Texts and Ideas Spring 2015
Paper II—Augustine’s Confessions
Write 3–5 pages as prompted below.
As a reader of scripture, Augustine has a complex interpretive approach. On the one hand, he thinks that his scriptures recount true facts (e.g., the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus). On the other, he recongizes that where, for example, the Genesis creation story is at odds with the “scientific” neo-Platonic account of creation, that what must be sought is an exegesis of the scripture’s “spiritual” meaning. Indeed, Augustine maintains that individual readers are able to find valid spiritual meaning in the Biblical texts even if their human authors did not understand those meanings. So, again, if Moses thought the creation story literally true, and it is not, this does not preclude another reader from uncovering a latent, spirtual meaning in Genesis (as Augustine seeks to do in the last book of the Confessions).
Attending to how Augustine uses his personal experience as a kind of evidence, consider his use of scripture in the Confessions. Limiting yourself to the books we have read, explain how Augustine uses his life story as proof of the “truth” (as he would call it) of scripture. How does Augustine’s approach to the interpretation of scripture allow us to understand the autobiographical account of the Confessions as a kind of performative exegesis?
In framing your response, you will want to focus closely on one or a small number of instances. While you are free to consider any aspect of Augustine’s treatment of scripture, it is clear that his engagement with the epistles of Paul underlies the whole of the Confessions autobiography, and that Augustine clearly expects his readers to be
familiar with details of Paul’s life (e.g., as recounted by Paul himself in the Letter to the Galatians).
Taking that epistle as typical of Paul’s style, note that Augustine makes extensivem use of other of Paul’s writings. Though modern scholars now doubt the authencity of some of them, Augustine would have known the following ancient canon of Paul’s works.
Letters Attributed to Paul
[Rom.] Romans [1 Thess.] 1 Thessalonians
[1 Cor.] 1 Corinthians [2 Thess.] 2 Thessalonians†
[2 Cor.] 2 Corinthians [1 Tim.] 1 Timothy†
[Gal.] Galatians [2 Tim.] 2 Timothy†
[Eph.] Ephesians† [Titus] Titus†
[Phil.] Philippians [Philem.] Philemon
Col.] Colossians† [Heb.] Hebrews†
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