Augustine's Confessions begins with an exhortation of God's unsearchable characteristics. Readers immediately sense the writers remorse of time wasted in his youth. A deep remorse over idleness and neglected studies convicts our author of the sinfulness of his youth. Augustine considered the opportunity to study a gift from God and to be idle was to neglect God. He recounts an awareness of God in his youth, attributing his exposure to the basics of Christianity to God's providence, though it was his mother who taught him.

Augustine's father desired his son to have a good education. Though poor, he provided funds for Augustine to attend school at Madaura so he would be well versed in grammar and rhetoric. Augustine did not like school! He particularly detested Greek lessons. At the end of his fifteenth year, funds begin to dwindle and Augustine was forced to discontinue his studies and return home.

When Augustine reflected on his youth, he saw God directing his steps with the goal of bringing him into the fold. The events that occurred while Augustine was at home enjoying youthful idleness shaped him throughout adulthood.

Recognition of past sins, and God's forgiveness of those sins is ever present with Augustine. “I want to call back to mind my past impurities and the carnal corruptions of my soul, not because I love them, but so that I may love you, my God” (2:1). It is strange that recalling sin from time past increases love for God, but this is the essence of Augustine's thought. His statement tells us that he was helpless to save himself. Only the grace of God brought him back from the grasp of evil. Lust, self-seeking pleasure, and a state of savagery were marks of his former life. “I was tossed here and there, spilled on the ground, scattered abroad; I boiled over in my fornications” (2: 2).

Deep anguish and remorse plagued our author as he remembered and regretted seeking after marriage and temporal things instead of seeking after God. Augustine's adult view of the world and the providence of God lead him to believe that his life was a microcosm of all humanity. In past events of his life he saw God trying to correct and summon him home. “ But, I did not know these warnings came from you” (2:7). These are poignant, reflective thoughts as he considers his youthful indiscretions.

The incident of the theft of the pears influenced Augustine throughout adulthood by shaping his view of human sin. One day while with his peers, the young men stole pears from a neighbor's tree. At first thought it is a simple enough crime for a young man, but the deeper implications of that crime haunted Augustine. “ I had plenty for myself, and much better than what I stole. I had no wish to enjoy that I tried to get by theft; all my enjoyment

was in the theft itself, and in the sins” (2: 4). For Augustine, the analysis of the theft of the pears is that a person steals something they do not want just to satisfy the longing and need to sin. Augustine writes that the boys only tasted a few of the pears and gave the rest to the pigs. This story will become the foundation for the doctrine of 'total depravity' as advocated by John Calvin.

“I loved my sin—not the thing which I had committed the sin, by for the sin itself” (2:4). How does one explain sin in light of the 'theft of the pears?' There are sins of the lower order and sins of the higher order. Augustine explained that sins of the lower order are usually committed because we want to gain something or fear we may lose something. Even a man who commits murder has a reason, but the theft of the pears except the act of theft. This is a sin of the higher order; “To enjoy that which if forbidden for no other reason except that it was forbidden” (2:6). For Augustine, this episode cannot be explained.. “Who can understand his errors” (2: 9). Appreciation to God for bringing him back from the wasteland of sin is Augustine's only reaction.

From his seventeenth to his nineteenth year, Augustine attended school at Carthage. It was there that the love of theater and wisdom impacted Augustine's memories. Some contemporary writers refer to the experience of reading Cicero's Hortensius as Augustine's first conversion. “But this book altered my affections, and turned my prayers to Thyself” (3:7). Augustine longed to seek his God and turned once again to reading the Scriptures, but the Holy Writ made no sense to him and seemed shallow.¹ He then turned to seek answers through human reason and philosophy. It was his quest to approach faith by means of reason that lead him to involvement with the Manichean sect. The Manichean's seemed to have all the correct answers, so for nine years Augustine was a part of the sect to the consternation of his mother, who suffered deep grief because her son fell away from the truth.

Augustine's life from nineteen to twenty eight years of age is as diverse as his younger years. Though a Manichean and seducing others to the the same

heresy, being lead astray by those practicing astrology and seeking after spirits, Augustine still sought the truth.

