but all the issues people described had to do with running the service in IIS, and I wasn’t even getting that far: I was just trying to get this running under Cassini, in Visual Studio. 

But after much troubleshooting and more than a little swearing, I finally put my finger on it.  We’re using a simple URL rewriting module that shouldn’t have been interfering with this, but it was.  The trouble was in this particular line of code in the URL rewriting module:

HttpContext.Current.RewritePath(rewrittenPath);

A debugger showed that it was rewriting the path from “/Services/AjaxRoomService.svc/SayHello” to “/Services/AjaxRoomService.svc/SayHello” – in other words, it wasn’t making any changes.  But as soon as I changed it to only rewrite the path if the path had actually changed, my problem went away:

// Only rewrite the path if the path has changed, as otherwise it interferes with .svc request processing.
if (string.Compare(HttpContext.Current.Request.Path, rewrittenPath, true) != 0)
{
    Debug.WriteLine(string.Format("Rewriting {0} to {1}", HttpContext.Current.Request.Path, rewrittenPath));
    HttpContext.Current.RewritePath(rewrittenPath);
}

Not exactly a dramatic discovery, but I figured it might benefit someone else at some point, so I’ll toss it out there for the Google indexer to discover, in the hopes that it helps someone else someday.

A Eulogy for Elmer Smith

My 97-year old grandfather died this week, and I’m currently down in Southern Oregon to attend his memorial service and to help clean up his house.  This is what I read at his memorial service.

Elmer Smith came from the humblest of beginnings, but by the time he graduated from high school, his teachers were telling him he needed to apply to MIT. That was the sort of mind my grandfather had been given: intense, analytical, searingly precise. But my grandfather had other goals besides academic achievement. He wanted a wife, and he wanted a family. That was the sort of heart my grandfather possessed: generous, disciplined, searingly loyal. So he turned from MIT to Montana: he exchanged the dreams of a brilliant engineering career for a pair of lips that he first kissed on a quiet Kalispell street in 1933. And my famously skinflint grandfather would have called the price cheap.

Although I came into the picture much later, I have no experience of life without him. In my earliest memories, he is a constant figure: often present, always desired. He was not just strong: to my young mind, he was strength itself, and intelligence, and character. For many years, even as he entered his eighth and ninth decades, it seemed impossible that he should ever depart this earth. He was the earth, and the salt thereof. He was my hero, everything I ever wanted to be, the very special gift of a God who knows how much little kids need Grandpas. God gave many gifts to our family, but none more valuable or valued than a patriarch who loved his wife, who loved his family, and who loved me.

It wasn’t until about fifteen years ago, when my grandfather lost his eyesight, that we began to realize that the Lord would eventually take back those many gifts he had given. Five years ago, my grandfather broke his ankle, and began using a cane. Three years ago, he lost his beloved wife of 72 years to cancer. Two years ago, he broke his hip. Last year, he had to leave the property he had nurtured for 60 years. The brilliant and brash young man who had conquered his wife’s heart as easily as he conquered the Salmon River was now lonely, crippled and blind. God had given my grandfather in his youth great strength, amazing health, a warm home, and a loving wife; and as my grandfather aged, God slowly and inexorably withdrew each of those gifts. In the end, God recalled even His gift of rational thought. The time came, during his last weeks, when my grandfather’s reason rambled but loosely through his conversations.

But it was during this time, when almost everything God had provided him was removed, that we could see most clearly who my grandfather was at his core, and who he had always been. From his bed, unable to walk or see, he talked a great deal about fixing things, even if those things existed only in his imagination or memory. He talked continuously about family, even if the loved ones with whom he was conversing had departed years ago. And he talked ardently about his Lord. He felt God’s presence a great deal in his final days. When we gathered with him to pray or to sing hymns, tears would stream down his face, and his scattered wits would slowly recollect themselves. He prayed constantly for his family, and made each of us assure him that we would, in our turn, meet him in heaven.

Rest did not come easily to my grandfather, nor to a heart that had beat steadily for 97 years. But he is at rest now, at peace in the presence of the Savior he served faithfully, and reunited with the wife he loved passionately.

During these last weeks, I’ve thought a great deal about death, how it comes to us all, even the strongest and best. One day, I know, I will follow in my grandfather’s footsteps. One day, God will require from me an account of all the many gifts that I have received. I hope, when that day comes, that I will face it with the same fortitude and good humor my grandfather showed in his final years. I pray that I will have lived a life of enough faith and love that, like my grandfather, my own children and grandchildren and great grandchildren will be gathered around me. One day, I will follow my grandfather down the long valley of the shadow of death; and one day, I pray to meet him again when the world is made new.

Confessions – Book 9

This is my final series of notes on Augustine’s Confessions.  Although there are 13 books in the Confessions, we’re only covering books 1-9 in our Bible study, so at least for the moment, this will be my final set of notes.

Opening Meditation (9.1)

As always, Augustine is mystified by the nature of human will. Now that he was a Christian, he says, “Now I did not will to do what I willed, [but] began to will to do what thou didst will.” Paradoxically, his own will was not formerly free when he simply willed to do what he wanted: rather, his will became free the moment God gave him the grace to will what God wanted.

