St. Augustine Confessions

Confessions by St. Augustine is organized into two main parts, the first 9 chapters being a history of Augustine 's life and reconciliation back to the Lord, and the last 4 chapters being a theological search into the meaning of creation: how it 's all longing to be brought back to the Lord. It struck me while reading Confessions how honest and forthcoming Augustine is about his life. Even though Augustine cannot remember the exact details of his infancy, he begins the autobiographical sections of the book with a description of how he imagines it went based on watching other infants grow up. By this odd starting point Augustine means to dispel the idea that humans are good at birth and become “corrupted” but instead start out full of sin

Augustine put it this way, “When sin is committed, we have… preferred… goods of a lower order and neglect the better and the higher good — neglecting you, our Lord God.” At this point Augustine describes what he believed to be the most pervasive sin affecting his life, which will continue to torture him for the rest of his life, lust. “Then bushes of lust grew rank about my head, and there was no hand to root them out.” Augustine then moves away from his home to Carthage to study the art of rhetoric. This time in is life was what he’d describe as the darkest time, when his lust and urge for power guided him. He even described how he did not want any rescuing, but enjoyed being ensnared by sins, “I was in love with loving, and hated security and a smooth way free from snares.” However, slowly his heart changed and he began searching for a creator, which is when he found the Manichees.

The Manichees were a group that believed in the dualism of good and evil. They head that God was not omnipotent, but that he fought against his evenly matched opposite, Satan. In Manichaeism, Humans are then the byproduct of the never-ending battle between God and Satan. This religion also formed many of his other views that he held about God for many years, one