It was during this periods of life that he made a close friend, but was devastated at the death of his friend one year later. “Thou tookest that man out of my life when he had scarce filled up one whole year of my friendship, sweet to me above all sweetness of that my life” (4:4). His young friend was converted on his deathbed. He was baptized at the final moment in his life. These events had a profound effect on Augustine, leading him to think about differences real and unreal friendship, love and fame, and the fair and fit. This final section in the book rings with “Of what did it profit me.” The events once again forced Augustine to reflect on the purpose of life and eternity.

For months Augustine asked questions of the Manichees, most of which they could not answer. He was assured that Faustus, a leader of the sect, could in fact answer all of his questions. Finally Faustus arrived and Augustine listened closely to him. Greatly disappointed in what he heard Augustine decided that Faustus was a wonderful speaker with a limited brain. His philosophy was full of contradictions and impossibilities. The Manichees criticized the Scriptures but Augustine was sure that the criticism could not be defended. At times he wished he knew enough to take up the challenge. It was this set of circumstances that lead Augustine to abandon his belief in the Manichean sect.

Another major turning point in his life was his move to Rome. Shortly after arriving in Rome he was summoned to Milan to teach. It was at Milan that Augustine heard the great Ambrose preach. It was also at Milan that Augustine's mother joined him. She was still trying to convert her son to the church. Augustine's common law wife with whom he had child appears to have been forced by Monica, his mother to leave. It did not take long for Monica to arrange a marriage for Augustine that she deemed appropriate. The girl she chose was to young for marriage so Augustine took another woman to sleep with while he waited for the younger girl to age.

In the meantime Augustine was listening to the great Ambrose preach. At first , Augustine was attracted by the eloquent speech but it was not long before the words started to penetrate. Far the first time in his life, the Holy Scriptures made sense. Augustine returned as a catechumen to the church and

Extricating himself from errors was a gradual process. In his thirty – first year the events of his life changed again. Two questions continued to bother him. He elaborated on them in book seven: What does God look like? What is the origin of evil? “ I was still forced to think of you as a corporeal substance occupying space, whether infused into this world or diffused through the infinite space outside the world and this substance took I regarded as being incorruptible, inviolable, and changeless nature which I saw as superior to the corruptible, the violable and the mutable” (7:1). For Augustine, what God looked like was related to the question of where does evil come from. Augustine decided that sin is not a substance but an act of free will. The mystery is that if God is as an infinite sea and things of this earth are as a sponge in the middle of the sea, being surrounded on every side and penetrating it, then the sponge in all of its parts would be filled with the sea. Since God is good and God is around everything, how does evil arrive?

It was to books of the Platonist that helped Augustine answer these questions and allowed him to have a faith based on reason. Neo-Platonism provided philosophical categories for understanding the truths of Christianity. Augustine made a list of the items he found in Platonic books that agreed with Christianity and the things that did not agree with Christianity.

Neo-Platonism requires an intense state of recollection. Augustine entered this state of recollection after reading the Platonic books and wrote, “I was admonished by all this to return to my own self, and, with you to guide me, I entered into the innermost part of myself, and I was able to do this because you were my helper” (10:2). He used the words “I saw” and many other terms to indicate he realized something that became manifest to his intelligence rather than his senses. He no longer needed to accept authority on the basis of faith, but he could cross the frontier from faith to reason and understand. This was the answer to the life long question: must one accept authority before coming to faith, or must one have faith before accepting authority? For Augustine, faith without reason was a problem, but philosophy helped him arrive at a understanding. He boldly quoted the Apostle Paul saying, “Now indeed I saw your invisible things understood by the things which are made, marking a new dawn of understanding” (7:17). The Platonist taught Augustine to seek a truth that was incorporeal, and he came to see the invisible things as being manifest by those things which are visible. The role of Platonism in his spiritual development as a Christian was to bring him to the state of a finished scholar, except Augustine realized that his final state of understanding had been supplied by God. Our author knew that humility was not taught in Platonic books, rather; humility comes from Christ.

Augustine's battle with the human will and its struggle with the flesh are the central issues of chapter eight. In chapter eight, Augustine states that he no longer desires to be rich. The pursuit of an exalted earthly position no longer held the grandeur it once did, but there were still things that bothered him. He desperately wished to give his life entirely to God and found that the will was within him to so so but not enough will power to make the final commitment. He attributed the final force, which enabled him to move in the proper direction to God, since it was God “ who put the idea in his mind” (8: 1).

