Confessions

Audience

• He addresses it to God, but a conversation w/ God wouldn’t need to be written down

• Primary/Secondary Audience → might use conceit of confessing to God to talk to others

• is he doing it primarily for himself or for others?

  • he dramatizes a lot but it may just be important to him→ may be dwelling on his sinful transgressions

  • did write a lot of essays and treatises

Augustine and his mom are typically sainted in traditions that have saints

• goes from being connected to Christianity purely through his mom to being a bishop and traveling and then writing later on and becoming a church official

• more of an autobiography

• from the area around Carthage

His last book in Confessions, his style changes, becomes more philosophical

• most ppl who want to think about Christianity philosophically basically have to read this

His story

• Starts with being born - 354 CE

  • his mom is Christian, pagan father who moves into Christianity in Augustine’s later years→ can question faith

  • says he doesn’t know where he was before he was born but there must have been a pre-life experience→ he connects everything to God except human sins

• Takes this idea from Genesis→ humans are created in a perfect way→ free will→ blames Eve for human sins being passed down

• His life as a baby

  • babies are evil

  • he must have sinned as a baby and the only reason they don’t do more damage is because they don’t have the strength to sin more

  • they cry because they want too much→ envy

  • babies fight over things but other animals do this too→ Augustine wants this to be a human thing b/c he uses it as the idea of Original Sin

  • everyone has sin within us b/c descended from Eve

• Concupiscence- you have an instinctive appetite of desire that work contrary to reason→ this is what drives humans to sin b/c we know the rules and sometimes go against them