Saint Augustine writes about his journey to finding God through his autobiography Confessions. It is filled with Augustine’s personal experiences from infancy to adulthood. Many of the experience Augustine’s reviews are common amongst people today. These relevant situations make it easy for readers to apply to their current life. Augustine also adds his current understanding to these past situations that he may have been unaware to at the time. Augustine’s Confessions are bursting with theological, and Psychological text and ideas that he uses to guide him through certain events he goes through. There is a reoccurring theme throughout Augustine’s autobiography about his desire to find God to fill the void or separation he feels. Augustine …show more content…
Augustine starts with describing what it was like to be a baby and credited the miracle to God. Although Augustine questions how and why certain things are he has no doubt that the creation of life is from a supreme being. Looking back at his infancy and recognizing that he could not control or remember anything he does not feel responsible for not knowing God at this time. Intertwined within these stories of Augustine’s childhood there are theological and philosophic statements and questions. Saint Augustine tries to understand what God is as an entity but does not understand fully. “Lord? In you it is not one thing to be and another to live: the supreme degree of being and the supreme degree of life are one and the same thing. You are being in a supreme degree and are …show more content…
Augustine was a part of a religious group known as the Manichees, and spent years trying to understand and connect to God within this religion but couldn’t fully connect with God through the false teachings. After Augustine denounces his Manichees faith Augustine starts to learn how to incorporate his philosophical knowledge with his new found faith of Catholicism. During this time Augustine finally begins to build his connection with God. “Such questions revolved in my unhappy breast, weighed down by nagging anxieties about the fear of dying before I had found the truth. But there was a firm place in my heart for the faith, within the Catholic
St. Augustine considers his mother as a crucial factor in his conversion to Catholicism. However, through the analysis of his confessions, it leads me to believe that St. Augustine’s mother was not a decisive figure. Monica was in the background keeping him in thought and prayer, however Augustine’s watershed moments came as a result of his own examination of readings as well as his conversations with his friends and mentors. Therefore, I argue that Monica had delayed Augustine’s baptism and it was his own experiences that allowed him to come to God. Baptizing a baby at birth was a common practice during the time when Augustine was born.
St. Augustine’s Confessions is written through the Christian perspective of religion. Christianity is founded on the idea that there is one God who oversees all actions. Though all actions are observed by a higher power, God instills in us a free will. As Christians we are free to make our own decisions whether right or wrong. In his Biography St Augustine expresses that he feels like a sinner. He struggles with the fact that he is a thrill seeker. He loves to watch blood sports. He watches gladiators fight to the death and commit murder. Not only does he watch, but he enjoys observing these acts. He is also expressing his sins in his biography when he writes about stealing, which is another sin. He steals pears for fun. St Augustine doesn’t even eat the pears he steals, but throws them to the pigs to eat. Through the story St Augustine struggles interna...
The death leaves Augustine feeling lost and broken and he cries out “He has become a great problem to himself” (Page 57). This pivotal time in his life caused him to begin the journey back home, back to his Lord and Creator. He begins to meet with a man name Ambrose who convinces Augustine that the Bible may be more rational and valuable than he once thought. Under the mentorship of Ambrose Augustine begins to question his faith and return back to his Catholic
One of the most documented and honest journeys to accepting Christ is presented in St. Augustine’s book, Confessions. He embarks on a mission to find truth and explains the many barriers he had to overcome to understand the greatness of God. Throughout the book, St. Augustine lays out different significant milestones that enabled him to overcome certain barriers of thought that he originally believed. These significant milestones included him meeting Ambrose the Bishop of Milan, the learning of Neoplatonism, meeting Simplicianus and Ponticianus which lead him soon after to convert, and finally reaching the end of his journey to Catholicism when he becomes baptized. Each of these milestones presented a realization that played a significant
Throughout the Confessions, Augustine provides a journal of his life. Education played a major role in his development. Augustine the character’s education began from the moment he started to communicate. He later went on to be formally educated before being removed from school for financial difficulties. Augustine the narrator believes his education a granted will from God; however, at times, Augustine the character seemed to take advantage of this will. Through this ability, granted by God’s will, Augustine the character was able to become literate.
