Two Confessions: Scripture and Moral Agency in Augustine’s and Nat Turner’s Confessions

Almost 1500 years after Augustine’s *Confessions*, Nat Turner, leader of the 1831 Southampton slave rebellion, dictated his own. These two texts represent vastly different forms of confession: a classic spiritual autobiography and an account of the rebellion haunted by the editorial presence of a white lawyer. Yet each confession found language in Scripture that made sense of their world and offered them a role to play in it. While increasing attention has been paid to Augustine’s writing on slavery, attention to how Scriptural narratives shape his sense of moral agency can contribute a further dimension to the discussion. Comparing his sense of Scripturally-narrated agency with that presented in Nat Turner’s *Confessions* highlights their accounts of moral agency and their divergent choices of biblical texts, language, and symbols. This paper will compare these two *Confessions* to discover how Scripture has been used to narrate human moral agency—its possibilities and limitations.