Reflection Of St Augustine's Confessions

Saint Augustine’s Confessions In novel, Confessions, St. Augustine tells his life story in the first nine books. Throughout Confessions, Augustine grows and has dedicated his life to be driven to the pursuit of happiness. This book shows many of Augustine’s confessions, but one of the most important one, was to Gusto when he confessed his lust and lack of understanding of God. He did not understand why he always sought pleasure. Through the story Augustine struggles to connect with God. The nine books are about Augustine’s life events that led him to becoming close with God. Augustine struggles through his pursuit of pleasure, even after his conversion to Catholicism. In the first book, it talks about how important God was to Augustine …show more content…
Augustine says, “You stir us to take pleasure in praising you, because you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you” (Chadwyck, page 3). This statement means that God wants us to praise him, he wants us to need him and he takes pride in that. In the second book he talks about when his sexual desire arose. His mother was worried because he was so young and marriage was not even close. In the third book he talks about how he grew interest in the Bible, but he had a lot of questions. He wanted to understand the Bible but did not know how and he did not know who to ask. In the fourth book, he grows toward Manichaeism. In the fifth book, Augustine questions the Bible to a Manichaeism bishop, but he had no answers for him, this drove him away from Manichaeism. In the sixth book, Augustine moves to Milan, his mother follows, and he learns more about Catholicism. He wants to convert himself to …show more content…
The first one he talks about is Manichaeism. Manichaeism believes in reason and this helped with his pursuit for pleasure but pulled him further from God. He believed that God thought pleasure was a sin, but he did not. After nine years, Augustine realized that none of his questions could be answered, so he pulled away from Manichaeism. Augustine then goes through his phase of skepticism. Skepticism is the belief that there is no unknown. This was easy for Augustine to believe in because now there was a reason for him to always seek pleasure. Lastly was Neoplatonism. Neoplatonism was based on a humans place in this world. How a person fits in to the rest of the world. This leads us to Augustine’s fight with Hedonism. Hedonism is exactly as he felt, which was seeking pleasure is the most important thing. He could not pull away from this belief. Hedonism was always his first