Abstract
،،Is there anyone who can take stock of his own weakness and still dare to credit his chastity and innocence to his own efforts? And could such a person think to love you less, on the pretext that he has had smaller need for your mercy, that mercy with which you forgive the sins of those who turn back to you? If there is anyone whom you have called, who by responding to your summons has avoided those sins which he finds me remembering and confessing in my own life as he reads this, let him not mock me; for I have been healed by the same doctor who has granted him the grace not to fall ill, or at least to fall ill less seriously. Let such a person therefore love you just as much, or even more, on seeing that the same physician who rescued me from sinful diseases of such gravity has kept him immune. ”
This article is being introduced with words found in Saint Augustine’s The Confessions because I am attracted to Saint Augustine’s autobiographical style of chronicling his confessions as well as Augustine’s theological brilliance. It was not readily apparent when I began my academic journey at the Interdenominational Theological Center (ITC) in 2008, but my attraction to autobiographical styles of writings would become an essential component of my Doctor of Ministry (DMin) research project based on a research methodology known as heuristic research. Heuristic research was ideally suited for me because heuristic research creates a phenomenological lens that spotlights personal experiences and insights by asking: How did the researcher experience a particular phenomenon? Heuristic research pioneer, Clark Moustakas, expands this notion further by declaring, “In heuristic research the investigator must have had a direct, personal encounter with the phenomenon being investigated. There must have been actual autobiographical connections.”