Guide Study for Augustine's Confessions, Chapter. 1
Telling God the story of his life and consequently telling how God was present in each
stage of his life, even in sin.
Augustines mother was Christian and his father was Pagan.
1. What is the style that Augustine uses to address God in the opening pages? (Note that pp. 3-6
are highly philosophical. This style does not continue throughout the whole book, so don't be
discouraged....)
He speaks as if he were having an actual one sided conversation with God.
He poses a multitude of rhetorical questions and continues to discuss the amount of God
within the world.
Asks why God makes people fall in love with him and then bestows miseries upon their
lives.
Speak before your mercy, for I am but dust and ashes.
He is talking to God from a present perspective but then goes back and forth between that
and his past.
He contrasts the greatness of God with the littleness of human beings. Nevertheless it is
mans desire and spiritual impulse to reach out to the source of our being. And our heart
is restless until it rests in you.
Where is God in the material universe? He raises a lot of questions but never answers
them.
Concludes that God is always present and close to us, but we are not always close to him.
2. How does Augustine describe his infancy? What does he say about the sinfulness of infants
(use examples)?
He does not actual remember what he did but he was told he first began to smile in his
sleep and then when he was awake.
He used to weep when he did not acquire the internal desires he needed from his external
care takers.
He asks where he was before he was conceived in his mothers womb.
Says that all things and beings will change except God.
To him, God is not discoverable in life and is a higher power.
The sin of infants is not pure even if they have lived only for one day on this earth.
However, they do not understand the person scolding them and therefore they continue
the act and thus the ones taking care of them do not see it as a sin but merely as part of
their age and needs.
The feebleness of infants limbs are innocent but not their minds! Jealously is born within
us and only through teaching is it taken out of us. They cannot talk but that doesnt mean
they are not considering and cursing what they do not have.
Coming of age all the infants persistences will pass.
are Babies mired in original sin and even they are not exempt from it. Each individual is
not personally responsible for it but after we grow up we can be when sinning.
Page 9 and 10 and 7.
Pessimistic view of human nature and that from the beginning we need the salvation of
God.
Are infants selfish and thus sinful?
3. What was Augustine's attitude towards the education that he received as a boy? What does he
think about the Greek and Roman myths that they learned? What does he think about his
teachers?
He mentions that it is not by the teaching that he learned to talk but by the intelligence
that is bestowed upon humanity by God.
He was then able to communicate the signs of his wishes to those around him.
He prayed to the Lord to not be hurt at school when he was not able to follow all the
directions which were given to him.
Believed the teachers who beat him were not better than he was.
He sinned by not doing what his parents and teachers we telling him to do.
He detested Greek literature and believed he was mere, Flesh and sin, going on its way
and then returning.
He believed his education was covering up of error and not rightful teaching.
Fearful and Cruel punishments were imposed on him to learn the words in Greek stories
and therefore he came to hate the tales and their foreign language.
Page 17, free curiosity When you want to have an interest in something then you are
more likely to do it then if you did not like it at all.
He believed Greek myths were fun of seducing sin and thus lead people to wonder why
they cannot do these sins if the gods are. Moral misreadings!
4. Was Augustine baptized as a boy? What was his family's attitude towards baptism?
Mother only baptized him once he came down with sickness and nearly died. She did not
want him to descend into eternity without being able to enter Gods kingdom.
They believed cleansing was a waste because in life everyone is sure to soil themselves
and thus the baptism meant nothing.
He wants the health of his soul however and to be kept safe under protection by baptism.
He will be with God and have faith in him since it is through him that he was created and
ceases to exist.
If they were not baptized then people would not enter into heaven.
He is not baptized because he recovers. He is critical of his parents because of this
decision but also of theology.