Augustine Research Paper

It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.” (https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/saint_augustine.html) Augustine’s admiration was one of the many reasons he was designated a saint. Another, being his kind statement, telling people to be courteous to all, especially those close to you. “Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special attention to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstances, are brought into closer connection with you.” (https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/saint_augustine.html).

According to Augustine, “God resides at the base of the soul and in order to know God, one had to be self-reflective” (Thomas, “Augustine”). The soul has a choice to reflect on the reality of God or the reality of the world. Excessive love or focus on the worldly realm, a person is said to be suffering from what Augustine called “Disordered Desire” or “Disordered Love.”

Augustine was eminent by Platonism and declared that there is one God and that God was and is the wellspring of all Happiness because of His perfect adoration. In this manner, anything that needs to do with our ethics cognizant is at last God and we ought to uninhibitedly need to take after our cognizant as it is divine law Augustine sees awareness as God is letting us know what is correct and what isn't right, he is our witness and the voice of God ought not be addressed, but rather it is our human senses that permit us to second figure our nature and conflict with God's arrangement and this prompts is the reason we encounter a despondent life we see as insufficient. My Argument is that if God is the voice of our awareness and our cognizant

The theological issue that most perplexed Augustine in his youth was that his mother Monica was Christian. He had turned his back on Christianity in his days as a youth and always tried to hide his views about Christianity. His mother never give up and always prayed that one day he would return Christian. I believed his Mother prayers had a lot to with him converting to

At a younger and earlier stage of his life, St. Augustine felt abandoned in some way by God and found no strong connection to a higher being as he developed into a materialist who could only grasp tangible concepts. Little did he see in his life that God was with him through his trials and tribulations as a man on a journey who fell into a life of sin through lust and stealing. Augustine writes, “But in my misery seethed and followed the driving force of my impulses, abandoning you. I exceeded all the bounds set by your law, and did not escape your chastisement-indeed no moral can do so” (Confessions 2:4 p. 25). This driving force was God’s providence. Augustine was spending time in sin, God was punishing him with a sense of emptiness that could not be filled. By turning to such pleasures, he turned away from God and needed such illicit things to realize that he needs a sense of something more in his life. He states, “Before you I lay my heart and my memory. At that time you were dealing with me in your hidden

Whereas Augustine’s heart was consumed with passion for women, now his soul is unswervingly devoted to Christ. Augustine’s desire is to “love Christ’s holy ways” (Conf. 1.24). When he considers the utter baseness of his sins, Christ grows even lovelier to him. Christ satisfied his soul more than any earthly love could. According to Augustine, there is a love far superior and more desirable than mere romantic love. The divine love of Christ for sinners and the love of the believer toward God is the most sublime of all affections. Lust destroyed his heart, but pure love renews and restores his soul. The tragedy of Dido’s death inspired Augustine’s rebellious, adolescent ways, but her love for

In his lifetime Augustine develops a strong relationship with an unnamed friend. This relationship was so strong that his death makes a tremendous impact both negatively as Augustine faces true devastation. In addition this positively impacts him as he discovers that it is God that is the solution. Describing the relationship as a “very sweet experience, welded by the fervour of our identical interests” (Conf. 4.7), Augustine exhibits their relationship as one that is pleasing, with their similar interests acting as the base of their friendship. The identical interests in this case happen to be religious views; Augustine not a converted Christian, influences his friend by showing him his religious views and “turned him away from the true faith” (Conf. 4.7) being Christianity. At this point they strengthen their relationship through their similar religious stances, and become “deeply dependent on one another” (Conf. 4.8). It is this dependence upon one another that serves as the cause of Augustine’s despair that follows his friend’s death. Their separation quickly unfolds as his friend becomes ill with a fever and dies soon after. His death marks the beginning of the long and unbearable heartbreak that Augustine experiences.

Augustine implies God initiates the God/ man relationship. God created man in his image, gave him the power of prayer to speak with him whenever he wants to, and before the fall, speak with him face to face. I believe God does initiate the relationship for the very reason that he created us, he clearly wants us, and he sent his son to die for us, how or why would someone do all this for someone/thing he does not love and desire a relationship with? Man did not create God, God created man.

One of the opening lines of his Confessions may provide a clue: “Man is one of your creatures, Lord, and his instinct is to praise you” (21). This suggests that man possesses an innate instinct to seek God and spiritual enlightenment. It implies that man, as a product of God, will inherently desire knowledge of and a relationship with his creator. Augustine continues by saying: “The thought of [God] stirs [man] so deeply that he cannot be content unless he praises you, because you made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in you” (21). This suggests that though man may struggle on earth, should he decide to turn to God he will experience peace and rest in the Lord. Here Augustine also states that unless man has found God, “he cannot be content,” implying that those who have not found God will feel a constant inner void.

In, St. Augustine's Confessions, St. Augustine credits his prior foul behavior to him misplacing his love for God,"I sought an object for my love," he says. His dedication to find the answers to his questions as well as to Christianity led him to becoming a significant figure in the theology of the Christian

In addition, Augustine is quite disturbed with his previous susceptibility for worldly pleasures. He conceptualizes that, at times, we fall too in love with God’s creation which are only a mere fraction of God’s beauty and we forget to

In everyone’s life, there are core beliefs that shape who a person is. For many, these core principals are shared to others in an attempt to spread these core values. For religious individuals this process could be referred to as evangelism. Evangelism is an attempt to convert people to a specific religion. Core beliefs are central to an individual’s worldview. They are what make it up. Augustine was very influential in the development of Western Christianity, and claimed to be one of the most important church fathers of that time. For most Christians, God is at the center of their worldview, and for Augustine this was also true. God is central to Augustine’s worldview because humans are subject to God, and God is the only way in life.

Augustine believes that the body is a divine creation from God and its evil does not rise from its distance from the good. It is a result of seeking to desire misrepresented pleasure and beauty. The body is a means of communication with one’s environment

Augustine’s Confessions is a humble life story of a Christian, which I think most Christians have a hard time doing. Even though this story is centuries old, this autobiography shows how much Augustine changed, acknowledging his mistakes and sins as boy to joyous celebration of conversion to Christ. It reminded me a lot about my own life where I looked back on how God changed my life as well. When I read this book, I felt that this story came from the heart of a Christian who struggled with sin all his life.

St. Augustine was a theologian and philosopher born in Africa to St. Monica. Although he is now known as a an incredibly influential Christian writer and thinker, his early years were defined by rebellion and discord that did not, in the least, reflect Christianity or the values that he is now known for supporting. His early years were freckled with mindless disobedience, wretched behavior, and characterized godlessness that makes his conversion to the faith incredibly remarkable and one that is worth defining in Saint Augustine 's Confessions. His incredible turnaround from a faithless man to a devout supporter of Christianity is significant and is freckled with many major milestones that truly demonstrate his spiritual and internal growth into one of the biggest spiritual icons of the fifth century. These major milestones include his realization that his boyhood was defined by pointless rebellious behavior, even though he grew up in a Christian home, his new found appreciation for philosophy as well as God and his incredible mercy during his years as a student at Carthage,