Leaving the World (9.2-6)

Augustine and his friends decided to leave their secular employments and devote themselves full-time to God’s service. Augustine did not quit his job immediately, however, but waited for several weeks, until the start of the harvest vacation (from late August through mid-October). He seems a little worried that people might think he took this time because he wasn’t completely committed, but says that he actually took this course due to the opposite fear: that if he were to leave in the middle of the term, it would look ostentatious and proud.

Some of thy servants, my brethren, may say that I sinned in this, since having once fully and from my heart enlisted in thy service, I permitted myself to sit a single hour in the chair of falsehood. I will not dispute it. But hast thou not, O most merciful Lord, pardoned and forgiven this sin in the holy water, along with all the others, horrible and deadly as they were?

Augustine’s friends took his conversion in various ways. Verecundus, his landlord, was rather dismayed to find Augustine following this path; although he was interested in becoming a Christian, he only wished to do so if he could become as “complete” a Christian as Augustine, i.e., a chaste, unmarried one. Since he was married, and divorce was considered an even worse state than marriage, this was obviously not possible. It was only when he fell ill and was on his deathbed that he allowed himself to be baptized. In contrast, Nebridius was excited, and quickly abandoned the last remnants of his docetic heresy, in submitting himself as a candidate for baptism.

Cassiciacum (9.7-13)

During the harvest vacation, Augustine left to a country villa in Cassiciacum, a small village north of Milan, within sight of the Alps. He was accompanied by his son Adeodatus, his mother Monica, Alypius, and half a dozen others. While at Cassiciacum, he wrote several important treatises, including a dialog with his son called The Teacher, The Happy Life, Soliloquies, and several others.

What Augustine treasures most about this time, however, was not the writings which he finished, but the hours spent in prayer and meditation on the Psalms. Paragraphs 8-11 are basically a meditation on the Old Latin text of Psalm 4, which of course, being a translation of a translation of a translation, differs in some important ways from what we read in the NIV. To take just a couple examples:

Verse	Old Latin	NIV	Significance
3	Know that the Lord has magnified his Holy One.	Know that the LORD has set apart his faithful servant for himself.	The Old Latin “magnified” and “Holy One” seem to be clearer references to Christ than “set apart” and “faithful servant”.
4	Be angry and do not sin.	Tremble and do not sin.	Augustine interprets “be angry” as “Be angry at yourself for your sins so that you will not sin” (a different interpretation than Paul gives it in Eph. 4:26). The NIV translation seems to be saying, “Tremble at God, so that you will not sin.” The object of the initial verb is different, though the thought is similar.
7	Many are saying, who will show us the good? O Lord, the light of your face shines bright upon us.	Many, LORD, are asking, “Who will bring us prosperity?” Let the light of your face shine on us.	Augustine interprets the verse to mean, “Only when God’s face shines upon us can we know the true good” (in both a philosophical and moral sense). In contrast, the NIV seems to mean, “Only when God’s face shines upon us can we be prosperous” (in both a pecuniary and moral sense).

Augustine also apparently experienced a (relatively minor) instance of divine healing. He was suffering from a toothache, which was probably a dramatically more troublesome experience in the centuries before modern dentistry and analgesics than it is now. It was troubling him horribly, however, and he asked for prayer; and as soon as his friends knelt to pray for him, the pain disappeared.

Baptism (9.14-16)

Augustine mentions only briefly the death of his son (which took place about a year after this point). He was clearly a proud father, and if the dialog reproduced in The Teacher is any indication, a justly proud one. It’s very interesting, though, and perhaps just a little disturbing, that he seems to feel no grief about the premature death of such a talented and promising son, “our companion, as if he were the same age in grace with ourselves”.

Augustine mentions how moving he now found the hymns and psalms sung in the church – which were apparently a new innovation. Presumably shortly before his conversion, during the height of the Arian controversy, the empress Justina attempted to enforce Arian doctrine in Milan, going so far as to attempt to remove the orthodox Ambrose by force. When the soldiers arrived, they found the people of the church barricaded inside. Ambrose refused to give up the church, though he equally refused to use force to keep the soldiers out. To keep the people’s spirits up during this time of heightened confrontation, Ambrose borrowed a tradition from the Eastern Church, that of communal (and antiphonal) singing. This was an early version of what later became Gregorian chant, and it’s the first recorded communal singing in church (apart from various NT references to “psalms, hymns and spiritual songs”). Seven of the hymns that Ambrose wrote are still a part of the Roman Catholic liturgy.

Monica’s Life and Death (9.17-33)

Some of the customs Augustine describes seem quite strange to us, and even perverse, such as the rule instituted by Monica’s nurse that children should only drink water at mealtimes:

“You drink water now only because you don’t control the wine; but when you are married and mistresses of pantry and cellar, you may not care for water, but the habit of drinking will be fixed.”

This reminds me of Aristotle’s recommendation that infants should be exposed to the cold as much as possible, so that they would grow up used to it.

Similarly, Augustine accepts with a certain equanimity the fact that bad-tempered husbands beat their wives (this is at best mildly problematic for him), and that masters beat their servants (he seems to think this is a good thing).

