Augustine Confessions Flashcards
How does Augustine’s Confessions contrast with the Qur’an?
- In Augustine’s confessions, Augustine speaks to God
- In the Qur’an, God speaks to Muhammad.
AC: What empire did Augustine belong to?
Rome, he was a Roman citizen.
AC: When did Augustine live?
-354 CE
AC: Where did Augustine live?
- His early years in Roman North Africa.
- Parents were not poor but not wealthy.
AC: Why is Augustine’s mother Monica a more important figure in Confessions?
-She was a lifelong Christian, unlike his father, who always hoped for Augustine to be a baptised believer.
AC: What is the context of fourth-century Christianity?
- Catholicism in the 4th century was one young theological philosophy among many.
- Christian splinter groups like the Manichees, secular philosophies like Neoplatonism, trendy returns to ancient religions like the cult of Osiris, and more traditional propitiation of Greek and Roman deities.
-Becoming a Catholic, or orthodox Christian, would not be an entirely normal thing to do, and could hinder the success of Augustine’s public career.
AC: Who did Augustine marry?
-A concubine, who he took at age 17, and stayed with for 15 years, she bore him a son, Adeodatus.
AC: What did Augustine’s first religion(‘s prophet) claim (Manichee)?
- Mani, claimed that God was not omnipotent but in a constant state of conflict against the evil of the world.
- This is why evil can exist in a world with a god.
- Augustine joined because their texts were written in ‘good Latin’ and the religion was rhetorically embellished with disagreements with Christianity.
AC: Why did Augustine prefer Manchee to The Bible?
- For ten years, Augustine preferred the well-worded Manichean rhetoric to the simple parables of the Bible (which he believed to be crass and uneducated).
- His beliefs became shaky as he moved to Rome, and then Milan, becoming confused by Manichean incompatibility with the budding science of astronomy.
AC: What replaced Augustine’s belief in Manichee
- Neoplatonism, which was a philosophy with small, erudite, followers.
- Particularly impressed with its solution to evil, and its striking philosophical similarity to the Bible.
AC: When and where did Augustine commit himself to the church?
- In Milan in 386CE
- His masterpiece was written in 396 CE after becoming a bishop in Hippo in Northern Africa.
AC: How did Augustine’s critics influence his confessions?
- His critics doubted him being the right man to be bishop for:
- His Manichee past
- His cleverness in rhetoric
- His relatively recent conversion (13 years)
Therefore, Augustine wished to proudly display his past mistakes, whilst simultaneously praising God with effusiveness and poetry, whilst denouncing the Manichees.
AC: How would Confessions be described?
- A diverse blend of autobiography, philosophy, theology, and critical interpretation of the Bible.
- Augustine treats it as more than an autobiography as the events he chooses to recount are closely tied with philosophy or religious endeavour.
AC: What do the first nine Books portray?
Augustine’s life from birth (354 AD) to the events just after conversion to Catholicism (386 AD)
AC: How did Augustine view the social world he lived in?
- Sinful to the point of utter folly
- However, in his early years in Carthage, Augustine runs amok in sexual adventures and false philosophies.
- He sees this period of his life as a lesson in how immersion in the material world is its own punishment of disorder, confusion, and grief.
AC: How did Augustine allow his prior beliefs to influence him?
-His Neoplatonic ideas faced intricate fusion with Catholic theology in the Confessions.
AC: How did Augustine view his prior pursuits to be a teacher of rhetoric?
-The salesmanship of empty words.
AC: Where does Augustine finally admit that Catholicism holds the real truth?
-Milan
AC: What is the dual meaning of Confession?
- Admission of Guilt
- Act of Praise
Guilt at his early misguidance, praise to the God and truth he had now found.
AC: What does Augustine want people to take from his Confessions?
- The work is about the return of creation to God.
- Aims to inspire others to actively seek God’s return.
AC: What do the last 4 books focus on?
-Religious and philosophical issues:
Memory
Time and eternity
The interpretation of the Book of Genesis.
AC: What is the unifying theme of the work?
-Redemption, Augustine sees his own painful process of returning to God as an instance of the return of the entire creation to God.
