The New Perspective: Reading Literature Allegorically Essay

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.

Young Augustine weeps for the woman who dies for her love, as an older Augustine weeps over his complete ignorance and incontinence. Young Augustine is ignorant of the presence of God in his life, and is compelled not to weep for his own spiritual distance from God, but instead for a tragedy that, in the mind of the older Augustine, is incomparable to the tragedy of being without God. The older Augustine is compelled by his advanced knowledge of the Lord’s proximity to lament his previous lack of control over his habits, proclaiming “I had no love for you and ‘committed fornication against you’ (Ps. 72:27); and in my fornications, I heard all round me the cries ‘Well done, well done’ (Ps. 34:21; 39:16) … I abandoned you to pursue the lowest things of your creation.” (Conf. 16). This reveals that Young Augustine lives an entirely habitual life, never thinking of God or his importance, instead concerned with material and worldly concerns such as reputation and honor. This state of pure habit does not leave space for Young Augustine to have continence, and leaves him to act out his life according to passion and emotions.

As a “doctor” of the Church, he defended Christianity against false (heretic) interpretation. After his conversion, he refused to teach rhetoric. Yet, in the end, no matter what sin he had done, he found his savior which is God. Augustine then writes about how to convey God’s truth to diverse audiences and demonstrates that both the Bible and one’s own life are texts to be read and assessed against the true Cristian Doctrine. The last four books offer an interpretation of the opening of the Book of Genesis. As mention before when Augustine’s converted to Christianity his appropriation of Platonic ideas uses his past sins and later confesses to God. This will eventually enhance his mind and soul. The consequences of this appropriation are that sins can be ‘pleasurable’ which will tremendously affect Augustine’s life.

Death is a very natural occurrence in life, and everyone experiences death differently, but yet in the same way. When Augustine was a young boy his father died, and he makes a small account of this in the Confessions. Later on in life, he loses a dear friend, and his loving mother. With time, he mentally matures and death affects Augustine differently each time. The death of his father was merely mentioned in the Confessions, while the death of Monica, his mother, was an elaborate detailed account of the time of her death. The death of his close friend, when Augustine was a child made him realize that life is temporal. Growing up, Augustine was not very close to his father. He confided in his mother and

Later when Augustine left for Rome, his mother followed with the hope and goal to convert Augustine to Christianity (“Saint Augustine”). She also remarked later on in Augustine’s life, “One thing there was, for which I desired to linger a little while in this life, that I might see you a Catholic Christian before I died. God has granted this to me in more than abundance, for I see you his servant” (Ryan 165). Even though he had been raised in a Christian setting and sat in on Saint Ambrose’s sermons, Augustine still wasn’t fully convinced enough to change his life and convert.

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.

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 the story, four English children move into a large old country house in the aftermath of evacuation after a war. The youngest of the four children pays visits to Narnia thrice through the magic of wardrobe from a spare room. On her third visit, all the four children are together, and this verifies her fantastic claims and includes the chapters 12-17.in Narnia, the siblings fulfill an old prophecy, and they are soon adventuring for saving their lives and Narnia. In the novel version of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lewis uses development, morality and symbolism. This paper discusses the differences in morals between the novel and movie version of the chronicles of Narnia. Lewis uses morality as a means of rallying the reader behind a character and inspiring them to continue supporting them through the

It was not until after Augustine graduated college that his perception and understanding of religion became positively evident. Before that, it was very vague and shallow. Augustine indulged in sin the most during his teenage years, claiming that he “ran wild.” His morality rapidly

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.

Augustine, with a father who was pagan Roman and Catholic Christian mother, made an interesting choice in studying the bible and following the Manichees, though oftentimes we do not see as clearly in the moment as we do upon reflection. One thing is very clear: Augustine did not seem to follow anything blindly, and everything he exposed

There are several themes within the passage that shows Augustine’s worldview. For example, in the first line of the passage, he understands the concept of loving God later in life: “I have learnt to love you late”(Conf. X.27). This quote suggests that Augustine is now able to see why is mother was so skeptical in giving him is baptism early in his childhood. He commits to sin on numerous occasions, but comes back to find God again. In Book II, Augustine’s actions are paralleled with the prodigal son: “I strayed still farther from you and you did not restrain me.

Throughout Confessions, Augustine, in retrospect, rejects many of the texts he came across in his life. He first exhibits this when he describes how wrong it was to have reacted emotionally to the Aeneid. He “wept over Dido, who ‘died pursuing her ultimate end with a sword’” (Conf. 1.21), while at the same time he failed to realize he was “dying by [his] alienation from [God]” (Conf. 1.20). Here Augustine laments the fact he wept over Dido’s death while at the same time worsened his own condition by ignoring God and his own sinfulness. He is highly critical of himself in the way he approached the Aeneid as a child, describing himself as having “abandoned [God] to pursue the lowest things of [God’s] creation” (Conf. 1.21). Because the Aeneid leads Augustine further away from God it cannot have any significance in one’s life.

It is obvious from The Confession that Augustine was a man who struggled endlessly to extricate himself from the bondage of sin, but the more he tried, the more he failed and sinks deeper into its abyss. And with every failure, comes a sense of disappointment and despondency, until he had a strange experience. In AD 386, while sitting in his garden, Augustine heard a voice from some children playing not far away urging “him” to pick the book—the Bible, and read. What he read from Apostle Paul’s letter to the Roman Christian in Chapter 13 transformed, not only his understanding of the hopelessness and despair man encounters in trying to solve the problem of sin on his own, but he saw the provision that God has made to remedy the consequences of sin and the grace he has graciously provided to live a life that is acceptable to God. That moment was the turning point in Augustine’s life and how he developed his sotoriological