Augustine Confessions Analysis

Augustine’s Confessions is a diverse blend of autobiographical accounts as well as philosophical, theological and critical analysis of the Christian Bible. Augustine treats his autobiography as an opportunity to recount his life and mentions how each event in his life has a religious and philosophical explanation. Augustine had many major events happen in his life but only 3 events would deem of extreme importance to his journey to faith. Theses major events were Book II how he describes that he considered his time of adolescence to be the most lurid and sinful period of his life, Book III how this becomes the lowest point in his relationship with God because his

In Augustine’s Confessions, he confesses many things of which we are all guilty; the greatest of which is his sadness of not having a relationship with God earlier in his life. He expressed to us that to neglect a relationship with God is far worse than the pity he felt for Dido. In reviewing his life, he had come to examine life and how there are temptations in this world that can keep us distracted. He tells to us how he became aware of this fact; everything is negligible except love for God, and his own guilt at not having found this truth sooner.

However, Augustine has another agenda- his confessions are also meant to show his praise and love for God. He says this in the fifth book with: "Accept the sacrifice of my confessions by the agency of my tongue, which Thou has formed and quickened, that it may confess to Thy name... But let my soul praise Thee, that it may love Thee; and let it confess Thine own mercies to Thee, that it may praise Thee." This is a clear declaration of his praise to God, and ​almost another underlying message of the text to the audience. So as he is writing about his life, he is trying also to set an example to the audience about how his choices were not always the best and use this as a guide to their own lives. And finally through his story, use his conversion and change as a way to praise God to show that even someone who "strayed off" the path was able to redeem themselves and how merciful and good God is to accept someone even as sinful as he was.

In St. Augustine’s Confessions, Augustine’s worldly experiences throughout his autobiography are crucial to his understanding of Christianity. Augustine reflects on his childhood experience of stealing pears from his neighbors to understand his sinful nature. Augustine struggles to understand his motivation for taking the pears when he knows that the pears are not necessarily better than those at his own home. He finally recognizes that this transgression is of the most wicked nature because he was sinning for the sake of sinning. “Now let my heart tell you what it was seeking there in that I became evil for no reason. I had no motive for my wickedness except wickedness itself”(29). By reflecting on a worldly experience, he is able to reach a

Augustine is our exemplar to human nature, as well as the guideline to what it means to be human. He demonstrates both the good and bad qualities that humans obtain and show that not everything can always be all-good. In the Confessions Augustine talks about how he knows about his own imperfections. He states “At one time in adolescence I was burning to find satisfaction in hellish pleasures” (Augustine, Confessions, pg. 24). Many of his imperfections have brought a new way of thinking about the human being. In the Confessions, Augustine focuses on his autobiography and how sin comes from inside us humans. From this we have learned about the term introspective conscience and how it depicts when someone is constantly looking at him or herself and looking at the motivation to sin.

This fundamental difference from the Catholic dogma that one could buy salvation to Luther’s new ideas as way to Heaven began to transform many people’s beliefs. Supporters of Luther adopted the concept of faith and knowledge of God as a way to repent their sins, and eventually, it reshaped the Christian culture. As Luther personally struggled to be a “perfect” monk, he discovered that faith in the gospel was the only way to be “made righteous by God”(roper 78). In response to his distress for his laity’s desire to buy indulgences, Luther wrote the “95 Theses on the Power of Indulgences.” He knew he was attacking the pope and the values of the church, but records show that he felt “...not fully in control of his actions, but handed over responsibility to a higher power”(84 roper). Cleary, Luther felt a spiritual connection with God and indulgences were in direct opposition to faith. His revolutionary claims in the “95 Theses on the Power of Indulgences” caused a conflict that would eventually be known as the Protestant Reformation.

