St. Augustine on His Book Confessions free essay sample

Augustine starts his first book of the Confessions by praising the Lord and making reference to the Psalms. He asks how to pray and call upon God and to know more about his nature. Augustine continues his story of growing up, and explains that he learned to talk not because he was taught it but because God gave him the gift of learning. He goes on to talk about how he was beaten and punished when he messed up reading or writing in school. This is when he learned to pray and he prayed to God that he would stop getting beaten and he would stop messing up. Augustine believed that God gave us eternal life when he sent his son down to us to sacrifice his life for the sake of us. Augustine became very ill and begged to be baptized before he died. His father (Patrick) was the only person in the family who had not converted over to Christianity, but he never tried to stop anyone from pursuing their faith and what they believed in. We will write a custom essay sample on St. Augustine on His Book Confessions or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Augustine never liked reading books and was rebellious towards anything anyone tried to teach him. He also said that if there was any good in him at all, that it was a reflection of God not himself. Augustine starts his second book of Confessions out with a confession of the sins he experienced as a teenage boy. He has become fully aware now that his one desire was simply to love and be loved. St. Augustine had started to hang out with a bad group of kids and he was always feeling that he had to impress his friends by participating in wrong doings with them, such as Augustine says later, Friendship can be a dangerous enemy,. Augustine feels that adolescence is a stage to test whether or not you will be able to resist taking part in evil doings. In St. Augustine’s third book of Confessions Augustine had reached a point where he almost didn’t have a relationship with God anymore it was so bad. Around this time that is when St. Augustine began get more into the Manichaean faith. This faith was an early heretical form of Christianity. Augustine went on to read a book on this faith called Hortensius and he was pushed away from the faith after reading it because of his mother’s influence talking to him about Jesus Christ. This book is what led him to read the Christian Bible. In Augustine’s fourth book of Confessions he graduates from his studies in Carthage and got his degree to become a teacher. He moved back to Thagaste to become a teacher of oratory and rhetoric. His main skill was being able to speak and write in a very persuasive way. He was still a follower of the Manichaean religion. Augustine also explains why he was so obsessed with the impermanent things of life. Any attachment to any object on this earth he says will always result in misery because it will always die out eventually. Only the attachment to God and any other eternal things can make a person happy. St. Augustine goes on to end his fourth book like he always ends his other books with praise to God in guiding him in everything he does. St. Augustine’s fifth book of Confessions begins by giving praise to God. Augustine was now 28 years old and was living in Carthage teaching rhetoric. During this time the Bishop of the Manichaean religion named Faustus came to speak to Augustine. Augustine found flaws with the Bishop’s logic and still refused to convert to the Manichaean religion. He had finally come to the realization that his mind was far more advanced than those around him. Augustine had decided to flee Carthage and go to Rome at this time, and just after he arrived in Rome he had fallen ill. He soon recovered though and spent time listening to the teachings of a school of Skeptic philosophers. Although Augustine was still a member of the Manichaean faith he was starting to question the faith more and more. Soon after this he listened to the great Catholic Bishop Ambrose who was head of the Milan Church during this time. St. Ambrose gave very impressive sermons and introduced Augustine to the possibilities of an allegorical interpretation of the Bible. Augustine started addressing some of the problems he head with the Catholic faith. Finally Augustine though unsure decided to become a catechumen.