An Interminable Work?

Abstract

From opening books to read them, through the continuous effort at opening one’s heart to God, to the eventual disclosure of God’s mysteries to human beings, Augustine seems to trace an implicit conceptualization of openness in his Confessions. The words of Matthew 7. 7–8 underlie Augustine’s engagement with openness up to the very last sentence of the book, which ends with a sequence of verbs in the passive voice that culminates with the desired manifestation of the divine. The entire endeavour of opening oneself up undertaken in the Confessions aims at this final passive openness, which is (always) yet to come as much as human opera are (always) yet to come to completion.