Sarah Teets - Christianus esse et fieri: Augustine’s Confessions and the Reading of Christian Identity

The tendency to impute anachronistic modern constructions of religious terms and practices to “upstream” ancient Christian texts is a frequent problem for the reading of these texts. In the case of Augustine’s Confessions, this tendency effects a reading by which the Milan garden scene of Book VIII demonstrates a conversion according to the modern Protestant/ Evangelical paradigm, understood as a “moment of belief” which transforms one’s totality and revolutionizes one’s identity.  A close reading of Books VII and VIII of the Confessions reveals that Augustine does not construct his narrative of conversion nor draw the lines of demarcation between Christian/not-Christian according to this paradigm. Augustine does not consider Christian “being or becoming,” i.e. identity or conversion, to hinge on belief, but rather to be a process comprising three elements: doctrinal belief, renunciation of sexuality, and initiation into the Church through the rites of baptism. Thus the garden scene represents a dramatic climax in which Augustine achieves his decision to renounce his sexuality, but he does not take it to amount to a Christian identity (in his own sense) or a conversion (in the Protestant/Evangelical sense).