On the flip side, some of what Augustine commends his mother for seems downright farsighted: such as the role she played as peacemaker in various quarrels:

She would disclose nothing about the one to the other except what might serve toward their reconciliation. This might seem a small good to me if I did not know to my sorrow countless persons who, through the horrid and far-spreading infection of sin, not only repeat to enemies mutually enraged things said in passion against each other, but also add some things that were never said at all.

Towards the end of this section, Augustine describes a vision which he and his mother together experienced.  It is similar in many ways to the “Plotinian ecstasy” which he experienced and describes in 7.23, but is much more specifically Biblical (not necessarily Christian) in its content.

And when our conversation had brought us to the point where the very highest of physical sense and the most intense illumination of physical light seemed, in comparison with the sweetness of that life to come, not worthy of comparison, nor even of mention, we lifted ourselves with a more ardent love toward the Selfsame, and we gradually passed through all the levels of bodily objects, and even through the heaven itself, where the sun and moon and stars shine on the earth. Indeed, we soared higher yet by an inner musing, speaking and marveling at thy works.

Augustine’s reaction to his mother’s death is almost – almost – the opposite of his reaction to the death of his friend in book 4. He never says anything like, “I knew that I would see my mother again.” His consolation appears to be somewhat deeper than that – though he clearly experiences grief as well, though in a much more subdued form than he had experienced as an adolescent, despite its surface similarity:

I was then left destitute of a great comfort in her, and my soul was stricken; and that life was torn apart, as it were, which had been made but one out of hers and mine together.

Despite his determined, near-pagan stoicism, God eventually graced Augustine with an unwanted gift of grief:

It was a solace for me to weep in thy sight, for her and for myself, about her and about myself. Thus I set free the tears which before I repressed, that they might flow at will, spreading them out as a pillow beneath my heart. And it rested on them, for thy ears were near me.

Confessions – Book 8

This is a continuation of my notes on Augustine’s Confessions.

Augustine’s Final Objections (8.1-2)

By this time, Augustine was convinced intellectually of the truth of Christianity. The old Manichaean doctrines – that God was material, and in time – held no more attraction for him. But Augustine himself was still material (and hence subject to lust) and still in time (and hence unstable). And he was possessed of a subtle pride that perhaps he did not recognize even when he was writing the Confessions: he didn’t feel like he could be just an ordinary Christian. Lots of other folks were Christians and were married, but Augustine wasn’t content with that sort of ordinary Christian life. If Augustine were to become a Christian, he disdained the example of even his own mother: the hermit life of Anthony, or the monastic life of Ponticianus’ friends, was much more suited to Augustine’s subtle pride. On top of that, Augustine was apparently convinced that even sex within marriage was lawful only if it were for the explicit purpose of procreation: and if he were to be baptized, and married, it would be difficult for him to obey that stricture. (This ascetic ideal, it should be noted, was not just a feature of 4^th-century Christianity, but also of contemporary philosophical paganism, Manichaeism, and Judaism. It’s an example of how Christianity can be swayed in unfortunate directions by societal trends. Our own century has many unfortunate examples of Christianity being swayed in the opposite direction by opposite trends.)

Simplicianus and Victorinus (Conversion Story #1) (8.3-5)

Seeking moral counsel from a trusted source, Augustine visited Simplicianus, a respected Christian who had baptized Ambrose and eventually succeeded him as bishop. Simplicianus told him the conversion story of Victorinus, a story which closely paralleled Augustine’s own journey, and which is the first of five conversion stories (and eight total conversions) which Augustine recounts in this book. It is worth noting that, like Augustine, Victorinus’ conversion was not intellectual (both had been convinced of the truth of Christianity for some time), but volitional.

One minor issue that gives scholars heartburn is that Augustine talks about having read Victorinus’ translations into Latin of the Neo-Platonists:

When I mentioned to him that I had read certain books of the Platonists which Victorinus--formerly professor of rhetoric at Rome, who died a Christian, as I had been told--had translated into Latin, Simplicianus congratulated me that I had not fallen upon the writings of other philosophers, which were full of fallacies and deceit, “after the beggarly elements of this world,” whereas in the Platonists, at every turn, the pathway led to belief in God and his Word.

The problem with this paragraph is that we have several pretty good records of all of Victorinus’ works (including one by Jerome, who was Victorinus’ student), and none of them mention any such translations. Either the lists we have are incomplete, or Augustine is remembering something incorrectly.

Celebrity Conversions (Conversion Story #2) (8.6-9)

Augustine spends some time thinking through an issue which is of some relevance to us today: is there any special value to celebrity conversions? His answer, perhaps surprisingly, is that yes, there is. His argument, however, doesn’t assume that the celebrities are any better than average Christians – on the contrary, it assumes that they are in greater danger. But precisely because they are in greater danger, greater is the rejoicing amongst those who have watched them fight their way free of it.

