Augustine's Confession

From Augustine’s Confession, we can feel the deep and sincere remorse of the sins committed him in every volume, chapter, even every paragraph. Which is the exact reason of his conversion, that he did not return to his faith as a rhetoric at professor at Rome but admitted that he was a sinner.

In regard to faith, his great perplexity at the time was that since the world is governed by God, why is the world full of evil and emptiness? Where did sin come from? Why do people's desires are particularly prone to crime and depravity? Why do people have a deep sense of guilt? If desire comes from God's creation, why do people tend to sin more?

Later he finally realized that all things created by God can be corrupted except the “goodness”. But if there

This is due to several reasons. First of all, Augustine's parents had always placed the mastery of learning in the first place of his child's education, and they had neglected to educate Augustine on morality and belief. This enabled Augustine to accept the only value of "learning from knowledge(experience)" since he was a child. Second, Augustine’s genius of intelligence made his career trajectory without obstacles. Other students were not his opponents, which led him to grow his ambitions to “get ahead” in the pursuit of learning. Once again, Augustine get the position of a teacher and gain respect from the society by his eloquence and knowledge. The vested profits brought by knowledge led him to realize the importance and the utilitarian nature of rationality. Thus, he stated his thought in Book Three that “Such ambition(study for the law) was held to be honorable and I determined to succeed in it.”(3.3

However, Augustine’s concept of learning formed in the course of his life mentioned above has brought obstacles to his understanding of Christ. These deviations are manifested in the following areas: First, although Augustine has not given up on the pursuit of truth, the vested profits brought about by learning have often prevented him from escaping from the lure of secular happiness, and have used it as a goal of life, thus neglecting the pursuit of truth. He himself admits that “my years of his(my) life had passed”, and “postponed his(my) renunciation of this world’s joys, which would have left me free to look for that other happiness.”(8.6