Essay on "St. Augustine Confession"

Essay 3 pages (1078 words) Sources: 3 Style: Chicago

[EXCERPT] . . . .

St. Augustine Confession

Two wills and inner conflicts in the life of Augustine

Augustine, who eventually became the Bishop of Hippo, is considered one of the early founding fathers of the modern Catholic Church. He is a revered patriarch, and his Confessions are read as inspirational tale of a man who was once a great sinner, who became a great saint. Given his reputation, it might be assumed that Augustine had an uncomplicated view of the innate freedom of the human will. The belief that human beings possess free will to sin or to choose salvation is one of the tenants of orthodox Christian belief, as opposed to Gnostic Manichaeism. Manichaeism was the heretical credo that Augustine embraced early in his theological career, and then eventually rejected. Manichaeism embraced predestination as well as a dualistic view of the universe as divided into good and evil. However, while Augustine did not accept the Manichean understanding of the world, he did believe that God's grace was necessary to achieve salvation. Salvation could not be achieved through sheer force of the human will alone. Only through divine intervention could the mastery of both physical desires and spiritual urges be undertaken, even while he stressed that human beings did have free will and Manichaeism was heresy.

When he was a young man, Augustine prayed to God to make him good -- but not yet. This famous statement of Augustine is often seen as a dramatic depiction of how someone with a spiritual orientation can be lead awry by the physical cravings and of the body. But this prayer shows that Augustine did not simply act poorly, but that his sincere wish to be good and his internal moral compass was lacking. He was incapable of moral behavior and good, self-restrained actions because his will was half-hearted and weak.

Furthermore, Augustine's great claim to fame as great sinner who became a great saint lies not just in his sexual crimes but also his intellectual and moral crimes. Augustine's sins were internal as well as physically manifest. He stole apples as a child and had a mistress as a young man but just as importantly Augustine was extremely ambitious and ruthless in his professional career. He studied pagan philosophers, preferring their prose to Christian teachings. He also showed a lack of respect to his gentle Christian mother, Monica. He embraced Manichaeism and neo-Platonism as superior systems of thought out of intellectual arrogance before he embraced Christianity. In other words, his sins were spiritual and incorporeal as well as of the body. It took grace from God for him to become a convert, not simply a change in his exterior actions or even his physical urges. In terms of his letting go of his desire for sexual excess, Augustine says explicitly that God took it away, not that he was able to resist these desires more willfully: "And now I will tell and confess unto thy name, O Lord, my helper and my redeemer, how thou didst deliver me from the chain of sexual desire by which I was so tightly held, and from the slavery of worldly business" (10.VI.13).

Only after his conversion and his acceptance of divine grace, were Augustine's body mastered by his… READ MORE

How to Reference "St. Augustine Confession" Essay in a Bibliography

Related Essays:

Confessions of St Term Paper

ST. AUGUSTINE

THE CONFESSIONS of ST. AUGUSTINE

In 397 a.D., St. Augustine, born as Aurelius Augustinus in 354 a.D., began to write what was to become his most famous theological… read more

Term Paper 6 pages (1880 words) Sources: 1+ Style: MLA Topic: Religion / God / Theology

---

St. Augustine's Concept of Grace and Salvation Term Paper

Augustine is considered as the founder of the Western Christianity. Augustine was professional Christian thoelogist. His services had little impact on the Western civilization; however his contributions towards Christian Church… read more

Term Paper 8 pages (2224 words) Sources: 5 Style: Turabian Topic: Religion / God / Theology

---

Confessions of St Book Review

Confessions of St. Augustine

Saint Augustine's "Confessions"

Saint Augustine's autobiographical manuscript "Confessions" stands as one of the first autobiographies written in the Western world. Furthermore, it is particularly notable because… read more

Book Review 3 pages (752 words) Sources: 1 Topic: Literature / Poetry

---

Origen and Augustine Confession Essay

Origen and Augustine

In Book IV of On First Principles, Origen tackles the problem of erroneous understandings of the Scripture leading to heresy. To clarify his understanding of how the… read more

Essay 6 pages (1837 words) Sources: 2 Topic: Religion / God / Theology

---

Augustine of Hippo Term Paper

Augustine of Hippo

Brown, Peter. Augustine of Hippo. Revised Edition. Berkeley: University of California

Press, 2000.

Make me good God, but not yet.' According to Augustine, in his most famous… read more

Term Paper 4 pages (1231 words) Sources: 1+ Topic: Religion / God / Theology

---

View 100+ more related papers  >>