For the enemy is more overcome in one on whom he has a greater hold, and whom he has hold of more completely. But the proud he controls more readily through their concern about their rank and, through them, he controls more by means of their influence. The more, therefore, the world prized the heart of Victorinus (which the devil had held in an impregnable stronghold) and the tongue of Victorinus (that sharp, strong weapon with which the devil had slain so many), all the more exultingly should Thy sons rejoice because our King hath bound the strong man, and they saw his vessels taken from him and cleansed, and made fit for thy honor and “profitable to the Lord for every good work.”

Here Augustine also makes reference to a second conversion story: when Saul defeated the sorcerer Bar-Jesus, and led the proconsul Sergius Paulus to the Lord (Acts 13:4-12), accepting (Augustine believes) the proconsul’s name as a symbol of his victory. It’s worth noting that this is the only conversion story which actually turns on the subject becoming convinced of the truth of Christianity, and it is the briefest of the various stories told.

Augustine’s Final Objections Part 2 (8.10-12)

In these paragraphs, Augustine rehearses the hesitancy which kept him from baptism and a full commitment to Christ. He wanted to become a Christian, to submit his own will to Christ, but found that he was unable to make the final movement on his own. His will was enslaved to itself, as a punishment for its choices:

For out of the perverse will came lust, and the service of lust ended in habit, and habit, not resisted, became necessity…It was through me that habit had become an armed enemy against me, because I had willingly come to be what I unwillingly found myself to be. Who, then, can with any justice speak against it, when just punishment follows the sinner?

Ponticianus and His Friends (Conversion Story #3) (8.13-15)

Ponticianus, a highly-placed Roman court official, told the story of two friends of his who had joined a monastery. Again, the parallels with Augustine are notable: in the story, the two were not becoming convinced of the truth of Christianity (indeed, they were both apparently baptized Christians), but became convinced that they had a higher calling.

Can our hopes in the court rise higher than to be ‘friends of the emperor’? But how frail, how beset with peril, is that pride! Through what dangers must we climb to a greater danger? And when shall we succeed? But if I chose to become a friend of God, see, I can become one now.

This story also introduces St. Anthony, a famous fourth-century monk, whose own conversion story will be told later.

Augustine’s Final Objections Part 3 (8.16-21)

As Augustine draws closer to the final crisis, he reflects on the goal he set himself as a young man, reading Cicero’s Hortensius, to pursue philosophy at all costs. He realizes now that philosophy is not enough to save him. Nothing that he can do can save him, for this is precisely the issue. His will is bound. Even his prayers are against him: “Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.” Augustine is amazed at the paradox he encounters: mind and body are separate things, but the mind can tell the body, “Do this,” and it does it, without hesitation. But the mind cannot tell itself, “Do this.” “My body more readily obeyed the slightest wish of the soul in moving its limbs at the order of my mind than my soul obeyed itself to accomplish in the will alone its great resolve.”

It’s worthwhile to note the Genesis imagery that appears during this account of his struggle: like Adam, and like Jesus, Augustine’s struggle against sin took place in a garden. Adam’s sin centered around a tree, and his attempt at redeeming himself involved a fig tree; Augustine’s temptation and conversion likewise took place under a fig tree. 

A Digression Against the Manichees (8:22-24)

Augustine’s conclusion that we may have more than one will leads him into a brief digression against the Manichaean version of this argument. The Manichees went further than saying that we had more than one will; they said that each will represented a separate nature, one good and one bad. Their evidence for this, apparently, was that we often found ourselves willing more than one thing. This is likely a straw-man argument, but Augustine is happy to knock it down. Willing good at the same time we are willing evil is no argument for multiple natures, however much it may be an argument for multiple wills. It’s no different, in Augustine’s book, than hesitating between going to the theater or to the circus (both bad), or between reading a Gospel or a Psalm (both good).

Augustine’s Final Objections Part 4 (8:25-27)

Again, Augustine rehearses the objections which prevented him from making his leap into Christianity. This time he introduces the image of the Lady Continence, opposing his “former mistresses”, who “tugged at my fleshly garments”. This hearkens back (at least) to the classic contrast in Proverbs between the personifications of Wisdom and Foolishness as two women who each seek to entice a man into their orbit.  The significance of the fig tree, in this instance, centers around the fact that Adam and Eve tried to cover their shame with fig leaves: this attempt was notoriously unsuccessful, because only God can rescue us.  Similarly, Augustine was trying to achieve celibacy and continence through his own efforts under the fig tree, and it was only when he threw himself fully on God’s mercy (and stopped adding the “but not yet” to his prayer) that he was able to achieve the continence and self-control that he wanted.

Anthony’s Conversion (Conversion Story #4) (8.28-29)

Augustine finally withdraws from even the closest human companionship and moves deeper into the garden, much like Jesus on the night of his arrest. The phrase he hears (Tolle, lege) could mean either “Take it, read it”, or “Pick it up, look at it” (the latter perhaps being a phrase chanted by agricultural workers during harvest time). Augustine finally tells the actual story of St. Anthony’s “conversion” (like the others in this chapter, not to Christianity, but to a deeper commitment to Christ). He’s been saving this one, partially because it was the most famous, but also because it resembled his own in having been achieved by the hearing of a specific passage of Scripture.