Augustine's struggle was not with a material pursuit but with his own body. He found that he was able to will all kinds of bodily actions, such as movement of hands and legs, but moral impudence was his greatest foe. His will could command all bodily functions except itself. To accomplish wholly within the will, that is for the will to command the will, is a much more difficult task that for the body to obey the will. Augustine found that there was something he was helpless to decide on wand that was being able to totally will, without reservation, giving his life entirely to God and living a lifestyle that was congruent with that idea. Freedom then was freedom from sin and the ability to control the will. That is, complete volition of the will in the sense that the will commands not only the body but also the will.

Augustine's love for physical pleasures damped his ability to control his will. His love for sex and a wife were just strong enough to be an impediment. His plea was “Now let it be, let it be now” (8: 11). “Why not finish this very hour with my uncleanness”(8: 12). It was a shortage of will that left him viewing life as unfulfilled.

“Give me the grace to do as you command, and command me to do what you will” (10: 29-37). Augustine's personal struggles were the basis he used to formulate the above statement. He meant that it is by the grace of God that man can come to God, for without the help of God some people do not have the ability to help themselves—realizing his own personal struggles with the weakness of the flesh. Humans can become so trapped in sin they do not have the will to escape. When that is the case, God must provide the will. Once the will is provided, the will of God and not the will of man enables one to overcome barriers of the will.

When the Pelagians read Augustine's statement they were shocked because they thought he meant that man could not do anything for himself. The Pelagians understood this as an excuse for men to sin since man must wait for God before anything can be done about personal sin. The Pelagians argued that God only helps those who help themselves, while Augustine argued that God only helps those who cannot help themselves.

In book eleven, Augustine enters into a lengthy discourse about the nature of time. Perhaps philosophers had been questioning him on points of creation, but the larger picture is his attempt to prove the eternal nature of God and the creation of earth by God. His own arguments concerning time raised questions he could not answer, such as how God taught the Prophets about things in the future, when the future did not exist (11:9). He answered the question as to why God created when he did rather than sooner by questioning those who think within the realm of time. “For how could countless ages pass by, when you, the author and creator of all ages, had not yet made them? What times could there have been that were not created by you? And how could they pass by, if they had never been in existence?” (11:13).

Augustine saw God as the complete controller of the universe and more specifically, the controller of humanity.

Let the waters be gathered together into on place, and let the dry land appear, which thirsteth after Thee? And what is meant by “sea” here is the gathering together of the waters, not the bitterness of men's wills. For you also restrain the wicked desires of the soul, and you set up bounds, how far the waters shall be allowed to go, so that their waves may not break upon themselves, and so you make it sea by the order of your power which is above all things (13:17).

Augustine's view is that man is unable to help himself, and therefore is completely dependent of God for salvation. He spoke in allegorical terms comparing the creation of the earth and the waters and the separating of those elements by God to the separation of the “precious from the vile” (13:20). a logical conclusion to Augustine was that God had the creation of the earth in mind before the foundations of the world. God knew the outcome of His creation before the world began. Augustine called this the “predestination before all time” (13:34) The earthly things we see and know are only what God

is working out, what He had already predestined in His mind. Augustine experienced the anguish of knowing what he should no but found his self unable to do that very thing. His own life experience should have led him away form the Platonist view “to know the good is to do the good.” He should have adopted a view of predestination based on his dependence on God's help to abandon his former lifestyle and live as in his view, God had commanded him.

A. The theme of the pilgrimage can be found throughout the Confessions. Augustine had a deep attachment to his mother. The theme of the pilgrimage intensifies after her death.

All people who live on earth on on this pilgrimage. Augustine saw God directly involved in his pilgrimage. “Whereas I do not know in my case what temptations I cannot resist. And there is hop, because thou art faithful” (10:5). In the latter part of the work the intensity builds as Augustine looks at things of the earth and considers them necessities one must have while on earth. “For it is not , I think, a desire for earthly things, nor for gold and silver and precious stones, or beautiful clothes or honors or power or pleasures of the flesh, or for things necessary for the body and for this life of our pilgrimage” (11:2).

For Augustine the pilgrimage was an earnest or down payment. “And in our pilgrimage we have received an earnest that we should now be light” (13:14). It is the way we live our life or participate in this earnest that allows us to enter the house of light. “Let me sigh toward you as I journey on my pilgrimage” (12:15). The end of our journey or pilgrimage is the heavenly Jerusalem (12: 16). Although the term pilgrimage is not used in the earlier sections of Confessions, it is plain that he idea is there. Consider, “But I did

not know these warnings came form you” (2:7). There was a realization in his later life that he was on this pilgrimage from his youth.

