Augustine still remains as the latest patristic and also the leading medieval father of Christianity in the West. Augustine gathered together in an aim to conserve all the main ideas regarding Latin Christianity. Apart from this, Augustine received and sanctified the religious philosophy by the Greco-Roman and transformed it into a new apologetic form that maintained the intelligibility of the proclamation by the Christians. While searching for God’s presence, Augustine undertook to find the depth of his own memory in an effort to trace the mysterious excursion of grace. Augustine ends with a thankful praise to God when he recalls of his infancy, learning how to speak, and his childhood experience while in school. In chapter one of his book, Augustine praises God for his great power and never ending wisdom. The basic requirement for a confession is the return to God like prodigal son acknowledging sins with a truthful sorrow.
In the confessions, Augustine stands on the verge of his calling in the church. The confessions by Augustine are deliberate efforts; he felt presence of God to remember the important episodes to be celebrated for the grace of God. He follows the windings of his minds as they signify the upheavals of his youth days and the unsystematic pursuit in wisdom. From these skills, he builds successful climaxes in his career. In the confession, the word confesses means acknowledging God and then praising and glorifying God in true humility.
In his holy scriptures, Augustine centers the system from his mind and heart, and this is where the religious authority is derived. Augustine suggests that man deserves to praise God as he is part of the creation, and God is the one who bears the mortality regarding man and has evidence of the sins that are committed by human beings.
Augustine is regarded as a religious conservative genius since he was able to alter the patristic customs into a new form, which shaped Christianity in Europe. Augustine’s aim was to save Christianity from the continued disruption of the sacrilege and also the pagans who were continuously increasing in number. He wanted to exalt and renew the true hearing of the gospel and the abundant grace by God.
The thoughts and ideas that were possessed by Augustine are believed to be very complex since in his career he had many prejudices and was full of tension. He did not deny the reality of human freedom and never tolerated the irresponsibility of humans toward God and the detractors of the dominance of the grace of God, where he emphasized on the irresistible grace. In Augustine writings there is the sovereignty grace of God which is his freedom to take action without any external necessity. God can act in love beyond the understanding of human beings in judgment, creation and redemption, since he gave his only son as the redeemer. Augustine was determined to examine the human nature by conducting depth analyses and exploration of the inner nature.
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As a bishop of Hippo, Augustine was the guardian of truth and steer of the souls. He had his own doctrine activities and he preached consistently sometimes even days, where through his charity, he won the hearts of many people. His doctrinal attitudes proved that he was truly great as he wrote many letters seeking solutions to the many problems that were facing people. He wrote his confessions when he was a bishop at the Hippo town in Africa after looking back and seeing what had happened to his life. He viewed his life as a new light where since God had called him on several occasions and also constantly via his mother who was called Monica. God had also called him via disillusionment with the leader of a sect that was called Faustus and via the death of a friend.
Through his translations as a bishop, he realizes that most of those experiences are callings from God. Augustine considers himself deaf, because he did not hear the inner call by God and also being too late in loving him. The confession by Augustine was written as a way of awakening others to the inner calling.
When Christians make a communion with God, they are called to a life which is even better than the one that they imagined. Augustine states that while the mind of human beings is seeking knowledge, the heart yearns for rest, but confessions will always retain the front place. Augustine intended confession to be a common intellect practice where people would lay plain their hearts. Confession is an honest book that aims to speak to the heart. After he was elected as the Bishop at Hippo, he took a short time in composing the Confessions which he completed by year 398. He wrote the book after he was pleased by his friend to commit the private conversations into writing.
In book one, chapter one of the Confessions, Augustine says that man should praise God since he is a small particle of the creation and that it is God who carries human beings’ mortality. He continues to state that God made human beings for himself and that the hearts of human beings cannot be at rest unless they are in God’s possession. Augustine prays to be granted the understanding to enable him to know what is important between calling on God and praising God.
In chapter two of book one, Augustine asks on how to call upon the Lord. He asks whether there is a place in the heart for God to be invited and if the heaven and earth made by God contain him. He sees that if the earth cannot contain God, then he should not ask God to come into him and yet he is in God. In book one chapter two, it is stated that the God we invoke is usually in us and we as human beings dwell in him.
In chapter four, God is regarded as the powerful, almighty, excellent, merciful and just. Augustine in his book refers to God as a loving one who loves and a God that changes his ways without changing the plans. In chapter five Augustine asks who is going to send God into his heart so that he gets to forget all the woes and gets to embrace God since he is good. He asks him to say to his soul and that God may not hide his face from him.
In chapter six, Augustine said that humans receive comfort when they are young from their mothers but the nourishment is bestowed by God. The ones who nourish the child are abundantly supplied by him. He continues to thank God in this chapter for the guiding him through infancy even though he does not remember anything.