The Conversions of Augustine and Alypius (Conversion Story #5) (8:30)

Augustine’s own conversion was fully effected when he followed the injunction of the chant of the children he had heard, and picked up the book of Paul that Ponticianus had commented on. There he read: “Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof.” (Rom. 13:13). This immediately quieted his soul, and allowed him to express himself to Alypius. Alypius was so moved by Augustine’s decision that he himself was prompted to make the same choice. However, because Alypius had never had the same struggle with sexual desire that had marked Augustine, his choice was much easier: you get the impression that he had merely been waiting for his friend to make the first move.

Confessions – Book 7

This is part 7 of my notes on Augustine’s Confessions.

The Remnants of Augustine’s Materialism (7.1.1-7.2.3)

Augustine was but slowly working his way out of the materialism that remained from his days as a Manichee. Specifically, he knew that God was incorruptible – he couldn’t imagine a God that wasn’t – but he couldn’t imagine how God couldn’t be physical in some sense. Augustine simply couldn’t imagine a God who existed, but didn’t exist physically. That said, Augustine was well aware of the problems associated with the Manichaean materialism, including a dilemma proposed by his friend Nebridius. Basically, Nebridius’ point is that the Manichaean explanation for human beings has a hole in it. The world as we know it is a mixture of divine substance corrupted by exposure to matter. But how can this be, if God is truly immutable and incorruptible? The whole idea of God having to fight evil seems to imply that evil could do some harm to God, which would mean that God is not incorruptible – which was anathema to Augustine, as soon as he had put the question to himself clearly.

I should note that it’s precisely this question about the mode of God’s existence that Augustine is driving at back in book 1, during the long series of rhetorical questions with which he opens his work.

3. Since, then, thou dost fill the heaven and earth, do they contain thee? Or, dost thou fill and overflow them, because they cannot contain thee? And where dost thou pour out what remains of thee after heaven and earth are full? Or, indeed, is there no need that thou, who dost contain all things, shouldst be contained by any, since those things which thou dost fill thou fillest by containing them? For the vessels which thou dost fill do not confine thee, since even if they were broken, thou wouldst not be poured out. And, when thou art poured out on us, thou art not thereby brought down; rather, we are uplifted. Thou art not scattered; rather, thou dost gather us together. But when thou dost fill all things, dost thou fill them with thy whole being? Or, since not even all things together could contain thee altogether, does any one thing contain a single part, and do all things contain that same part at the same time? Do singulars contain thee singly? Do greater things contain more of thee, and smaller things less? Or, is it not rather that thou art wholly present everywhere, yet in such a way that nothing contains thee wholly?

It’s quite interesting to note that the questions which at one point kept him from the faith have here become rather a means for deepening it, a source of praise and wonder, rather than a lament.

• Have you ever run into a Christian doctrine which, when you first heard it, seemed awkward and unpleasant, only to have it later become meaningful?

The Origin of Evil – Take 1 (7.3.4 – 7.5.7)

Augustine’s initial attempts to think through the problem of evil from a Christian perspective kept running up against the idea that our will didn’t appear to be completely free. He frequently found himself doing things that (at least in his better moments) he didn’t want to do: and he was mystified as to why that conflict would be present in him. How did it get there? The Manichaean answer – that human beings were made up of both divine and diabolical stuff – was no longer sufficient, but he didn’t have any better alternative.

Furthermore, his materialism exacerbated any attempt to find an answer. If both God and evil have a substantial, spatial existence, it’s quite impossible to maintain that God is truly good and all powerful. It’s also interesting to note that Augustine still seemed (at this stage) to think of evil as somehow originally bound up with matter: “Was there some evil matter out of which he made and formed and ordered [the world], but left something in his creation that he did not convert into good? But why should this be? Was he powerless to change the whole lump so that no evil would remain in it, if he is the Omnipotent?” This appears to be a remnant of his Manichaeism, which he hadn’t yet thoroughly purged from his thinking.

Astrology (7.6.8 – 7.6.10)

It seems like it took Augustine an astonishingly long time to grasp the principal problem with astrology: people born at exactly the same time have dramatically divergent fates. Not sure how that could have escaped his notice for so long.

Neoplatonism (7.7.11 – 7.10.16)

In the midst of this materialistic confusion, Augustine discovered the books of the Neo-Platonists (probably the Enneads of Plotinus, though we’re not sure), and his world was turned upside down. The Neo-Platonists had a simple argument against strict materialism: truth did not have a physical, spatial existence, yet who could doubt its existence? The same was true of thought, of love, and many other abstract concepts. The genius of this particular line of thought is that it tried to look at God in much the same way: all ideas and concepts can be subsumed under higher concepts, until you get to the one concept that holds all others, and that is God. Once Augustine found the Neo-Platonists, his materialism was gone forever.

Yet for all the influence that these philosophers had on him (and it seems that he devoured whatever of their writings he could get his hands on), he couldn’t give his heart to them: for they had nothing to say about Jesus. Augustine still wasn’t sure who Jesus was – but he was sure that he was important. And eventually it couldn’t help but strike him that everything he found valuable in the Neo-Platonists was itself already in Scripture; and that Scripture contained much more that attracted him.

