Augustine Confessions Research Paper Outline
Confessions Outline This paper will outline specific points in Saint Augustine’s Confessions that highlight religious views following the fall of Rome. Though Augustines views on religion may not reflect that of most people in his time period, it still gives valuable insight into how many, namely Neoplatonists,, viewed God and his teachings.
I. Book I
a. Attributes of God
Augustines first book is devoted to his early childhood and his reflections on human origin, memory, and desire. His ideas of God were very much influenced by the religious teachings of his day.
1-6- Augustine starts with a rather long invocation to God. In his invocation he inquires with questions about how one can seek the Lord without understanding his nature. …show more content…
“I was obliged to memorize the wanderings of a hero named Aeneas, while in the meantime I failed to remember my own erratic ways. I learned to lament the death of Dido, who killed herself for love, while all the time, in the midst of these things, I was dying, separated from you, my God and my Life.”-p. 33
b. “I can speak and write, read and count, and I want these things to be used to serve you, because when I studied other subjects you checked me and forgave me the sins I committed by taking pleasure in such worthless things.”-p. 36
19-31- Most of the remaining sections are dedicated to the follies of his early teachers, who were ignorant of the proper purposes of education. Fiction is a waste of time and it is sinful to read about someone elses sins, remaining ignorant of ones own. Augustine then reflects again in a Neoplatonism manner on his “misdirected” youth.
a. “I was being prepared…by a training which taught me to have a horror of faulty grammar instead of teaching me, when I committed these faults, not to envy others who avoided them.”-p. 39
b. “But my sin was this, that I looked for pleasure, beauty, and truth not in him but in myself and his other creatures, and the search led me instead to pain, confusion, and error.”-p. 40
II. Book
I. Book I
a. Attributes of God
Augustines first book is devoted to his early childhood and his reflections on human origin, memory, and desire. His ideas of God were very much influenced by the religious teachings of his day.
1-6- Augustine starts with a rather long invocation to God. In his invocation he inquires with questions about how one can seek the Lord without understanding his nature. …show more content…
“I was obliged to memorize the wanderings of a hero named Aeneas, while in the meantime I failed to remember my own erratic ways. I learned to lament the death of Dido, who killed herself for love, while all the time, in the midst of these things, I was dying, separated from you, my God and my Life.”-p. 33
b. “I can speak and write, read and count, and I want these things to be used to serve you, because when I studied other subjects you checked me and forgave me the sins I committed by taking pleasure in such worthless things.”-p. 36
19-31- Most of the remaining sections are dedicated to the follies of his early teachers, who were ignorant of the proper purposes of education. Fiction is a waste of time and it is sinful to read about someone elses sins, remaining ignorant of ones own. Augustine then reflects again in a Neoplatonism manner on his “misdirected” youth.
a. “I was being prepared…by a training which taught me to have a horror of faulty grammar instead of teaching me, when I committed these faults, not to envy others who avoided them.”-p. 39
b. “But my sin was this, that I looked for pleasure, beauty, and truth not in him but in myself and his other creatures, and the search led me instead to pain, confusion, and error.”-p. 40
II. Book