Pursuing & Praising God

In this guide to Augustine's Confessions, the author aims to share the decisive portion of what he has learned intellectually about this magnificent book through the years. Confessions is instructive in at least two closely related ways. On the surface, it shows the importance of trying, in humility, to develop for the better intellectually, yet decisively it instructs concerning the core of what Augustine means by confessio, i.e., man's prayerful and, therefore, humble praising, knowing, and loving of God. Augustine's central task in writing Confessions consists in showing confessio's intellectual and moral excellence and, certainly to his mind, our central task entails embracing confessio. The book asserts that Confessions' principal aim to explain the nature of confessio is accompanied by and, in a way, grounded in Augustine's book-long goal towards articulating a properly trinitarian relationship between God and man.