Confessions

Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

“How to Write Confessions”

In this activity, students will write their own “confessions” to reflect on Augustine’s motivations and writing style.

How would you write your confessions? Doing your best to replicate Augustine’s literary and allusive writing style, produce a brief introduction to your confessions. These do not need to be personal (though they can be): Like Augustine, your confessions can be primarily introspective, highlighting your inner experiences as you consolidated your moral or religious beliefs. As you write your “confessions,” make sure to consider the following:

• What exactly are you confessing and why? Are you confessing one isolated misdeed or a broad trend or practice that you regret?
• To whom are your confessions addressed, whether God, general readers, or even yourself?
• What are the moral or religious beliefs informing your confessions?
• How have other people (family, friends, community) influenced your life and beliefs?

Before writing, be sure to analyze Augustine’s literary style, including his use of quotation, allusion, and even poetry. Why does Augustine embrace this style in his Confessions? Write your confessions in a style that updates or resembles Augustine’s.

Teaching Suggestion: This activity connects to the themes Confessions as a Fundamental Act of Faith and Sin and Redemption. Augustine’s Confessions have had a huge impact on Western literary autobiographies. (Jean-Jacques Rousseau even copied Augustine’s title for his own autobiography.) Discuss this impact in class, highlighting Augustine’s literary qualities as no less important than the religious message of his text.

Differentiation Suggestion: For students with musical interests and/or intelligences, consider allowing them to find and share a song that represents the theme of confession, explaining to the class how it is representative. Visual learners could also create a comic-book confessions, or make a multimedia presentation. You may also want to encourage a creative partnership so that students can work with partners—perhaps one student contributes their confessions and the other works on the presentation.

Use these essay questions as writing and critical thinking exercises for all levels of writers, and to build their literary analysis skills by requiring textual references throughout the essay.

Differentiation Suggestion: For English learners or struggling writers, strategies that work well include graphic organizers, sentence frames or starters, group work, or oral responses.

Scaffolded Essay Questions

Student Prompt: Write a short (1-3 paragraph) response using one of the bulleted outlines below. Cite details from the text over the course of your response that serve as examples and support.

1. Augustine embeds many poems and prayers throughout his Confessions.

• How does Augustine use poems and/or prayers to convey his overall message in the Confessions? (topic sentence)
• Pick one poem or prayer from the Confessions and analyze it closely, highlighting how it is representative of the themes, symbols, and motifs of the work as a whole.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, evaluate the role of poems and/or prayer within the Confessions.

2. Augustine’s Confessions is often considered a literary masterpiece, full of powerful rhetoric and eloquence despite Augustine’s self-professed skepticism of rhetoric and eloquence.

• How and why does Augustine use rhetoric and eloquence in his Confessions? (topic sentence)
• Discuss the rhetorical and literary style of the Confessions in the context of Augustine’s attitude toward rhetoric and eloquence.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, evaluate to what degree Augustine’s use of rhetoric and eloquence supports (or subverts) his overarching goals.

3. Ancient philosophy, especially Neoplatonism, exerts a strong influence on Augustine’s thought.

• Why is Neoplatonism so important in guiding Augustine on his journey to embrace Christianity? (topic sentence)
• Discuss Neoplatonist ideas and their influence on the Confessions.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, reflect on how Augustine draws on Neoplatonist ideas in his perspective on Christianity.

Full Essay Assignments

Student Prompt: Write a structured and well-developed essay. Include a thesis statement, at least three main points supported by textual details, and a conclusion.

1. In Book II, Augustine describes at length an episode from his childhood in which he and his friends stole some pears from a neighbor’s orchard. Augustine writes of the “thrill” (42) that the theft gave him and his friends, confessing that it was for this thrill (rather than because of hunger) that they stole the pears. Why do you think Augustine gives so much attention to the pear episode? Why is this episode so representative of his youthful sinfulness? What is the role of literary devices such as allusion or symbolism in this episode?

2. Augustine’s Confessions is much more than a straightforward, linear autobiography, and in highlighting his transgressions and the lessons he learned from his life Augustine is often selective about the details of his life that he chooses to share. Many historians, indeed, have argued that important elements of Augustine’s account are exaggerated or even fabricated. How reliable is Augustine? How does Augustine’s reliability contribute to and/or detract from the goals of his work?

