Saint Augustine Confessions Summary

Michael L. Felix
Dough Sexton
History of Christianity
July 19, 2015
Reading Review: Saint Augustine’s “Confessions” Saint Augustine’s confessions is the first autobiography written in the western world, which offers an honest and compelling tale of his struggles with sin, and his salvation in the grace of God. I believe the wording of the title indicates a desire to atone for his indiscretions as a young man for satisfying his desires by chasing and laying with many women. I find this need for vindication odd as this is a common practice by both men and women in the world we live in today. The book consists of nine books that covers his life until the death of his mother, and four books that are filled with deeply philosophical about
God and Christianity. Confessions begins with a praise to God and is followed by his birth, and continues through his adolescence days in what is now known as Eastern Algeria. The philosophical nature of Saint Augustine leads him to deep thought about life and the human desires in his first book. Saint Augustine does not speculate about how the spirit joins the worldly body while discussing his infancy, and simply states “I do not know”. He admits to being helpless as an infant, demanding care by weeping to everyone around him, and thanking no one for care that he received.
This leads me to think he believed that we are born with sin and that we come into this world as demanding and selfish beings.
He was hard on his infant self, but dismiss his sinning in that period by stating the he "can recall not a single trace." Saint Augustine continues his book by discussing his disappointment in the fancy reading and writings that he learned in school for the purpose of gaining honors and future wealth. He blamed his teachers for their misguided curriculums in the remaining portion of this book, and thanks them only for teaching him literacy. Saint Augustine finishes the book one by listing his sins in that era, but also lists what was good in him, which he thought to be the work of
God. Book two of Confessions provides the reader with the most sinful time in the life of Saint Augustine, which he describes as “running wild in the jungle of erotic adventures...and became putrid in [God's] sight." He also tells the reader that he became a thief in this period of his life, and provides a story of a time where he and some friends stole pears from a neighbor’s pear tree.
His greatest struggle with this theft is that he did it for the pleasure of sinning, and not because “it was beautiful”, or for the taste”. He also discusses his desire to fornicate came from a need to love, and to be loved by others; while the act of sex was wrong, the virtue of love was a Godly characteristic. While Saint Augustine confesses his transgressions and the pleasure he took from committing them, he also places some blame on the quality of friendship and peer pressure. He stated in book two that "friendship can be a dangerous enemy, a seduction of the mind", which I believe he means that you must consider that a friend who sins, will likely entice you to
sin. Saint Augustine explains how he reached rock bottom in book three when he moved to Carthage after his school boy days in his home town of Thagaste. He continues to explain how his misguided need for love lead him to more sexual encounters with women, when the love he felt was meant for God. He also discusses his regret for taking advantage of the city by attending theatrical shows filled with fictional sufferings. Saint Augustine talks about the Manichees, a quasi-Christian group who followed the “Prophet Mani” to a great extent. Saint Augustine describes how the Manichees doctrine resembled the Pagan-like faith by considering object like the Sun and the Moon as something divine. He also provides an insight into the would-be Christians doctrine; for example, if God is Omnipotent then why does evil still exist. Augustine continued his sinful like in book four of Confessions, proclaiming that he continued to “be seduced and seducing, being deceived and deceiving”. One of his greatest regret in this period was instructing in the school of law, spreading the same philosophies that he learned from his teachers in book one I assume. He also met an unnamed woman who spent nearly 10 years with him, and even delivered him a son. Augustine made some progress in this period by realizing that that depending on mortal things was the source of personal misery. He also wrote a book titled “The Beautiful and the Fitting”, for which he makes many retractions in this book. By book five Augustine leaves for Rome, but finds the politics to be corrupt, and then he travels to Milan where he finally make the conversion to an “unbaptized Christian. Augustine hears the bible loosely translated for the first time, and this was the sole cause for his transition. He was neatly converted at this time, however one more sign from God is what it would take for him to be baptized. Book six through nine detail his conversion to Christianity and a praise to his dead devout Catholic mother. He quit his position at the school in Milan, and was baptized by his good friend Pope Ambrose. His mother fell ill and passed, but he felt that she had done everything she was on earth to do, so he decided not to morn her lost. He still felt a great deal of pain over her death, but he knew that God was merciful, so it was not a sin to cry. He ends this book with a prayer for his mother’s sole. Finally, books ten trough thirteen changes from an auto biography to his philosophical views about God and mankind. I found the book to be an honest and candid confessions of one man’s struggle with the sin, and his conversion to Christianity. It is also encouraging to know that we all endure some kind of internal struggles and how spirituality has brought peace to so many, even a thousand years ago. It is no wonder why this book was cherished by so many Christians around the world.