Confessions 7

Study Guide Questions for Book IV, viii-xvi

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)

Friendship, Grief, Truth, Goodness, Happiness, Beauty, Virtue vs. Vice, Ignorance, Obsession, Freedom vs. Bondage

Grammar Questions: (The Information of the Text)

1. According to Augustine, why had “grief…penetrated” him “so easily and deeply?”

2. What are three of the qualities of friendship which Augustine mentioned?

3. What did Augustine say should be our attitude towards “transient things?”

4. According to Augustine, what would we desire if our “physical perception were capable of comprehending the whole?”

5. What alone makes the things we love in this life “good and sweet?” 

6. For what reason “above all” did Augustine say that he loved Hierius?

7. What did Augustine say about being “loved like actors?”

8. How well was Augustine’s book on beauty received?

9. What “amazing madness” did Augustine formerly assert about himself and God?

10. What mistake did Augustine make concerning Aristotle’s Ten Categories and God?

11. What had Augustine not been “aware” of concerning the arts of liberal learning? 

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

1. What was Augustine’s point about the relation between time and grief?

2. What did Augustine mean by saying, “For wherever the human soul turns itself, other than to you, it is fixed in sorrows, even if it is fixed upon beautiful things?”

3. What was the point of Augustine’s illustration about “the way our speech is constructed?”

4. Was Augustine opposed to people taking pleasure in “physical objects” of beauty, in friendships, or other earthly goods? What is he arguing for concerning these things?

5. What distinction is Augustine making between “beautiful” and “fitting” things? What is the difference?

6. What did Augustine mean by saying that  “various kinds of love are felt in a single soul with different degrees of weight?”

7. When speaking of the Roman orator, Hierius, Augustine said, “my love for him was aroused by the regard of those praising him rather than by the actual achievements which evoked their praise?” What did he mean by this?

8. Augustine said, “in virtue there is unity, in vice a kind of division.” What does this mean?

9. What did Augustine mean by saying “the soul needs to be enlightened by light from outside itself? Why would that be?

10. Why did Augustine no longer think Aristotle’s Ten Categories could apply to God?

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

1. Augustine wrote about the nature of Friendship in this present reading. Define the term friendship. What are the necessary qualities a relationship must have to properly designate that relationship as a friendship? How common is it for people to refer to someone as their friend who is not their friend? Why might someone call another person a friend when they are not actually a friend to them? Finally, what is the best way to gain true friends?

2. Are things that are impermanent (do not last forever) more or less valuable because  of that fact? Explain your reasoning.

3. Augustine realized that he had a natural ability to understand Aristotle and other books of liberal learning. Why do some people learn more easily than others? How do the concepts of “nature” versus “nurture” affect the question of someone’s ability to learn? What kind of habits or practices can we develop in order to make ourselves better able to learn something we want to know?

Theological Analysis: (Sola Scriptura)

1. Read Isaiah 55:8-9. How might we relate this passage to Augustine’s discussion about God and Aristotle’s Ten Categories.