Did St Augustine say this to a prostitute?

By Spencer D Gear

Augustine of Hippo (image courtesy Wikipedia)

This is a story floating around the Internet about St. Augustine, his former sinful life and what a prostitute said to him after he became a changed man through Christ. This story has been repeated by some conservative evangelical preachers.

‘Grace to You’ cited it

John MacArthur’s organisation, Grace to You, is one such group telling this story:

Augustine, great saint of God had lived with a prostitute before his conversion. After he was wonderfully saved, he was walking down the street and this prostitute saw him. She shouted his name and he kept walking. He saw her, but kept his eyes straightforward and walked. She continued crying after him and ran after him. And finally, she said, Augustine, it is I. To which he replied, I know, but it is no longer I (Grace to You, ‘Whose fault is our temptation?‘)

Spurgeon also used it

C H Spurgeon’s sermon quotes a view that is now espoused on the Internet in Spurgeon’s sermon, ‘The way to honor‘:

This was the teaching of our baptism. When we were baptized we were buried in the water. The teaching was that we were henceforth to be dead and buried to the world and alive alone for Jesus. It was the crossing of the Rubicon—the drawing of the sword and the flinging away of the scabbard. If the world should call us we now reply, “We are dead to thee, O world!” One of the early saints, I think it was Augustine, had indulged in great sins in his younger days. After his conversion he met with a woman who had been the sharer of his wicked follies; she approached him winningly and said to him, “Augustine,” but he ran away from her with all speed. She called after him and said, “Augustine, it is I,” mentioning her name; but he then turned round and said, “But it is not I; the old Augustine is dead and I am a new creature in Christ Jesus.” That—to Madam Bubble and to Madam Wanton, to the world, the flesh, and the devil—should be the answer of every true servant of Christ: “I live, yet not I but Christ liveth in me. Thou art the same, O fair false world— thou art the same, but not I. I have passed from death unto life, from darkness into light. Thy siren charms can fascinate me no more. A nobler music is in my ear and I am drawn forward by a more sovereign spell towards other than yours. My bark shall cut her way through all seas and waves till it reaches the fair haven and I see my Savior face to face.” ‘Tis irretrievable, then, this step which we have taken, the absolute surrender of our whole nature to the sway of the Prince of peace. We are the Lord’s. We are his for ever and for ever. We cannot draw back, and blessed be his name, his grace will not suffer us to do so. The path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.”

Searching for the truth

I’ve searched quite a bit on the Internet, including an electronic search through all of the 13 chapters of Augustine’s Confessions, but couldn’t find any mention of this story. I did find this comment by Rev. Richard J. Fairchild who wrote:

Sources: Using Google I tried in 2005 to locate the St. Augustine quote (first taken from a sermon illustration journal many years ago) but could not find it. It seems that online at least, ours is the oldest citation of what may be an apocryphal reference?

It is said that St. Augustine was accosted one day on the street by a former mistress some time after he had become a Christian. When he saw her he turned and walked the other way. Surprised, the woman called out, “Augustine, it is I”. Augustine as he kept going the other way, answered her, “Yes, but it is not I.”

Did Augustine say it or not?

Seems like it was fiction

This is on a website by Timothy Kauffman, ‘Speaking the love in love‘, in which he exposes this story about Augustine as fiction:

In the process of this self-revelation, Brown[1] instead reveals how woefully uninformed he actually is about Church history. His first example is of Augustine’s encounter with his mistress in the streets of Milan. Brown tells his listeners that if they have not read Augustine’s Confessions as he has, “you’ve missed one of the great books of western civilization.” (12:05). Then he continues with the story:

“And there’s a wonderful story about the time that his mistress saw him down town and he saw her and turned and started running. And she said, ‘Augustine, Augustine, it is I.’ And Augustine looked back over his shoulder and said ‘Yes, but it is not I!’” (12:30 – 12:50).

This sort of creative historical revisionism makes for great sermon illustrations, especially when the preacher does not, as Brown does not, care about truth. What Brown relates as a key point in Augustine’s life was, as Ambrose clearly stated, a fable that had nothing to do with Augustine at all:

Let the man deny himself and be wholly changed, as in the fable they relate of a certain youth, who left his home because of his love for a harlot, and, having subdued his love, returned; then one day meeting his old favourite and not speaking to her, she, being surprised and supposing that he had not recognized her, said, when they met again, “It is I”. “But,” was his answer, “I am not the former I”. (Ambrose, Concerning Repentance, Book II, Ch 10.96)

This story floating around the Internet and in sermons has no relation to Augustine at all and certainly is not to be found anywhere in Augustine’s Confessions. It was, as Ambrose said, a ‘fable’. But Kauffman goes on with “the rest of the story”:

I’ve told that story for years. Let me tell you the rest of the story. She wasn’t looking for sex, she was looking for food. They had a son together and she wanted him to acknowledge their son and give them something to eat. What’s with that? When he did his Confessions, he confessed to stealing apples when he wasn’t hungry, but he {Brown pauses here, getting choked up} … he never mentioned his son. I love Augustine. Augustine R Us. (12:50 – 13:30)

Yet “the rest of the story” is as much a fabrication as the beginning. We believe Brown has probably read Augustine’s Confessions, but the passage of time seems to have dimmed his memory, for in his Confessions Augustine explicitly acknowledges his illegitimate son by name. He not only confesses his great sin, but also thanks God for giving the son to him, and acknowledges that he even took custody of the boy:

“Meanwhile my sins were being multiplied. 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. And she went back to Africa, vowing to thee never to know any other man and leaving with me my natural son by her.” (Augustine, Confessions, Book 6, Chapter 15.25)

“When the time arrived for me to give in my name, we left the country and returned to Milan. … We took with us the boy Adeodatus, my son after the flesh, the offspring of my sin. Thou hadst made of him a noble lad.” (Augustine, Confessions, Book 9, Chapter 6.14)

Clearly Augustine acknowledges his son in his Confessions, but Steve Brown’s point is moot because the fabled encounter with Augustine’s former mistress or prostitute never occurred in the first place. Whence, therefore, the fabrication? Surely Brown has a source for this story but it was not mentioned.

All we can conclude is that the beautiful and emotionally charged story about Augustine and the prostitute is a heart-throb of fabrication that has no relation to fact.

Notes

[1] Kauffman is referring to ‘Steve Brown [who] is a radio show host, author, seminary professor, PCA [Presbyterian Church of America] pastor and occasional “shock jock.”’. Available at: http://www.whitehorseblog.com/2014/08/10/speaking-the-love-in-love/ (Accessed 17 November 2014).

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