Analysis Of Augustine's Confessions

Autobiography is a method which allows the reader and the writer to reflect on a personal, and factual journey through the past. The creation of the autobiography opens up new doors which enlighten the reader into the development of history, which is a uniquely western idea. Augustine’s Confessions uses this story as an autobiography to describe his distinctions between his ideas of Inner and Outer Man, which he reflects through his various books. He also uses the distinction between his books to describe his life as a pilgrimage from the City of Man to the City of God. In Augustine’s Confessions, books I-IX describes Augustine’s life and places an emphasis on his idea of contemptu mundi, and the soul’s journey is back to heaven. In Augustine’s On Christian
The City of Man “seeks an earthly peace, and therein contrives a civic harmony of command and obedience, so that there is among the citizens a sort of coherence of human wills in matters belonging to this mortal life” (The Two Cities 151). This City is the one we live in today, in which we form laws and society falls into order. The City of God, on the other hand, holds no sense of humanity. Therein, “the Heavenly City holds none of man’s wisdom, but only religion in accordance with which the true God is rightly worshipped, with expectation of due reward in the fellow ship, not only of saints but of angels, that God may be all in all” (The Two Cities 151). With this in mind, Augustine emphasis the afterlife, and the journey towards this afterlife. The journey to God is where true peace lies because “its pilgrimage uses the peace of this world” (The Two Cities 152). Augustine’s various writings have been critical to the Middle Ages and the understanding of Christianity. This understanding provides a strong religion which was able to survive the splitting of the Roman and to continue to manifest itself