Confessions #3

In discussing the events leading up to Augustine's conversion, Chadwick notes in the introduction that Augustine's move to Milan from North Africa coincided with a growing intellectual crisis in which his "lost belief in Mani (the leader of a gnostic religious group) was replaced by a skepticism about the possibility of any certainty. He devoured the writings of skeptical philosophers of the Academic school telling him that certainty is not available except in questions of pure mathematics." Chadwick rightly observes that it was this disillusionment with Manicheism and resultant skepticism towards any certainty that laid the ground work for his later conversion.
As a side note, if in the 4th century pure mathematics was the only discipline in which one could hope for any certainty, then as of the turn of the previous century, that's not an option either. I guess certainty needs to be of a different sort and come from outside of us if it is to achieve what we hope "certainty" would achieve. Maybe this is why, later on in the Confessions, Augustine said "My desire was not to be more certain of you, but to be more stable in you." So the "certainty" or "stability" we need is not so much a scientific and cognitive one as much as it is a relational and holistic one.
It seems to me that we are in a period of skepticism much like Augustine's where disillusionment with a disappointing worldview and the proponents thereof have led to a radical skepticism about certainty and any sort of realistic hope for meaning and change. Could it be that we are being readied for conversion? Would it be that the Spirit who groans and intercedes for us on our behalf would cause Augustine's same prayer of "stability in you" to be our prayer in such unstable times? Would the Spirit who also convicts the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment use this to bring the restless skeptics despairing of certainty and meaning to Jesus to "find their rest in Him"? Yes Lord! Amen!