out of his first-century context is to distort him. And the ancients, among whom we must include the apostle Paul, were apparently not given to introspection. According to Stendahl, Augustine, not Paul, “express[ed] the dilemma of the introspective conscience,” and he “may well have been one of the first” to do so (83). “His Confessions is the first great document in the history of the introspective conscience. The Augustinian line leads into the Middle Ages and reaches its climax in the penitential
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