Augustine addressed God as the fountain of life. He writes, “I fell away to those material things…I heard your voice behind me calling me to return, but because of the tumult of men hostile to peace, I scarcely heard it. But now, see, I return, burning and yearning for your fountain. Let no man forbid me! I will drink at this fountain, and I will live by it. Let me not be my own life: badly have I lived from myself. I was death to myself, in you I live again”. (Book 12.10). Here it is now when Augustine throws away all the ideas of disobedience and follows after God. He came to the conclusion that Gods word was unique. He wrote “I do not know, O Lord, I do not know any such pure words, which so persuade me to make confession and make my neck meek to your yoke, and invite me to serve you without complaint.” (Book 13.15). He was pleading for Gods word and reading gods word constantly after this happened. This is the same for us when we are reading scripture. It makes us ask questions, and let us use our thoughts. Scripture leads us to the fountain of life, as it did with
Saint Augustine’s Confessions are a diverse mix of autobiography, philosophy, and interpretation of the Christian Bible. The first nine Books of the work follow the story of Augustine 's life, from his birth (354 A.D.) up to the events that took place just after his conversion to Catholicism (386 A.D.). Born and raised in Thagaste, in eastern Algeria, he has one brother named Navigius, and two sisters. His father, Patricus, a small landowner and an official of the local government is still a pagan. Monica, his mother is a devout Christian. Augustine starts off by praising to God and that it is the natural desire of all men. Yet Augustine does not have a lot of knowledge about God because he felt that he was powerless for God to come to him
Taylor claims that St. Augustine initiated a concept of inwardness, a turning towards the inner self to find truth and the idea of authenticity is simply a further development of Augustine’s inwardness. In this paper I will discuss in detail Taylor’s idea of authenticity: the pros and cons. I will lay out some of his arguments as to why he thinks this idea originated with Augustine. I will talk about Augustine’s view on the inner man and how this is connected with knowledge and memory. I will then talk about some of Augustine’s views. Freedom is also an important aspect to moral conduct so I will explore both Taylor’s and Augustine’s view of freedom. Finally, I will argue that the ideal of authenticity (although it contains some truth) is not an ideal that Augustine would promote.
St. Augustine is a man with a rational mind. As a philosopher, scholar, and teacher of rhetoric, he is trained in and practices the art of logical thought and coherent reasoning. The pursuits of his life guide him to seek concrete answers to specific questions. Religion, the practice of which relies primarily on faith—occasionally blind faith—presents itself as unable to be penetrated by any sort of scientific study or inquiry. Yet, like a true scientist and philosopher, one of the first questions St. Augustine poses in his Confessions is: “What, then, is the God I worship” (23)? For a long time, Augustine searches for knowledge about God as a physical body, a particular entity—almost as if the Lord were merely a human being, given the divine right to become the active figurehead of the Christian religion.
7-12- Again Augustines thoughts on God reflect that of the religious teachings of his day, namely those of the Neoplatonists. For example he refuses to speculate on how the soul joins the body to become an infant and even follows Plato when he suggests that this life could possibly be some kind of “living death”. He then goes into an examination of his infancy, which he depicts as a quite pitiful state. He described himself as a sinful and thoughtless creature who made demands on everyone, wept unceasingly, and gave everyone a hard time that took care of him. Though very brutal in his self examination, he later states that he does not hold himself accountable for any of these sinful acts because he simply can’t remember them.
When it comes to renunciation, "no pain, no gain" is what I've slowly, reluctantly, inexorably come to believe. And when Pete opted for scholarly monkhood, I think he was just trying to outsmart his pain. . . . He'd calculated that by considering the physical world "illusory" and burying his nose in metaphysical texts he could go on doing something comfortable--while his ignorance and sufferings and hometown and troublesome family just fell away like so much excess poundage. Obviously l question his calculations: to slough off half a self in hopes of finding a whole one is not my idea of good math.
W. Andrew Hoffecker. Building a Christian World View, vol. 1: God, man, and Knowledge. Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., Phillipsburg, New Jersey : 1986. William S. Babcock. The Ethics of St. Augustine: JRE Studies in Religion, no. 3.
...unconditional love for God. Once Augustine converts, he attains the purest form of love and it is solely reserved for God.
In conclusion, Saint Augustine’s life is a good example of the concept of reading, conversion and memory, which we can use as a guideline for the quest in finding God. As we saw through out the book, Saint Augustine went through many processes of reading, conversion and memory. He not only went through these conversions in an academic way, but also in a religious way. He went from not believing in God to reading the Bible, reading Platonian books and Cicero’s Hortensius. It was after reading these literatures that he began to believe in God and went through a religious journey to understand God and Jesus Christ. It was during this journey to understand God and Jesus Christ that he used his memory to remember things he read and how they relate to what he was trying to figure out at the time.
Author Claudia Gray stated, “Self-knowledge is better than self-control any day” (Goodreads). Evil and sin exists in our world today and the temptation they bring bounds many human’s spiritual being. Finding the root of all evil is a hard and torturous concept to understand, but knowing one’s own free will helps bring understanding and deliverance from the evils of the world. Throughout the book Confessions Saint Augustine “ponders the concepts of evil and sin and searches the root of their being” (Augustine 15). The existence of evil is one of the most worrisome challenges a Christian or any individual deals with throughout life. Saint Augustine’s beliefs concerning the root of all evil and sins transforms as he begins to grow and develop in the knowledge of his free will and spiritual being. Early on, he believes “God created all things and evil is a thing, therefore God created evil” (Augustine 73-74). From this he conceives the notion that God cannot be good if he knowingly created evil. As Augustine begins to grow in his spiritual walk, his views begin to evolve as he questions his Manichee’s beliefs and explores the concepts of good and evil. From his inquiring Augustine develops the question, what is evil and what if evil did not need creating? He asks, “Do we have any convincing evidence that a good God exists” (Augustine 136-137)?