3. One of the most important (and infamous) of Augustine’s theological contributions is his idea of original sin. What is original sin and how does Augustine describe it? Though many people today are skeptical about this concept, Augustine clearly views it with a sense of relief. Citing specific passages, discuss how the concept of original sin can be liberating as well as restrictive.

Multiple Choice and Long Answer Questions create ideal opportunities for whole-text review, exams, or summative assessments.

Multiple Choice

1. Which quote best expresses why Augustine believes humans have a fundamental need to worship God?

A) “So deeply was she engrafted into my heart that it was left torn and wounded and trailing blood.”

B) “Our heart is unquiet until it rests in you.”

C) “You have endowed [beautiful things] so richly because they belong to a society of things that do not all exist at once, but in their passing away and succession together form a whole.”

D) “The beautiful form of material things attracts our eyes, so we are drawn to gold, silver and the like.”

2. What is Augustine’s main complaint with the pagan texts he studied as a boy?

A) They have moral shortcomings.

B) He cannot understand them.

C) They are poorly written.

D) They fail to acknowledge Christ.

3. Why does Augustine say he enjoyed dramas in his youth?

A) Because they distracted from the sickness of his soul

B) Because he loved violent scenes

C) Because he enjoyed the social aspect of attending the theater

D) Because he wanted to appear cultured

4. How did Augustine cope with the death of his dearest friend?

A) By converting to Christianity

B) By attempting to kill himself

C) By getting engaged

D) By weeping

5. Why is Augustine writing down his confessions?

A) To gain admittance to heaven

B) To give himself peace

C) To give glory to God

D) To answer God’s command

6. What is Augustine’s main objection to knowledge for knowledge’s sake?

A) He found the study of science to be sinful. 

B) He felt that science neglected to credit God’s goodness. 

C) He preached that religion is the only worthwhile pursuit.

D) He denounced schools as breeding grounds for heresy.

7. Who does Augustine say inspired him to abandon Manicheism finally?

A) His father

B) Alypius

C) Faustus

D) Ambrose

8. What was Alypius’s main moral struggle?

A) His addiction to circus and gladiator games

B) His unrepentant lust and promiscuity

C) His life of alcoholism and gambling

D) His excessive pride in his appearance

9. Which of the following was NOT one of the reasons Augustine was hesitant about converting to Christianity?

A) His desire for sexual intercourse

B) Fear of punishment from the Roman gods

C) Fears of being socially ostracized

D) His doubts about the nature of evil and sin

10. What is implied by Augustine’s statement that he would ask God to “Grant [him] chastity and self-control, but please not yet” (Book VIII, Chapter 7, Page 149)?

A) He believes that promiscuity is pious.

B) He wants to have many children.

C) He does not believe in the Christian God.

D) He is not ready to give up his promiscuous lifestyle.

11. Where does original sin come from, according to Augustine?

A) Human nature

B) Christ’s crucifixion

C) Adam’s sin

D) The Creation

12. Why did Augustine feel he should suppress his grief at his mother’s death?

A) He believed that grief is a sin.

B) He felt it would be a distraction from his religious duties.

C) He knew that death brought her closer to God.

D) His mother was not a pious woman.

13. What does Augustine mean by “concupiscence of the eyes” (214)?

A) The lust that exists between sinning partners 

B) The need for doubters to have proof of faith

C) The sexual desire that begins with the first glimpse of debauchery

D) The seeking out of any unnecessary knowledge

14. Why does Augustine present as the challenge in interpreting the Bible?

A) The Bible is poorly written.

B) There are multiple true interpretations of the Bible.

C) There is only one true interpretation of the Bible.

D) God does not want humans to understand the Bible.

15. In what ways are women subordinate to men, according to Augustine?

A) Sexually and physically

B) Intellectually and spiritually

C) Emotionally and creatively

D) In every way

Long Answer

Compose a response of 2-3 sentences, incorporating textual details to support your response.

1. How does Augustine explain evil?

2. How does Augustine understand true friendship?