24-12-2012, 02:12 PM
Augustine’s Confessions
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Augustine's Confessions is a mixture of the famous Saint Augustine’s autobiography, philosophy, theology, and serious Biblical exegeses. The first nine chapters of Augustine's life contains valuable information about his birth in 354 A.D, and then the book builds up into the events that took place just after his conversion to Catholicism (386 A.D). Augustine writes this autobiography with such clarity that not only invites you into his lifeline, but he also penetrates the pages with religious and philosophical detail that clearly explains different circumstances and outcomes.
The first chapter of the Confessions is primarily focusing on the exploration of Augustine's life as a child, from his infancy up into his years as a schoolboy in Thagaste. Augustine's analysis of his early years leads him to ponder on human beginnings and origin, followed by the study ofhuman will and human desires. He raises questions in this chapter that have to do primarily on “who God is,”how one can seek God without yet knowing what he is. The general answer to this question was “faith in the Lord, then He will reveal His nature, His essence to you through His Word.” Overall, Augustine gives his boyhood teachers credit only for giving him the most basic tools for potentially good reading and writing--his "primary education." All the rest was simply a matter of learning perverted human custom rather than truth or morality (which are, in any case, more deep-seated than the "conventions" of language).
the onset of adolescence in Book II, Augustine enters what he seems to consider the most lurid and sinful period of his life. He "ran wild," he writes, "in the jungle of erotic adventures...and became putrid in [God's] sight." In addition to his first sexual escapades, Augustine is also quite concerned with an incident in which he and some friends stole pears from a neighborhood orchard. Augustine deeply regrets both of these sins, and offers a few brief insights as to how and why he committed them.The underlying theme here is, again, Neoplatonic. For the Neoplatonists, all creation (the material world) has "turned away" from God's perfection, becoming scattered into a chaotic state of mutability, temporality, and multiplicity. God remains unchangeable, eternal, and unified, and creation always seeks (whether it realizes it or not) to return to God. Here, Augustine has argued that even sin itself fundamentally aims at a return to God.
Augustine enters a place and a lifestyle in which "all around me hissed a cauldron of illicit loves." His range of "rotten...ulcerous" sins expands from teenage pranks to include attending public spectacles and reading tragedies. This is a low point in Augustine's relationship with God--turned almost entirely toward transient diversions, he seems to feel he could get no lower. It is at this point, however, that Augustine first suspects that seeking truth might be more important than worldly success. Shopping around for the right philosophy, he stumbles onto the Manichee faith (a heretical version of Christianity). Listening to the Manichees will turn out to be perhaps the biggest mistake of his life, and much of Book III is devoted to an initial attack on the Manichee faith.
Returning to Thagaste from his studies at Carthage, Augustine began to teach rhetoric, making friends and chasing a career along the way. Though giving some account of these worldly matters, Augustine spends much of Book IV examining his conflicted state of mind during this period. Having begun his turn toward God (through the desire for truth) but continuing to be ensnared in sinful ways, Augustine wrestled painfully with the transitory nature of the material world and with the question of God's nature in relation to such a world.
Book V follows the young Augustine from Carthage (where he finds his students too rowdy for his liking) to Rome (where he finds them too corrupt) and on to Milan, where he will remain until his conversion. Manichee beliefs begin to lose their luster for him during this period, and by the end of the Book he considers himself an unbaptized Christian (a "catechumen": a beginner who is being taught the principles of Christianity; a neophyte). Augustine encounters a number of important figures during this period of relentless searching, including Ambrose (the Bishop of Milan, who will eventually baptize Augustine) and Faustus, a Manichee luminary. He also encounters the profound doubt of the skeptical school and comes close to total skepticism in his own philosophy.