ABSTRACT
Augustine’s Confessions is a text par excellence by which the Christian tradition contributes to a theology of discourse. Through this narrative of conversion, Augustine offers the vertical exercises by which human beings respond to God and are thereby disposed with a loving receptivity to friendship with others. Memory, constituted by exercises in receptivity, is the founding dynamic of Augustine’s rhetoric of conversion; human forgetfulness of the fact that we are created in and for divine love is at the root of the turning away from God’s call that is human sinfulness. By the same token, remembering rightly the transgressions of one’s life disposes one to remembering God, which is the basis for a life of conversion. However, the very act of remembering itself is an experience of grace wherein the intellect and will are disposed to the extravagant love of God, and come to be practiced in this love through formation in the discourse marked by prayer. In this way, lives previously distinguished by isolation, meaninglessness and confusion become those marked by connectedness, meaningfulness and gratitude.
