Confessions By Augustine Of Hippo

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 the Confessions by Saint Augustine, this great philosopher experiences many problems and emotions related to sin and evil. As a boy, he often felt darkness, blindness, and confusion while attempting to find rest in God. Augustine started out in childhood with a restless heart because he had to live in two different worlds. These worlds consisted of his mother’s Christian faith, and the world of everything else. These two worlds confused and disturbed Augustine as a child. Augustine’s father was pagan and his mother was Christian, and they both wanted him to be very successful in the world. As he became confused, he began asking questions that could not be answered such as, “Humans often feel restless, but what is it they need to feel at

We begin Augustine’s attraction to Manichaeism with his travels to Carthage. His initial reaction to Carthage was shock, due to the citizen’s audacious affinity towards things which distracted them from God’s benevolence. One prominent example of this was their affinity towards theatre acts which depicted scenes of enjoying things irrelevant to how one should love God. Although this struck Augustine as quite odd, he nonetheless enjoyed these theatrical acts, often positively remarking about scenes of immense sadness and depression. He came to question whether or not pity, as shared by the citizens of Carthage, was meant as an indication to what his life should represent.

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.

It can then be deduced that belief to Augustine is not a choice; the choice arises through man’s action. Acts of choosing to believe God are simply a reaffirmation of one’s belief, while choosing the world and not God in one’s actions is simply denying God, although one can never fully disbelieve: the world is a substitute for God, as previously examined. The choice available restricts free will while allowing men to choose their actions, not their belief. Further, the fall of man, where human weaknesses stem from, presupposes God’s existence, as does Augustine. Consequently, choices to Augustine reflect our denial or acceptance of the truth that God is real. In this theological perspective, Augustine supports God’s existence completely, and his ascetic choice further upholds his belief. God’s creation further explains Augustine’s perspective on belief, Augustine stating that “[t]he only thing that does not come from [God] is what does not exist,” and that combined with “ any movement of the will away from [God who is] and towards that which is in a lesser way” (178). Denying God, moving away from God, who exists, is a movement defined as both a “crime and sin” (178). This freedom, again, does not deny God, but is, in spite of his existence, a means to explain one’s belief or doubt. Augustine’s Confessions clearly describes this path of sin and denial that unquestionably leads to a necessary habit of committing it, resulting in Augustine himself becoming a slave to sin. It is only by God’s power, the power than humanity does not possess, that can help man escape the godless way of life that is living through sin. Belief of God then, is not a choice for Augustine; it is our free will that allows the choice of living for or against God, and why resisting temptation and sin and living for God completely is a main idea throughout the Confessions; by choosing the world, one denies

“Where then is evil, and what is its source, and how has it crept into the creation? What is its root, what is its seed?”1 These are the first of the many inquiries that Augustine makes in his work entitled the Confessions. In fact, the question of 'what is evil' is the main concern of Augustine, eventually leading the theologian from Manicheanism, a heresy that Augustine spent nine years of his life practicing, back into the arms of the Church. The Manichees are not willing to say that God created evil, and so therefore evil must have existed from the very beginning, possessing its own being. At this time, Augustine has a very Platonist view of things and begins to question this view of the Manichees. As a Platonist, Augustine asserts that all being is fundamentally good because all being comes from a supreme Good, which is God. As it says in

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

In St. Augustine’s Confessions and Dante’s Inferno, the central characters in their respective narratives are presented a message from which induces distinct reactions. More importantly, their reactions are reflections of their perspective concerning the Christian outlook

The cause of evil itself, according to Augustine, is the human will, and thus all blame for it rests on our shoulders, not on Gods. We willfully turn our souls away from God when we perform evil deeds. Even the punishment that God imposes on us for our evil is something that we brought on ourselves. Consequently, a first solution that Augustine offers to the problem of evil is that human will is the cause of evil and reason for divine punishment. A second and related solution is that the evil we willfully create within our souls is only a deprivation of goodness. Think of God’s goodness like a bright white light; the evil that we humans create is like an act of dimming that light, or shielding ourselves from it to create an area of darkness. It is not like we’ve created a competing light source of our own, such as a bright red light that we shine around to combat God’s bright white light. Accordingly, the evil that we create through our wills is the absence of good, and not a substantive evil in itself.

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 paper examines St. Augustine’s view on evil. St. Augustine believed that God made a perfect world, but that God's creatures turned away from God of their own free will and that is how evil originated in the world. Augustine assumes that evil cannot be properly said to exist at all, he argues that the evil, together with that suffering which is created as punishment for sin, originates in the free nature of the will of all creatures. According to Augustine, God has allowed evil to exist in the world because it does not conflict with his righteousness. He did not create evil but is also not a victim of it. He simply allows it to exist.

In this essay I will be discussing how St. Augustine ultimately solves the problem of evil, in a way that at times does go hand in hand with his religious views, however, at times contradicts what he is saying. In “ Confessions” Augustine who although does not in any way question the existence of God questions why God, someone who is all powerful, and all good still allowing people to suffer the way in which they are.

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,

The book expresses three main concerns. One is Augustine’s frank and detailed acknowledgment of his personal sinfulness and the power he came to recognize as God’s provident grace—protective, creative, salvific—in every moment of his life. He also wrote in order to confess his own Christian faith and clearly repudiate any supposed lingering connections on his part with Manichaeism. Finally, The Confessions are a heartfelt paean of praise and thanksgiving in honor of God’s glory.