Excerpt via Term Newspaper:
St Augustine’s Personality as Illustrated Within His Confessions
The smoothness of St . Augustine (354-430) as viewed within his Confessions (begun 397), which he published as a extended epistle to God, in midlife, represents a distinct turning point in the lifestyle, attitudes, and values of Augustine the person. The content of Augustine’s Confessions itself points to personality traits of Augustine’s which includes honesty, truthfulness, humility, piety, a convenience of self-reflection, and a desire for self-improvement. Augustine spent his youth licentiously, and up towards the point of his midlife, remained far more interested in hedonistic pursuits than in being of service to The almighty. All of that improved for him midlife, however , precipitated with a sort of “midlife crisis” (as we would call it nowadays). At that point in his existence, when he was about 43, Augustine realized that non-e of the actions from which this individual derived short-term pleasure were genuinely fulfilling, and that genuine fulfillment found him from service to Goodness. Augustine was also firmly affected, within a spiritual impression, by his mother’s fatality at around this time. Augustine’s mother have been a sincere Christian, a lot more so than Augustine’s father, and the girl had usually hoped that her boy would comply with her personal spiritual course. However , St Augustine’s individual Christian philosophy were not specifically strong until after his mother’s death. It was then that Augustine himself converted to Christianity, taking the core benefit of his beloved mother into himself. In this dissertation, I will talk about how Augustine’s character is usually reflected inside the words of his Confessions.
Augustine’s Confessions is, above all, a work of self-revelation. As such, it reveals the vulnerability of its author, and in particular, Augustine’s strong and genuine desire to repent of and find out from his sins. Confessions in fact forms the cornerstone of the Catholic belief that, whatever their stage anytime or past sins, it is never to later to repent, and to search for forgiveness and redemption. This cornerstone opinion of Augustine’s likely signifies that he was, himself, a forgiving individual, since one particular must 1st possess the capability to forgive one self, in order to reduce others.
The text of Augustine’s Confessions as well indicates that Augustine supported the importance of the individual, the individual heart, and the individual’s relationship to God. In accordance to Lawall et ing.:
Augustine, [was]#@@#@!… responsible for the consolidation of the Church in the West, especially for the systemization of its doctrine and plan…
… he set down, for the benefit of other folks, the story of his early life and his conversion to Christianity… which will proclaims the significance of the individual heart and the importance of its regards to God…. Augustine talks straight to God, in humility, yet conscious that God is concerned for him personally.
(p. 1221)
Augustine’s humility toward God is usually shown simply by his readiness to give Goodness credit pertaining to everything that features happened to him in life, good, poor, or natural. Augustine offers God credit rating for his education, his experiences (even the ones this individual now remorse, so that he may come to find out better), as well as, for his very living on earth. Furthermore, none on this is arbitrary, Augustine observes within his epistle, although instead a part of God’s plan for him. In Book I of his Confessions, one example is [Childhood], Augustine declares:
… For my personal sustenance and
