ABSTRACT
Theological reflection on the language and relationality of discourse is best engaged within the greater context of ongoing, interpersonal conversion in the life of faith. Critical components of such reflection include: the potent - ially transformative nature of discourse itself (Tracy), the spiritual exercises which cultivate its intersubjective framework (Burrell), and the dynamics integral to a shared vocation of women and men to life in God (Coakley). As two texts primarily concerned with the rhetoric of conver sion, Augustine’s De doctrina christiana (DDC) and Confessions were shown in Chapter Three to constitute a set of primary spiritual exercises from the tradition. The DDC provides the basis for vertical and horizontal exercises by employing the principle of love as the hermeneutical key to all discourse. The narrative of the Confessions exemplifies vertical practices of cataphatic and apophatic prayer as primary, formative exercises in receptivity (memory), discernment (intellect) and the life of conversion (will). In the Confess ions, these practices serve to point the reader to the horizontal exercises latent in the text.
