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Augustine and the role of God and confessions
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Augustine and the role of God and confessions
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There is a skit that is used in many Evangelical Christian circles such as churches, youth groups, and camps where there is a person sitting on a stool with Jesus beside them. The stool represents the power to make decisions in the life of the person. The person on the stool asks Jesus to take it from them, but he refuses and tells the person that they have to give it to him. The idea of the skit is to show God will always be there, pursuing the person, but the person has to be the one to decide to follow Christ. Augustine definitely experienced this in his life. God relentlessly pursued Augustine through both the pleasant and painful events of his life, and this led to Augustine making the decision to finally accept Christianity and follow God. One of the main avenues God used to pursue Augustine was the granting of a vision to Augustine’s mother, Monica. She desperately wanted her son to be saved and did all she could to make this happen. Yet, she knew she had almost no power to do this without the help of God. So, she wept and prayed for her son to come to know Christ. When her hope that Augustine would ever convert was running low, God blessed her with a vision in which she encountered God who told her, “where you are, he will be” (Saint Augustine 90). God blessed her with this vision so that she would have the faith to know that because she believes, her son will also believe. God’s granting of a vision to Monica caused her to remain faithful in trying to save her son. Even when it seemed impossible that Augustine would convert, she remained faithful to him and to God by still pursuing him. In a praise to God, Augustine himself describes this by saying, “steadfast in her fidelity, my mother had by this time rejoined me, f... ... middle of paper ... ...s right there with them. Even though he knew they would continue to experience hardship, he promised that he would remain faithful to them and always be with them. Jeremiah 29:11-13 states, “For I know the plans I have for you declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart” (English Standard Version). Even when the Judeans and Augustine were facing their darkest times and had almost completely lost hope, God was still there pursuing them and waiting for them to seek after him. Works Cited ESV Study Bible: English Standard Version. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008. Print. Saint Augustine, and Maria Boulding. The Confessions. Ed. John E. Rotelle. 2nd ed. Hyde Park, NY: New City, 2012. Print.
Unlike other texts of the time, Augustine’s confessions are less of an epic tale or instructive texts, both of which soug...
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.
Augustine. “Confessions”. The Norton Anthology of Western Literature. 8th ed. Vol. 1. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. 1113-41. Print.
St. Augustine considers his mother as a crucial factor in his conversion to Catholicism. However through the analysis of his Confessions it leads me to believe that St. Augustine’s mother was not a decisive figure. Monica was in the background keeping him in thought and prayer however Augustine’s watershed moments came as a result of his own examination of readings as well as his conversations with his friends and mentors. Therefore I argue that Monica had delayed Augustine’s baptism and it was his own experiences that allowed him to come to God.
Augustine is fixated upon the idea of evil and its origins in Christian theology. He struggles to come to terms with the doctrine of sin. A popular counterargument to the belief in God is that a good, kind, and loving divine power would never command the wholesale slaughter of nations. According to Christian belief, God created everything, and everything He created is good because He Himself is righteous. Augustine claims that God pervades the entirety of the universe and all it contains. So, how can things outside of God, such as evil, even exist? He asks this in various forms of rhetorical questions, such as, “Where then is evil? What is its origin? How did it steal into the world?...Where then does evil come from, if God made all things
“Our hearts find no peace until they rest in you” (21). The return to God, the means of doing so, and the manners by which man is turned from him in the first place, are central themes in St. Augustine’s Confessions; a historical work serving as confession, praise, and examination of faith. Autobiographical in nature, Augustine’s work retells the story of his life and of his spiritual journey in retrospect, considering each event and its importance to the larger framework of his religious philosophy, a result of the merging of Neo-Platonist thought and Catholic theology. Through this fusion, Augustine is able to reconcile God and “evil,” make a distinction between the physical and spiritual realms, and lay out his views on how one can come to know and love God the truest sense possible; how one returns to him.
In Saint Augustine Confessions, Augustine talks about his conversion from Manichaeism to Christianity. He believes in order to become a wise individual; one must have a transformation of his mind inward and upward towards God. Augustine’s intellectual conversions that preceded his conversion to Christianity, made him recognize that the Manicheans were wrong. Manichees viewed God as a material thing, which is something that passes and is destroyed, but God cannot be viewed this way because God created materiality. They also thought there were two forces good and evil, which were constantly battling one another. Augustine soon realized this was wrong because God would not allow evil to exist substantially; evil is the lack of good, or, in other words, the good that should be there is not. That is, evil is not something that is there before the good, because God created everything good and humans with free will have chosen to act with evil. In Nathaniel Rich’s article, The Man Who Saves You from Yourself, he talks about the authoritative influence of cult leaders. Cult leaders are very persuasive with their approach, which allows them to recruit people. Cult leaders infiltrate there recruits and make it their focal point to monopolize their recruits time in order to brainwash them into the cults beliefs, before family and other people interfere with this process. Therefore, if an individual does not experience a major intellectual conversion, she will be at serious risk of a relapse and be stuck in the cult.
Augustine begins his work with a short prayer praising God. Augustine tells of his faith in God and his need to allow God to “live in” him. Augustine repents his childhood sins and asks God for forgiveness while continuously praising Him. Augustine describes his adolescent self as being “wild with lust” and consequently claims that fornication is purely for procreation between married peoples, an opinion expressed by his mother. Augustine tells of his father’s excitement regarding Augustine’s lust and his ability to create grandchildren as it contrasts with his mother’s advice “not to commit fornication and above all not to seduce another man’s wife.” At the time, he viewed his mother’s advice as “womanish” and did not adhere to it. Augustine
Catherine of Siena. The Dialogue of the Divine Providence . Trans. Algar Thorold. 1907. 25 Feb. 2004 .
...unconditional love for God. Once Augustine converts, he attains the purest form of love and it is solely reserved for God.
Saint Augustine’s On Faith and the Creed breaks down the Apostles Creed and expresses the essence of the Christian faith. The 11 chapters within On Faith and The Creed express many truths of the faith. Chapter one explains the origin of the creed and object of its composition. The Apostles Creed is a sufficient summary of the faith for beginners and those who who are more diligent in their faith. Many heretics have tried to corrupt the interpretation of the Apostles Creed. Yet, since it is written according to the scripture, the Apostles Creed is based on complete truth. Chapter two expresses the fact that eternity is exclusive. Saint Augustine talks about how the Apostles Creed will not truly be understood or impact a person if they are not
Before we dive into what Augustine has to say about free will, we must first understand what the problem is. In The HarperCollins Dictionary of Philosophy, the problem of free will is defined as:
Why does St. Augustine seek God? Through his Confessions we come to understand that he struggled a great deal with confusion about his faith, before finally and wholeheartedly accepting God into his life. But we never get a complete or explicit sense of what led Augustine to search for God in the first place. Did he feel a void in his life? Was he experiencing particular problems in other relationships that he thought a relationship with God would solve for him? Or perhaps he sought a sense of security from religion? A closer analysis of the text of St. Augustine’s Confessions will provide some insight into these fundamental questions.
..., the closer he was really moving toward God. He began to realize that God is all good, so nothing he creates will be of evil. “God does not create evil but it is of the world” (Augustine 230-31). Once he took responsibility for his personal life and spiritual walk, Augustine began to uncover the truths to his life. He reveals one must take responsibility for their actions and confess to develop a stronger connection with God. He then comprehends; God allows bad things to happen in your life to show you that you need him. Evil is not a lesser good, but it is a reflection of ones moral well-being. In order for one’s well being to be saved one must confess their sins to Christ.
Spoto, D. (2002). The Reluctant Saint: The life of Francis of Assisi. New York: Penguin Group.