Augustine, Confessions, 12.28.38

St. Augustine (354-430)

St. Augustine [5] began his life in Algeria, an apt student devoted early to the Church and seeking the Truth. His professors recognized his great skill at philosophizing and writing. As Augustine devoured writings both ancient and of his contemporaries, he fell away from the Church and toward a religious dualism sect known as the Manicheans. His mother, a very devoted Christian (later St. Moni...

Augustine and the Philosophers

Because of the immensity of Augustine’s corpus and the complex intellectual patrimony that informs it, attempts to place him within the history of philosophical traditions are often partial and in need of supplementation. In treating below of Augustine’s engagement with Aristotelianism, Middle Platonism, Neoplatonism, and Stoicism, I shall be drawing attention to particular topics, lexical poin...

Confessions and expert testimony.

In this clinical paper, the author discusses criminal confessions from the point of view of the expert witness who may be asked to comment on the reliability of the statement and waiver of rights. From the time a suspect is in police custody, constitutional protections against self-incrimination and for due process are in place. The Supreme Court set the standard for these situations in the 196...

Augustine on Manichaeism and Charisma

Augustine was suspicious of charismatics‘ claims to superior righteousness, which supposedly authorized them to relay truths about creation and redemption. What follows finds the origins of that suspicion in his disenchantment with celebrities on whom Manichees relied, specialists whose impeccable behavior and intellectual virtuosity were taken as signs that they possessed insight into the mean...

Interrogations and Confessions