Augustine's Confessions and Christian Practice

Abstract

This study offers a sustained treatment of the contributions Augustine’s Confessions offers to Christian practice. In recent decades, contemporary theology has elevated the formative potential of Christian practice, in part thanks to the theological project of Stanley Hauerwas. However, a problem I chart across Hauerwas’s work is a lack of interior description that addresses questions of theological agency. In response, I turn to Augustine to chart how his theological development of the will culminated in the Confessions with a theological depiction of interior agency. Specifically, Augustine’s account charts sin and grace as they effect the will, as well as a complex treatment of the problems created for the will by memory, time and new creation. As a whole, the Confessions thus provides a theological account of interior agency that is missing from Hauerwas’s project and has relevance for addressing the formative potential of Christian practice today.