Augustine’s Account of His Personal Conversion to God in the Confessions (Part I)

St. Augustine’s Confessions may be history’s most famous autobiographical account of one man’s personal conversion to God. In this essay, I shall read St. Augustine’s Confessions as a highly personal account of a conversion to God – a personal conversion which included his whole person in its intellectual, moral, and affective dimensions. Once grace leads him to accept the truth of the Catholic faith intellectually, it further leads him to allow God to inspire and guide him in choosing to live the truth of the faith and, in doing so, to experience a joy or delight that gives him the emotional strength to live that truth. As I shall argue, Augustine’s Confessions can be read as an autobiographical account of one man’s personal conversion to God in his decision to receive baptism and henceforth to live a life of an ordered love for God.