B. The theme of holy restlessness starts at the beginning of his story. “Oh that I might find my rest in you” (1:5).. In almost every book of the confessions one can find statements like “and as I my self shall be with you” (1: 20). The endured restlessness was a desire to be closer to God and to life a holy life. As he wrote this book he related that he wanted to be close to God all of his life, even though he did not realize it. “O my joy so slow in coming. Then you were silent, and I went on going further from you and further, making my way into more and more of these sterile plantations of sorrow, arrogant in my dejection, still restless in my weariness” (2:2). Augustine was always seeking God, even in his youth, though some of his avenues might seem unconventional. According to Augustine, his restlessness had a purpose. “Inside me your good work was working on me to make me restless until you should become clear and certain in my inward sight” (7:8). Augustine attributed his restlessness to God convicting him until he was able to believe based on faith by reason. It took most of his life to accomplish this.

C. The theme of homesickness has much more of the same line as the theme of holy restlessness. “And our home, which is your eternity, does not fall down when we are away from it” (4:16). Since he considered his life a pilgrimage, and throughout his works he stressed the transitory nature of life on earth, one can easily see that Augustine considered heaven his home rather than earth. He had a deep longing to be with God in the permanent resting place of heaven. Much of his book is spent on defining reality. Reality was not what a person can see through the senses but the unseen or the invisible. Homesickness was the desire to go to heaven and be with God.

D. The longing in the Confessions has much the same idea as the other themes. “Remembering Jerusalem with my heart stretching out and longing for it” (12:16). Throughout the work the "longing" is sometimes used to mean a longing for heaven and in other cases it is used to mean a longing to receive God. "I call you into my soul which you are making ready to receive you by the longing which you inspire" (13:1). In nearly all cases, Augustine attributes the inspiration of this longing to God. In his themes Augustine portrayed his life as being under the divine providence of God to the point of being controlled by God to a certain extent.

(2) Augustine's concern to bring together the God of the Bible with the God of the philosophers reaches a climax in Book VII. An indication of the problem can be found in his statement " though I did not think of you in the shape of a human body" (1:1). Augustine thought that the God of the Bible was made of a corporeal substance occupying space.

Bible students realize this idea of God is impossible to make consistent with the entirety of the Bible. The problem for the human mind is to imagine a God that does not occupy space and time. This was the dilemma, for Augustine. In Book VII, verse 9, Augustine spoke of the Platonic books. IN these books he found things that the Bible speaks of, but he notices things that the Bible omit. The Platonist's books taught Augustine to seek for truth that was incorporeal. After reading this, he came to see invisible things (7:20).

Augustine was trying to seek faith based on reason, but prior to the reading of the Platonic books this was hard for him to do because God, as he imagined Him, was not reasonably imaginable. The Platonic books gave Augustine a mental frame of reference so that he might reasonably believe in God.

(3) The Confessions of Augustine is one long catharsis. It is an entire book of guilt and repentance for his former life, although he was an extremely sincere person who tried to please God. His guilt is multi layered. Guilt plagued him because he had mistreated his mother when he was a young man. Much of his guilt may have been behind the motivation he had to live a perfect and just life. The very act of writing the Confessions is a method Augustine used to "purge" his conscience.

What is unfortunate about Augustine's guilt is that Christ died so we might have a clean conscience (Heb. 9: 14). There was not need for Augustine to write Confessions if he had understood that he Christian is "justified by faith, " or "counted righteous."

Augustine may have caused a significant departure in Christan thinking that is still with us today, in terms of the conscience. Sigmund Frued revitalized Augustine's concept of the guilty conscience. It is an affection we face in modern society that is particularly damaging and harmful to the church.

1There is a good lesson to be learned from Augustine's conversion that is applicable to the church today. When Augustine first wanted to explore Christianity , by chance the only version of the Bible he found to read was a very rough Latin vernacular translation that was full of mistakes and grammatical errors. Augustine, being a educated person thought that all Christians must be illiterate given this example he had been exposed to and for that reason rejected Christianity. We ought not put stupid people up in front of the congregation. When we do, there is a possibility that we to may cause someone else to stumble.