Key Arguments

• He describes his present condition as being torn and dispersed in time: "I am scattered in times whose order I do not understand. The storms of incoherent events tear to pieces my thoughts, the inmost entrails of my soul".
• He interprets salvation as a future transformation by divine love in which his scattered self will be unified: "until that day when, purified and molten by the fire of your love, I flow together31 to merge into you."
• He contrasts his current instability with the promised stability and form he will receive in God: "Then shall I find stability and solidity in you, in your truth which imparts form to me."
• He implicitly interprets temporal successiveness as disintegrative, whereas union with God is described as flowing together and merging, implying recovered unity and form.

Source Quotes

years pass in groans’ (Ps. 30: 11) and you, Lord, are my consolation. You are my eternal Father, but I am scattered in times whose order I do not understand. The storms of incoherent events tear to pieces my thoughts, the inmost entrails of my soul, until that day when, purified and molten by the fire of your love, I flow together31 to merge into you. xxx (40) Then shall I find stability and solidity in you, in your truth which imparts form to me.

You are my eternal Father, but I am scattered in times whose order I do not understand. The storms of incoherent events tear to pieces my thoughts, the inmost entrails of my soul, until that day when, purified and molten by the fire of your love, I flow together31 to merge into you. xxx (40) Then shall I find stability and solidity in you, in your truth which imparts form to me. I shall not have to endure the questions of people who suffer from a disease which brings its own punishment and want to drink more than they have the capacity to hold.

Key Concepts

• you, Lord, are my consolation. You are my eternal Father, but I am scattered in times whose order I do not understand.
• The storms of incoherent events tear to pieces my thoughts, the inmost entrails of my soul, until that day when, purified and molten by the fire of your love, I flow together31 to merge into you.
• Then shall I find stability and solidity in you, in your truth which imparts form to me.

Context

Book XI, xxx (40): After expounding time as a distension of the mind, Augustine applies this to his own life as a painful temporal scattering and expresses hope that divine love will someday gather and solidify him in God’s truth.