The Confessions

The Confessions

What did you learn about Augustine's conversion?

Book VIII focuses on Augustine's life and his long search for truth that led to his conversion to Christianity. He struggles to understand how God, a spiritual entity who, while absolutely good, allows the existence of evil. He decides that evil has its origins in the weak will of human beings, owing to the Fall of Adam and Eve, which corrupted human ability to know or to will the good (Richardson, 1970). He contemplates the necessity of divine grace through Christ as mediator between God and humankind. He feels his accumulating experience ...