Augustine’s Confessions and the Bible
In your readings, you have seen how authors continually look back to earlier texts and offer a reading of them in order to foster their own arguments. (Think, for instance, of the way that Paul interprets Abraham’s relation to God in Genesis in order to bolster his own claims about righteousness.) The project of this final writing assignment is for you to engage in a dialogue with an author interpreting an earlier text—that is, (1) to represent and explain the author’s use of the earlier text, and (2) to speak back to the author: using both his text and the earlier text as evidence, evaluate the author’s claims and in the process develop your own idea to add to the conversation.
This project is not about simply comparing ideas that you find in these different works, or isolating a similar kind of discourse in both—you are being asked to find a point of view, to make an argument. But be careful not to simply agree or disagree with the author’s claims: rather, construct a more nuanced idea. (Turn your “yes” into a “yes, if…” and your “no” into a “no, but…”) Always justify your claims with careful reading of the texts: what they argue, how they argue, how they define their terms, etc.
We have found three moments in your readings that we think offer a fruitful opportunity for developing this kind of dialogue. You may also suggest one of your own, but it needs to be approved by your preceptor.
—— In the Confessions, Augustine continually presents the details of his own life in ways that seem to be modeled on Biblical texts. Examine his use of Paul’s Letter to the Romans in his description of his conversion in book 8. How does his picking up and reading of these particular words from Paul elicit his final conversion? Would Paul find these particular words sufficient to convert someone to a Christian life? Augustine also cites texts from the Gospels. Why does he give priority to Paul’s words as opposed to those of Jesus in the Gospel According to Matthew, and what do you see in Matthew that might complicate Augustine’s own account of conversion?
3. Assessment
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