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St. Augustine's Confessions

Uploaded by knoxville on Dec 28, 2004

St. Augustine wrote about many different aspects of his life he considered sinful. The first part of the book is mainly autobiographical and it’s only later when he talks about his conversation to Neo-Platonism and then Christianity that he classifies his previous behavior as sinful and bemoans many of his previous actions. By the time his conversion was complete he viewed every act in which he put himself ahead of God as sinful. A sin he faults himself greatly for committing is allowing himself sexual freedom and having numerous partners. Although this is one of the sins he most condemns he also writes that it was the sin hardest to give up when he was trying to decide if he wanted to formally convert to Christianity. Augustine also attempts to provide another reason for his previous actions by speculating that these actions where a result of his love for God being somehow misdirected.

In the beginning of Confessions Augustine writes about an incidence when he was a young boy and stole some pears with a group of boys from someone else’s tree. Theft is a fairly clear-cut sin. The issue of sexual relationships is a little more complicated. If both parties are willing participants then there is no victim from a legal standpoint. In Neo-Platonism all actions are considered good or evil. Under that definition it’s impossible to classify a voluntary sexual act as evil. Christianity goes deeper and asked the question of why the people are committing the sexual act. The answer to that would be to satisfy their selfish desires instead of acting on God’s will. Augstine also felt that the pursuit of sexual pleasure acted as a distraction from concentrating on religious matters. The victim under Augustine’s view of sin would be the souls of each participant.

Some historians would argue that sex out of wedlock was only forbidden in Christianity because the founders of the religion wanted to set up families in such a way that would facilitate large numbers of children. Augustine’s arguments about how such sexual actions should be considered sins effectively defeats this argument. In fact using Augustine’s definitions of sin it seems to me that some sex inside wedlock could also be considered sinful depending on the motivations of the people involved in it. If the actions are purely for sexual gratification they can still fall into the sinful category.

As much as Confessions can...

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Uploaded by:   knoxville

Date:   12/28/2004

Category:   Religion

Length:   2 pages (511 words)

Views:   13632

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