With quotes such as: “ ...the supreme degree of being and the supreme degree of life are one and the same thing. You [God] are being in a supreme degree and are immutable,” it is to no surprise that most readers interpret God as Saint Augustine’s divide ruler (8). To further their position, these same readers may present evidence as in chapter VIII of the Confessions when Augustine converts to Christianity and accepts God as his “helper and redeemer” (155). They may even argue that the whole point of the memoir is to give his thanks and praise to his Lord and Savior. However, I do not believe that is the Lord who Augustine follows. Instead, I believe that “God” is just a figment of Augustine’s imagination and that it is he himself who resolves his moral dilemmas and releases him from his sins.
The strongest evidence for my argument happens to also be the strongest evidence for the interpretation of the opposing side. It initially seems impossible to refute the idea that God is indeed Augustine’s supreme ruler when he spends an entire chapter explaining his inner turmoil with his conversion to Christianity. The fact that he does eventually accept God as his salvation should seal their argument; however, it fails to do so. In
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Obviously this physical object which he possesses now is not a figment of his imagination; however, it was once started by the imagination of another. Once it was created, it brought people together, because they, like Augustine, needed an escape from themselves, so they too created God as a figurehead of this religion. This then formed a community of people who all believed there was this transcendental spirit who was more a part of them than their soul was. This also explains why Augustine was so quick to convert to Christianity; he wanted to be included in this group who had seemed to be healed of their evils, once again enforcing the group mentality he had described