And therein I found, not indeed in the same words, but to the selfsame effect, enforced by many and various reasons that “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.” That which was made by him is “life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shined in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” Furthermore, I read that the soul of man, though it “bears witness to the light,” yet itself “is not the light; but the Word of God, being God, is that true light that lights every man who comes into the world.” And further, that “he was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.” But that “he came unto his own, and his own received him not. And as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believed on his name” --this I did not find there.

In the end, Augustine was willing to borrow from the Neo-Platonists and other philosophers whenever he found them helpful, which was not infrequently. After all, “I had sought strenuously after that gold which thou didst allow thy people to take from Egypt, since wherever it was it was thine.”

One very interesting result that came from reading these philosophers is that Augustine appears to have had a mystical vision of some sort. “Being admonished by these books to return into myself, I entered into my inward soul, guided by thee… When I first knew thee, thou didst lift me up, that I might see that there was something to be seen, though I was not yet fit to see it. And thou didst beat back the weakness of my sight, shining forth upon me thy dazzling beams of light, and I trembled with love and fear.”

The Origin of Evil – Take 2 (7.11.17 – 7.16.22)

Armed with a variety of concepts borrowed from Neo-Platonic philosophy, Augustine made a second run at the problem of evil, this time with much more satisfactory results. Here Augustine makes his first profound contribution to Christian thought: all that is, is good, precisely because it is. Of course, it can be corrupted, either naturally, by returning to a state of nonbeing, or unnaturally, through evil. But to the extent that it is at all, it is good. With respect to Christian theology, this is a breakthrough quite as important as Newton and Leibnitz’ discovery of the integral calculus: it really is that big, and has had an impact on Christian theology every bit as large as calculus has had on mathematics and physics.

Augustine’s argument that being itself is good is interesting and subtle.

And it was made clear to me that all things are good even if they are corrupted. They could not be corrupted if they were supremely good; but unless they were good they could not be corrupted. If they were supremely good, they would be incorruptible; if they were not good at all, there would be nothing in them to be corrupted. For corruption harms; but unless it could diminish goodness, it could not harm. Either, then, corruption does not harm--which cannot be--or, as is certain, all that is corrupted is thereby deprived of good. But if they are deprived of all good, they will cease to be. For if they are at all and cannot be at all corrupted, they will become better, because they will remain incorruptible. Now what can be more monstrous than to maintain that by losing all good they have become better? If, then, they are deprived of all good, they will cease to exist. So long as they are, therefore, they are good. Therefore, whatsoever is, is good.

In other words, Augustine says, imagine an object, any object. Since I’m sitting on one, imagine a chair. And imagine all the goodness removed that chair through corruption, like a spiritual refrigerator: imagine it reaching a state of “absolute zero”, so that no good remains in that chair at all. Now, if all good has been removed from this chair, does the chair still exist? If it does still exist, but all good has been removed from it, this means that it can suffer no further corruption, which means that it is incorruptible. But for Augustine, this is absurd, because incorruptibility is not just a good, it’s the good. How could something that has had all good removed from it participate in the very best good of all? We must conclude, therefore, that if our chair has had every ounce of its good removed, it must also have had every ounce of its existence removed. In other words, existence is as necessarily connected to goodness in Augustine’s account, as energy is connected to matter in Einstein’s. And both connections are equally radical and world-shaking.

And of course, this was the (final) end of Augustine’s Manichaeism. The Manichees imagined evil as a substance with an independent, autonomous existence. Augustine now knew it for what it was: a parasite, entirely dependent on God’s sufferance, at most borrowing existence from God’s good creation.

One of the implications of this is that there is some good in all creation, even the “lower” parts that human beings find less congenial (such as snakes and mosquitoes). The fact that we don’t like them shows partially that our vision is finite, but also that our taste is corrupt. The point is that all things in creation harmonize with each other.

Holding Fast to Christ (7.17.23 – 7.21.27)

Despite the mystical vision of the intellect which Augustine had been granted, he found that he was unable to sustain that level of engagement with God.

And thus with the flash of a trembling glance, it arrived at that which is. And I saw thy invisibility [invisibilia tua] understood by means of the things that are made. But I was not able to sustain my gaze. My weakness was dashed back, and I lapsed again into my accustomed ways, carrying along with me nothing but a loving memory of my vision, and an appetite for what I had, as it were, smelled the odor of, but was not yet able to eat.

Specifically, Augustine says, he was unable to “connect” with God because his faith in Jesus was, at best, unformed. Jesus is the one is the mediator between God and man, the one who gives us access to God. However, Augustine didn’t yet understand this. He thought Jesus was merely a superlative human being, one who could show us the way to God, but not actually God. Against the Manichees, he had concluded that not only was Jesus’ body real, but also that Jesus was possessed of a human soul: for deciding and feeling are appropriate to the changeable human soul, not to God proper.

There’s an interesting note here in Alypius’ (initial) take on Catholic doctrine. He initially thought that Catholics taught that Jesus had a divine rather than a human soul, and he (quite rightly) disagreed with this, because it was clear that Jesus’ soul must have been human. However, it eventually became clear that the position with which he was disagreeing was not, in fact, the Catholic one, but rather that held by Apollinarius, who was declared a heretic. (The opposite heresy is that of Nestorianism, which holds that there are in fact two persons in Christ, not just two natures.)

