To confess, then, is to praise and
glorify God; it is an exercise in self-knowledge and true humility
in the atmosphere of grace and reconciliation.
Thus the Confessions are by no means complete when the
personal history is concluded at the end of Book IX. There are
two more closely related problems to be explored: First, how does
the finite self find the infinite God (or, how is it found of
him?)? And, secondly, how may we interpret God's action in
producing this created world in which such personal histories and
revelations do occur? Book X, therefore, is an exploration of
_man's way to God_, a way which begins in sense experience but
swiftly passes beyond it, through and beyond the awesome mystery
of memory, to the ineffable encounter between God and the soul in
man's inmost subject-self. But such a journey is not complete
until the process is reversed and man has looked as deeply as may
be into the mystery of creation, on which all our history and
experience depend. In Book XI, therefore, we discover why _time_
is such a problem and how "In the beginning God created the
heavens and the earth" is the basic formula of a massive Christian
metaphysical world view.
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