St. Augustine Confessions Analysis

Book Summary and Analysis: Confessions

Born in 354 in Thagaste, St. Augustine was born to a Christian mother and a pagan father. Augustine was always interested in learning and knowledge, and it was this desire to learn that led to him becoming a teacher and eventually teaching in Carthage, Rome and Milan.1 However it was not just secular knowledge Augustine was seeking, rather Augustine was also searching for the right to faith to believe in, and though he started off as a believer in Manichee theosophy, he eventually converted to Christianity. St. Augustine’s novel Confessions is more than a man revealing his thoughts and confessions; it is a record of a man’s journey to discover his faith. This work illustrates the internal struggle
Augustine describes his life in this section as a period of time in which his life was “one of being seduced and seducing, being deceived and deceiving in a variety of desires,” referring to his current interests and what he was actually pursuing at the time. More specifically, he was referring to the fact that he was a teaching a liberal subject to students (rhetoric) while believing in a “false” religion behind closed doors, relishing in the attention and popularity he and he students received from their rhetoric mastery all while wanting to purge themselves of their prideful and sinful behaviors.2 Another regret that Augustine reveals in this section is that he maintained such a long relationship with his concubine who was also the mother of his child. He notes
More specifically, the personal relationship with God seemed to have a profound effect on Augustine, because he found himself directly engaging with God multiple times, including the instance in Book VIII where God made him look at his true self. There is evidence in Confessions that Christianity even attracted women, as Augustine’s mother was a devout Christian and hoped that her son would eventually become one as well. One can infer that Augustine’s mom tried to teach Augustine about Christianity, as Christianity was so popular because it spread through women and their households. Augustine also was attracted to the religion because he viewed God as one that was forgiving, and truly cared about his followers, rather than a god who punishes its followers for doing wrong. This was attractive to many people, because regardless what you had done in the past, God was willing to forgive you and wash away your sinful mistakes. St. Augustine’s Confessions is more than just a memoir of a man’s journey and his quest to figure out who he was and what he believed in, it is also a work that shows how appealing Christianity was to the masses. Christianity appealed to a wide range of people for many reasons, including being free to join and open to all social classes, but