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

This quote explains Martin Luther’s ideas of salvation and justification through only faith. He believed that people like the Pope were just public figures that were abusing their power for their own interests and beliefs. They would use god’s word to intimidate Kings and Queens. He thought that the Pope was out of line using his authority to forgive sins for material objects. Indulgence is a grant given by the Pope to cancel all sins for donations to the church. This made people more willing to just donate if they could get something in return also. Critics told Luther that there is no way you could achieve salvation without good works, but Luther uses bible passages to make a case that faith, alone, is all you need to be a Christian follower set to be in heaven. Martin Luther knew that it wasn’t right nor faithful for the Pope to do this.

In Confessions, Saint Augustine showed that people commit sin since the beginning until the end of life, implying that sin is inside us, like part of our nature. In this sense, there is really nothing we can do, except to follow God and ask for his forgiveness. For Augustine, God offers grace, and you have the opportunity to accept it. In this essay, I analyzed some examples of Augustine’s life that help me prove my point that people are not always capable of accepting God’s grace, and as result may fall into sinful behavior.

St. Augustine was wise beyond his years. Despite the amount of times he discredits himself, at age 16, he vulnerably presented himself as a wretch who needed God more than anything. In Book 2 of the St. Augustine confessions, it is as though Augustine is sharing his testimony with the audience. St. Augustine bestows a susceptible recount of his life while utilizing the themes of companionship, satisfaction from sin, and the motivation of love to ultimately show how much we need God and are broken without him.

Faith, it is the complete trust or confidence in someone or something. We as humans can only define it as that because we cannot tangibly grasp faith, or even understand it as we do our emotions. It can be as overwhelming as love and yet there may not be a reason or an understanding to why we have it or put our faith into someone or something. The only way to describe it is through the claim faith and reason are compatible. This claim is examined in the stories, Genesis, as God creates human beings to live amongst his other creations but to have free reign over the land, the Romans & Corinthians, as even Jesus’ faith was to put to the test, and it is deeply explored in St. Augustine’s Confessions. Furthermore, the compatibility of faith and reason is seen in The Book of Matthew as Jesus travels the lands of Israel blessing them with his own faith. Faith and reason would not be attainable if it weren’t for our triune God subtly giving us the knowledge we need to make decisions on our own.

The choice between approaching the world through reason or faith is one that people commonly struggle with. In fact, this is a reoccurring theme in Augustine’s Confessions. While most perceive reason and faith as two different things that have no correlation, Augustine argues that reason and faith are significantly related.

The over-arching theme of Saint Augustine’s Confessions is the portrayal of man’s ability to reflect. Augustine’s work is a series of self-reflection; one sees Augustine’s personal struggles with identity, sin, and ultimately, his relationship with God. When reading Confessions in English 104, I realized that Augustine’s work is timeless and that the struggles that men from the earliest days of civilization are the similar to the day-to-day struggles that I face. Time and time again, Augustine falters on his journey to holiness. I read about how he worked tirelessly to understand his vocation.

In Augustine’s Confessions his mother pleads with him throughout his life to come to a knowledge of who God is and let his life be one that glorifies God. Augustine struggles with many temptations, a major one being women and lusting towards them. He questioned himself and he questioned God. Augustine had a heart knowledge of who God was from his mother. He knew laws and how God felt about how Augustine behaved, but it was not until he moved away and lost the woman he loved due to his upcoming marriage that he realized how lost and how sinful he really was. He begged God for forgiveness and he began to turn his life around. Augustine’s mother grew ill very quickly and Augustine spent time in prayer. He prayed over his mother’s soul, and he

Saint Augustine’s Confessions is a diverse mix of autobiography, philosophy, and interpretation of the Christian Bible. The dialogue starts off with Augustine praising to God and it is the natural desire of all men. However, Augustine does not have a lot of knowledge about God because he felt that he isn’t too powerful enough for God to come to him and help him. All throughout his life, he was very educated. Yet he made a lot of sins from birth through adulthood. Such as crying and tantrums of infancy; boyhood pranks like stealing pears to feed to the pigs; bodily pressure like sex, food, theater, etc. With all these sins dragging Augustine down his mother constantly prays for his son to find God and strongly believe that one day he will