Augustine's confession

Augustine’s lasting influence in Confessions lies largely in his success in

combining a neoplatonic worldview with the Christian one. Neoplatonism,

which enjoyed a small following, came in to replace Augustine’s shaky

Manichee beliefs. He was particularly impressed by the Neoplatonic solution to

the problem of evil and by it’s striking philosophical similarity of th Bible.

Augustine finally understood the nature of evil: namely that, “for God evil does

not exist at all.” He saw that human wickedness is not a substance “but a

perversity of will twisted away from the highest substance you O God, toward

inferior things, rejecting it’s own iner life.” This is exactly how Socrates would think

because to him nothing can be truly antagonist...