In chapter seven of the Confessions, he talks of the sins of mankind and that God did not make created that. He pleads with God to have compassion on humans since he is the one who made them. In chapter nine, Augustine says that after enrolling in school young children learn about God depending with their abilities and they mostly consider him as great. Augustine as a young boy, called upon the Lord for help and refuge letting his tongue freely to call on him. He considers such a bound as being great in that it bounds strongly. He continues to say that as a young people, human beings will sin and tend to be delighted only in games.
In chapter ten, Augustine claims that he sinned because of acting contrary to the wish of the teachers and parents. He says that childhood disobedience came from the love of honor and victory from the games they played as a young boy. In this chapter, he prays that God looks down with compassion upon his people so that he can deliver those persons that call upon God. He also prays the God to deliver those persons that do not call upon the name of the Lord, so that they may begin calling on him name and be delivered by God.
Chapter eleven continues to look at the life of Augustine as a young boy while confessing in his book. As a young person, eternal life is promised via humility to God. In his confessions, Augustine remembers a time during his childhood when he was seized with stomach pain to a point near death. He reminds God that he was his keeper during that time and he had implored baptism from the church. His mother was very uneasy during that time of pain more than during the time of natural birth. Augustine continues to say that the very fact that his father never believed in God does not make him a non-believer. Augustine says that he beseeches to know whether it was through God’s will that his baptism was deferred.
In chapter twelve he states that life during his adolescence was even more dangerous than during his childhood. Augustine says that he hated to be forced to do things that he did not do well, yet good came on his side and he attributes to God all the good things that happened to him. In chapter fifteen, he asks God not let his soul faint beneath the discipline while confessing before him all the mercy that God had on him. He prayed that God became good to him so that he would be able to overcome all the seductions.
Augustine investigates the motives behind him stealing pears. He inquires why he committed the crime and the motives behind that. He wants to explore a frame of mind which led him into committing wrong acts for no reason. It is worth noting that even though Augustine conducts an investigation into his former criminal activities, they are not aimed at defending his actions, but rather as a way of understanding those actions. Augustine considers the condemnation of theft that he undertook as his duty, since it demonstrated lack of justice and greed for doing wrong on his side. Augustine reminds God that every theft that is conducted is punished by the laws of God that are written in the hearts of people and cannot be erased even if they are very sinful.
In chapter eight, Augustine admits that he stole a pear and does not defend the fact that he stole it. He acknowledges the crime that he committed since he tells God that he was willing to steal and he did indeed do that. Augustine considers the matter juridical since he admits the act of theft.
Augustine continues to search for the reasons behind him committing crimes on whether he was seeking money, honor or power from crime. Augustine explores and is determined to know whether he was seeking to satisfy some passions while indulging in crime. He notes from his examination that no individual is usually satisfied until a time where it is clear that the motive will result in gaining good things or losing one of the good things. According to Augustine, in crime one can gain revenge or esteem, and crime can be done out of ignorance, anger or fear.
In Confession, Augustine states that the plea of mercy is to be used when confessing a crime without attributing it to chance, necessity or ignorance and at the same time plead for pardon. Augustine considers himself as a Christian who cannot trust on his virtues and as a result he must be appealing to God regularly.
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By the time Augustine was composing the Confession, he had already established a new-fangled Christian code of rhetoric. The confessions allowed him to have some historical space which was critical in the assessment of his teaching career and the rhetorical studies.
According to Augustine, the end purpose of preaching is for the salvation of those spoken. Augustine continues to state that every person needs and should be loved for the sake of God. Our aims as human beings should be the desire that every other person enjoys God equally as we enjoy, and the assistance that we either get from or give them needs to be directed towards one particular end. As per the views of Augustine, rhetoric is a talent and a gift that should be used in the service of God in an effort to bring many other people to the truth.
Augustine testified concerning the confessions and said that the book was meant to praise God for being good. The book was intended to change people minds and increase their affection towards God. The books by Augustine have given and continue to give pleasure to many people. Augustine was a Christian from the very beginning of his ministry and continued until he reached the climax where he set himself to focus on his experiences and thoughts in an inquest to determine what were for him and also his summing up. He had a purpose towards understanding and analyzing on self. Augustine’s journey led him to some outcomes that were not expected from him. As a result, he sought to retrace the important turning points through his entire life from where he had come from. He was sure that it was through the grace of God that he had come to be in the very position he was while composing the Confessions.
The Confession cannot be found in the autobiography since he stated that it was a considered effort to recall those instances that were crucial and deserved to be celebrated as a mystery from God. Augustine considers the important moments as provision of grace by God and also as disorderly stages that led to the pursuit of wisdom. In the end of the Confessions, related problems are explored, one being how we tend to interpret the actions of God, while the other one is how the limited being gets to find infinite God.
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