The orthodox position is laid out in the Definition of Chalcedon:

Therefore, following the holy fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin; as regards his Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood begotten, for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin, the God-bearer; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ; even as the prophets from earliest times spoke of him, and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the creed of the fathers has handed down to us.

As Augustine sought more to understand who Jesus was, he was introduced to Paul’s writings, which was another turning point. Everything that he found attractive in the teaching of the Neoplatonists was present in Paul, along with a great deal more.

Confessions – Book 6

This is part 6 of my notes on Augustine’s Confessions.

Monica (6.1.1 – 2.2)

Monica was clearly a little out of her element when she arrived in Milan. She had come from northern Africa, where the Donatists remained very influential, and consequently where veneration of the saints was a much more prominent part of Christian faith and practice. Nevertheless, Augustine says, she managed to adapt to the practices of northern Italian Christianity without too much difficulty. Ambrose had put strict limitations on the practice of venerating the saints, for at least two reasons that Augustine alludes to, and perhaps for a third: (1) It tended to encourage drunkenness; (2) it could easily be mistaken for pagan ancestor worship; and (3) it tended to slide too much towards the Donatist positions.

• What do you think of the current Catholic practice of venerating the saints, whether Mary or St. Francis or any of the others? Do you think it’s OK to pray to the saints?

The Influence of Ambrose (6.3.3 – 6.5.8)

As Augustine spent more time listening to Ambrose, he began to move closer toward Catholic Christianity. Under the influence of Ambrose’s preaching, Augustine realized that he had been badly misinformed on what Christians actually believed. For instance, referring back to the verse in Genesis where God creates man “in His image”, the Manicheans had apparently told him that Christians believed God had a physical body. Augustine was both relieved and mortified to realize that this charge, which he had himself leveled repeatedly, was not accurate.

• Have you ever badly misunderstood a point of Christian doctrine? How did you feel once you had it better explained to you?

In addition, Ambrose employed a very different method of explicating Scripture than Augustine had previously been exposed to. Eventually this worked its way out to a “fourfold sense” of Scripture, which remained the standard medieval doctrine, pretty much up until Luther. Augustine’s basic doctrine of Scriptural interpretation, which presumably had its roots in Ambrose, was not quite so convoluted as this. Rather, he said (in On Christian Doctrine):

“The end of the Law, and of all Holy Scripture, is love… Whoever then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought. If, on the other hand, a man draws a meaning from them that may be used for the building up of love, even though he does not happen upon the precise meaning which the author whom he reads intended to express in that place, his error is not pernicious, and he is wholly clear from the charge of deception…. Whoever takes another meaning out of Scripture than the writer intended, goes astray, but not through any falsehood in Scripture. Nevertheless, as I was going to say, if his mistaken interpretation tends to build up love, which is the end of the commandment, he goes astray in much the same way as a man who by mistake quits the high road, but yet reaches through the fields the same place to which the road leads. He is to be corrected, however, and to be shown how much better it is not to quit the straight road, lest, if he get into a habit of going astray, he may sometimes take cross roads, or even go in the wrong direction altogether.”

In addition, like St. Paul, Augustine believed that it was legitimate to interpret Scripture allegorically. To take one example, again from On Christian Doctrine:

Why is it, I ask, that if any one says that there are holy and just men whose life and conversation the Church of Christ uses as a means of redeeming those who come to it from all kinds of superstitions, and making them through their imitation of good men members of its own body; men who, as good and true servants of God, have come to the baptismal font laying down the burdens of the world, and who rising thence do, through the implanting of the Holy Spirit, yield the fruit of a two-fold love, a love, that is, of God and their neighbor;--how is it, I say, that if a man says this, he does not please his hearer so much as when he draws the same meaning from that passage in Canticles, where it is said of the Church, when it is being praised under the figure of a beautiful woman, "Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are shorn which came up from the washing, whereof every one bears twins, and none is barren among them?"

• How do you deal with the difficult passages in Scripture? Which passages bother you the most?

Augustine also determined at this point that the εποχη advocated by the skeptics and academics was harder to carry out than it would seem. “My desire was to be as certain of invisible things as I was that seven and three are ten.” For he could not be mathematically confident even of the identity of his parents: yet he had to live as if he did know. In the same way, he could not achieve mathematical certainty about any of the philosophical and theological questions which beset him – but he could quite probably arrive at a reasonable certainty. And at any rate, it simply wasn’t possible to live with all judgment suspended on these questions. Augustine had never ceased to believe that God existed; and he slowly became convinced that this God would not have allowed these Scriptures to attain such authority through all nations if there were not something to them.

• How confident are you that Christianity is true? Why do you believe it?

Ambition and Marriage (6.6.9 – 6.13.23)

Even as Augustine began to work his way up in the circles of the court, he became more and more conflicted about his career choice. He had tasted the good life and wanted more of it: but he was more and more aware that true happiness was not to be found in the pursuit of worldly pleasures, whether the lawful or the unlawful sort.

