Augustine, Confessions
Bks 2-4 Summary
Augustine begins by relating his past sins. By sixteen years old, he says, he was entirely given over to lust and sinful desires. He sinned, not because he loved the result of the sin, but rather because he loved the wickedness of the deed itself. Belief in God had been inculcated in him by his mother from babyhood, but he turned from these doctrines and was led away by false teachers. Deep inside, nothing satisfied him because he knew the difference between truth and falsehood, but he looked everywhere else but God for it. He had a friend who was like a soulmate to him, and when God took away this friend, he realized how he had placed the dependency he should have had on God in a mere human. These chapters are filled with self-admonitions and commentary on why he acted the way he did.
Bk 7 Summary
This book was focused around Augustine's search for the origin of evil. Since God was free of evil, how could he create something that was capable of evil? Wouldn't that make God not perfect and incorruptible? Could evil have existed before God, and he just worked around it when he created the universe? If so, why did he not just take the evil and turn it into something good? These thoughts and more bounced around Augustine's head, until he realized that evil was just the corruption of what was already good; evil was not a substance in itself. Every substance is good; evil is just the lack of that good. During the time period of this discovery, Augustine also finally rejected astrology and learned from the Platonists many things that helped him understand the Bible better. Through it all, his faith in God grew.