Saint Augustine's Book - Confessions

Saint Augustine’s book Confessions talks about how increasing your knowledge through reading leads you through a “conversion” in which you begin to recall things and their relevance through memory. Socrates stresses the concept of increasing knowledge as a way to grow. Socrates also was the one who wanted to have a “field day” teaching Saint Augustine. Saint Augustine uses his life to display to us the way one’s quest for God should be like. He believed that one must begin their journey by first reading about God through books such as the Bible. Once one believes in God, they will have gone through a conversion in which their memory allows them to remember their readings on God and apply them in their lives. We will be analyzing the relationship between reading, conversion and memory and how they relate to the quest of God using Saint Augustine’s life as an example to follow.

The relationship between reading, conversion and memory is that in order to go through a conversion one must read and be able recall the important information through memory. While Saint Augustine is talking to God he says “For you have granted to man that he should come to self-knowledge through the knowledge of others, and that he should believe many things about himself on the authority of the womenfolk” (p. 7) With this statement, Augustine is showing us that God believes we should learn from each other and the main method of learning from each other is through reading each other’s literary works. He also believes that once you read something it can “convert” or change your way of thinking and looking at things. He displays this belief in the following remark “…which he here reads of me as I recall and confess them of myself, let him not despite me – for I, who was sick, have been healed by the same physician by whose aid it was that he did not feel sick, or rather was less sick than I” (p.26) He also displays this concept in the following statement “Now it was this book which quite definitely changed my whole attitude and turned my prayers toward you, lord, and gave me new hope and new desires” (p. 31). He clearly states that reading the book converted his belief. After going through conversion Saint Augustine believes that your memory begins to recall the relevance of things. He describes memory as “The vast cave of memory, with its numerous and mysterious recesses, receives all these things and stores them up, to be recalled and brought forth when required.”(10.8.13 p154). He uses this description of memory because as one is reading one does not try remembering everything, but once one is converted everything that is in their memory starts to make sense and becomes relevant.

The concept of reading conversion and memory apply to God. It describes the quest in finding God. One first reads about God and tries to understand him. After you have had some time to let what you read sink in to your memory, your memory begins to recall the readings and you understand the importance and relevance of what you read. It is because of your memories that you undergo a conversion. Saint Augustine uses reading and memory to lead to a conversion in his life from not believing in God to becoming a Christian. Saint Augustine confesses to God the following “Have mercy on me; heal my soul; for I have sinned against thee” not to abuse thy goodness as a license to sin, but to remember the words of the Lord, “Behold, you are made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing befall you.”(p. 42) After denouncing his belief in astrology he is at a point of limbo in which he does not know what to believe and what to follow. He displays this when he says “I did not wholly separate myself from them, but as one who had not yet found anything better I decided to content myself, for the time being, with what I had stumbled upon one way or another, until by chance something more desirable should present itself.” (p 63). He tells us that “upon the reading of Cicero’s Hortensius, I was roused to a desire for wisdom.” (8.7) This was not only wisdom for knowledge, but also the wisdom of God and God’s creation. His first real run into a religious belief was when first learns about Catholicism, which he took a liking to right away. “Still, from this time forward, I began to prefer