This particular section is, in some ways, oddly disjointed. At some points, he indicates that he despised the pursuit of trivial pleasures during this point in his life; at others, he indicates that he honored them. Probably this reflects the actual disorder in his mind, the cognitive dissonance he felt between the high honors he was pursuing at court and the moral compromises he was forced to make as a result.

The distress and confusion Augustine felt during this period is perhaps nowhere better expressed than in 6.11.18 – 20, an astonishing (and astonishingly disjointed) passage that nevertheless resonates even today:

O you mighty Academics, is there no certainty that man can grasp for the guidance of his life? No, let us search the more diligently, and let us not despair. See, the things in the Church’s books that appeared so absurd to us before do not appear so now, and may be otherwise and honestly interpreted. I will set my feet upon that step where, as a child, my parents placed me, until the clear truth is discovered. But where and when shall it be sought? Ambrose has no leisure--we have no leisure to read. Where are we to find the books? How or where could I get hold of them? From whom could I borrow them? Let me set a schedule for my days and set apart certain hours for the health of the soul. A great hope has risen up in us, because the Catholic faith does not teach what we thought it did, and vainly accused it of. Its teachers hold it as an abomination to believe that God is limited by the form of a human body. And do I doubt that I should ‘knock’ in order for the rest also to be ‘opened’ unto me? My pupils take up the morning hours; what am I doing with the rest of the day? Why not do this? But, then, when am I to visit my influential friends, whose favors I need? When am I to prepare the orations that I sell to the class? When would I get some recreation and relax my mind from the strain of work?

19. “Perish everything and let us dismiss these idle triflings. Let me devote myself solely to the search for truth. This life is unhappy, death uncertain. If it comes upon me suddenly, in what state shall I go hence and where shall I learn what here I have neglected? Should I not indeed suffer the punishment of my negligence here? But suppose death cuts off and finishes all care and feeling. This too is a question that calls for inquiry. God forbid that it should be so. It is not without reason, it is not in vain, that the stately authority of the Christian faith has spread over the entire world, and God would never have done such great things for us if the life of the soul perished with the death of the body. Why, therefore, do I delay in abandoning my hopes of this world and giving myself wholly to seek after God and the blessed life?

“But wait a moment. This life also is pleasant, and it has a sweetness of its own, not at all negligible. We must not abandon it lightly, for it would be shameful to lapse back into it again. See now, it is important to gain some post of honor. And what more should I desire? I have crowds of influential friends, if nothing else; and, if I push my claims, a governorship may be offered me, and a wife with some money, so that she would not be an added expense. This would be the height of my desire. Many men, who are great and worthy of imitation, have combined the pursuit of wisdom with a marriage life.”

20. While I talked about these things, and the winds of opinions veered about and tossed my heart hither and thither, time was slipping away. I delayed my conversion to the Lord; I postponed from day to day the life in thee, but I could not postpone the daily death in myself. I was enamored of a happy life, but I still feared to seek it in its own abode, and so I fled from it while I sought it. I thought I should be miserable if I were deprived of the embraces of a woman, and I never gave a thought to the medicine that thy mercy has provided for the healing of that infirmity, for I had never tried it. As for continence, I imagined that it depended on one’s own strength, though I found no such strength in myself, for in my folly I knew not what is written, “None can be continent unless thou dost grant it.”168

• How do you deal with all the conflicting claims on your time, attention and effort? How can God help to bring order to these conflicting claims?

One interesting note: in his late 20’s, largely at his mother’s urging, he became engaged to a girl who was not yet old enough to marry. Since the legal age of marriage was 12, this presumably means that she was only 10 years old. This also had the side-effect of Augustine dismissing his concubine, and sending her back to Africa, without even her son to accompany her. It’s uncertain why he did this, since he was obviously torn up horribly about it: “My mistress was torn from my side as an impediment to my marriage, and my heart which clung to her was torn and wounded till it bled.” Perhaps his mistress was from another class, perhaps even a slave? Or perhaps she had tired of Augustine’s pursuit of philosophy and ambition more than her, and the choice to leave was as much hers as Augustine’s. Whatever the reasons for her departure, however, Augustine was notoriously unable to maintain continence even for two years, and quickly took another mistress (of whom nothing more is said).

• What do you think of Augustine for sending away his concubine?
• Augustine was conflicted about marriage: it was a path towards lawful sexual fulfillment, but it also promised to interfere with his pursuit of philosophy. In this he echoes St. Paul in 1 Cor. 7. What is your take on marriage? What are the upsides and the downsides to it?

Alternatives (6.14.24 – 6.16.26)

As empty as the pursuit of worldly pleasures and ambitions was proving to be, Augustine was confounded in his search for any alternative. Marriage, he suspected, would be just as much a snare as his concubine had been. He wanted to live with his friends in a sort of proto-monastic commune, pursuing philosophy and supported by rich sponsors, and they had almost decided to start one when someone pointed out, “What do you think our wives will feel about this?” It’s almost comical that in all their planning, this question had never bothered to cross anybody’s mind.

The two sides of Augustine’s mind during this period are expressed well by his claim that Epicurus’ account of human happiness seemed the best – except that Epicurus left out any possibility of the afterlife, and Augustine was convinced of its reality.