Volume 28, Issue 1, January 2011
Paul J. Griffiths
Pages 19-28
Tears and Weeping
An Augustinian View
This essay describes and commends the treatment of tears and weeping in Augustine’s Confessions. It shows that Augustine depicts these acts as communicative of a particular judgment about the way things are; and that he understands these acts as a species of confession appropriate to the human condition. To become, or attempt to become, the kind of person who does not weep is to distance oneself from God; Augustine therefore commends weeping to Christians as a mode of establishing intimacy with God.