"The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works"
About this Quote
Augustine’s line cuts against the instinct to manage appearances. “Confession” here isn’t a therapeutic unloading or a PR reset; it’s a spiritual technology designed to break the ego’s favorite habit: self-justification. Calling it “the first beginning” is deliberate. Before you can do anything resembling good, Augustine argues, you have to stop lying about who you’ve been. The moral life can’t be built on denial because denial keeps the self in charge, and for Augustine that’s the root problem.
The subtext is anti-heroic. He’s suspicious of “good works” that function as self-salvation projects, performed to earn status, quiet guilt, or purchase control. Confession flips the direction of credit. It refuses the story where you are the author of your own redemption. In Augustine’s Christian framework, naming evil isn’t wallowing; it’s surrendering the fantasy of autonomy so grace can actually do something.
Context matters: Augustine’s own life, famously narrated in Confessions, was not a tidy conversion tale but a public inventory of ambition, lust, and pride. He’s writing in a late-Roman world where Christianity is becoming culturally dominant, and “virtue” risks turning into a social costume. Confession, then, is a protest against respectable religion: if you won’t indict yourself first, your charity is just performance.
There’s also an implicit psychological insight: you can’t change what you won’t name. Augustine makes moral progress start not with willpower, but with truth-telling.
The subtext is anti-heroic. He’s suspicious of “good works” that function as self-salvation projects, performed to earn status, quiet guilt, or purchase control. Confession flips the direction of credit. It refuses the story where you are the author of your own redemption. In Augustine’s Christian framework, naming evil isn’t wallowing; it’s surrendering the fantasy of autonomy so grace can actually do something.
Context matters: Augustine’s own life, famously narrated in Confessions, was not a tidy conversion tale but a public inventory of ambition, lust, and pride. He’s writing in a late-Roman world where Christianity is becoming culturally dominant, and “virtue” risks turning into a social costume. Confession, then, is a protest against respectable religion: if you won’t indict yourself first, your charity is just performance.
There’s also an implicit psychological insight: you can’t change what you won’t name. Augustine makes moral progress start not with willpower, but with truth-telling.
Quote Details
| Topic | Honesty & Integrity |
|---|
More Quotes by Saint
Add to List
