Calling All Sinners!

It seems to me that Augustine’s main argument throughout his confessions so far has been that even though one will sin at some point throughout life, one can still be saved by God. This argument is also a way for Augustine to essentially comfort himself and the fact that he has sinned throughout his life as well. This fact also makes his confessions a form of unburdening as well as an advertisement to his audience. Throughout his memoirs so far, Augustine recalls past sins and glorifies God to try to have him be forgiven. “I will love you, Lord, and I will give thanks and confession to your name because you have forgiven me such great evils and nefarious deeds. I attribute to your grace and mercy that you have melted my sins away like ice (Ecclus. 3: 17)” (Augustine 32). He makes it clear that while sinning is most obviously a negative action, one does not have to worry about his fate with God because one will be able to be forgiven for such acts.

Augustine seems to almost take pity on himself and use this technique as way to foremost forgive himself for his past actions. Throughout the book so far he acts as though he is begging in desperation to be forgiven and move past those times in his life. This desperation comes across as a weakness to me however and too forced. Augustine puts the blame on the fact that God was too far away from him during his times of sin. “For I sought for you, my God (I confess to you who took pity on me even when I did not yet confess). In seeking for you I followed not the intelligence of the mind, by which you willed that I should surpass the beasts, but the mind of the flesh,” (43). Therefore, another secondary and supporting argument is that to be forgiven for past sins one needs to search for God in his or her life and make that eternal bond. Essentially that person needs to be saved by God.