Augustine's Confession

Augustine was the perfect apologist for the church in the late fourth century and early fifth century. Why perfect? Simply put, he had lived the life of a pagan - intellectually, spiritually and professionally. If there is one message we get from the Confessiones it is that the young Augustine had been afforded all the opportunities to engage in Roman cultural practices. The other message from that same work, is that he progressed through the Platonic allegorical cave in search of a beaconing light that drew him through the stages of intellectual progression and degrees of self-awareness within his individual soul; only to conclude that God was a relational God who wanted spiritual reconciliation and not intellectual enlightenment as the basis of conversion. Plato's conversion was not equal to the Christian conversion, according to Augustine, nor was philosophical thought equal to God's thought as revealed through the Scriptural text for Divine instruction and truth about the totality of existence. His life truly was about the making of a pagan mind into a Christian mind. Augustine's mind was, in fact, an expert in pagan socio-political history and the intellectual history that supported it. He seems to have been keenly aware of human corruption and injustice within the State and the Church