Confessions 4

Study Guide Questions for Book III, i-vi

If you are looking for the beginning of the study for Augustine’s Confessions then you can go HERE for a brief introduction. At the bottom of the introduction you will find the links to each section of the study guide as it becomes available. If you would like to see the growing list of book studies available for free on this site you can go HERE. Enjoy!

Virtues/Vices/Great Ideas: (Find them in the Text)

Freedom vs. Bondage, Obsession, Deception

Grammar Questions: (The Information of the Text)

1. What was Augustine’s number one desire at this point in his life?

2. What form of entertainment was Augustine infatuated with during this time?

3. What did Augustine call an “amazing folly?”

4. Who were “the wreckers?”

5. What caused Augustine to gain a desire for true wisdom and to not simply care about his “style” of speech?

6. What “advice” did Cicero give which “delighted” Augustine?

7. What “put a brake” on Augustine’s Enthusiasm for Cicero?

8. What was Augustine’s initial reaction to reading the Christian Scriptures after having read Cicero?

9. What did Augustine say about the “Food pictured in dreams?”

10. According to Augustine, how does God differ from “bodies” and “fantasies” of the mind?

11. To what biblical allegory did Augustine compare his stumbling into false religion?

Logic Questions: (Interpreting, Comparing/Contrasting, Reasoning)

1. What did Augustine mean when he said he was “glad to be in bondage?”

2. What was Augustine’s point about “compassion” versus “mercy” in relation to attending the theater?

3. What did Augustine mean by saying, “Mercy cannot exist from suffering?”

4. What did Augustine mean when he said, “some kind of suffering is commendable, but none is lovable?”

5. How was Augustine's new found love of wisdom (philosophy) different from his previous academic pursuits?

6. Cicero’s advice, which Augustine took to heart, was “not to study one particular sect but to love and seek and pursue and hold fast and strongly embrace wisdom itself, wherever found.” Why might this be good advice? What might this advice protect us from?

7. Augustine described the Christian Scriptures as “something neither open to the proud nor laid bare to mere children; a text lowly to the beginner but, on further reading, of mountainous difficulty and enveloped in mysteries.” Explain what you understand him to be saying by this.

8. In what way were “the fables of the masters of literature and poets” superior to the false religion by which Augustine had been deceived?

9. What distinction is Augustine trying to make between “the intelligence of the mind” versus the “mind of the flesh?”

Rhetoric Questions: (The Analysis of Ideas in the Text)

1. Augustine has some strong words for those who get caught up in theater performances, feeling sad for fictional characters, weeping for their losses. Can we sin simply by reading, listening to, or watching a story? If so, explain how. If not, explain why not.

2. Augustine discusses the way in which Cicero’s book, Hortensius, deeply affected him, making him desirous of true wisdom and not just polished style. What is a book which you have read that deeply affected your thinking or perspective on life? Share a brief synopsis of the book and tell how it changed your outlook on things.

3. Augustine discusses the human imagination’s ability to see things in the mind that are not really there. How does the human imagination work? By what means are we able to recreate something in our mind? Can we make new things with our mind (things we have not seen)? Is human imagination limited by anything or is it truly unlimited? Explain your answer carefully.

Theological Analysis: (Sola Scriptura)

1. Read Matthew 20:1-16. To what extent does the force of Jesus’ message depend upon our ability to relate to the “characters” of his story? How should this affect our thinking about the role of fictional stories and their use for good? Could someone else use a story like this to move someone towards evil?

2. Read 1 Corinthians 1:17-31. How does what Paul says here relate to Augustine’s initial experience in reading the Christian Scriptures?