With passages such as

You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours. (X.xxvii)

it's manifestly plain that this text is the original theophiliac deomance.

Some items of interest, such as the nuanced interpretations of Genesis and the interaction of Plotinus with scripture--but on the whole, a self-indulgent and dogmatic presentation that simply assumes its conclusions and pursues them recklessly in circles, such as in the dismissal of contrary opinion, e.g.:

This is the utterance of madmen. They do not see your works with the help of your Spirit and do not recognize you in them. (XIII.xxx)

We see the regular conflation of ethics with merely aesthetic ends in statements such as "I travelled much further away from you into more and more sterile things productive of unhappiness" (II.ii). There is also a tendency to equivocate through figure, however rhetorically elegant it may be: "Your omnipotence is never far from us, even when we are far from you" (id.).

I can’t really rate this one but it was certainly interesting... not my favorite though.

Nisam siguran koliko je skraćeno izdanje koje sam čitao, ali kamo sreće da je skraćeno još više.

Na kraju sam zbunjen i nisam siguran šta je čudnije - i tužnije. Avgustina smatraju za velikog mislioca, na trenutke ga porede sa Platonom (?!). Da li to više govori o onima koji izriču takva poređenja ili o periodu u kom se pojavio? Ako je ovaj bio veliki mislilac, šta reći... Nakon onakvih 1,000 godina.

"Filozof"? Svašta.

pain

Considering that the style of Augie's work is completely and utterly impenetrable, this is actually a pretty decent read. Just come to it expecting circularity, meditation, rapturous theology and self-flagellation, and you'll come away impressed.
Don't expect anything linear, and you'll be all the more impressed when he ends up, every now and then, out-Aristotling Aristotle with arguments of the (x-->y)&(y-->z)&(z-->p)&(p-->q); ~x is absurd; therefore q variety.
Don't expect any modern 'you are a unique and special snowflake and your desires are good it's just that your parents/society/upbringing/schoolfriends/economic earning power have stunted you' self-help guff. It'd be nice to read someone more contemporary who's willing to admit that people do things wrong, all the time, and should feel really shitty for doing wrong things.
Don't expect Aquinas. This is the hardest bit for me; if someone's going to talk about God I prefer that they be coldly logical about it. Augie goes more for the erotic allegory, self-abasement in the face of the overwhelming eternal kind of thing. No thanks.
Finally, be aware that you'll need to think long and hard about what he says and why he says it when he does. Books I-IX are the ones you'll read as autobiography, and books X-XIII will seem like a slog. But it's all autobiography. Sadly for Augie, he doesn't make it easy for us to value the stuff he wants to convince us to value, which is the philosophy and theology of the later books. The structure, as far as I can tell, is to show us first how he got to believing that it was possible for him to even begin thinking about God (that's I-IX). X-XIII shows us how he goes about thinking about God, moving from the external world, to the human self in X and a bit of XI, to the whole of creation in XI and XII, to God himself in XIII. I have no idea if this is what he had in mind, but it roughly works out. That's all very intellectually stimulating, but it's still way more fun to read about his peccadilloes and everyday life in the fourth century.

هي نوع من االاعترافات التي يقوم بها العقائديوين المتشددون بصورة تجليات نثرية مملة تعبر عن مدى مازوشية وحب لجلد الذات بصورة غير مبررة تستجدي من خلالها رغبة نرجسية لجلب اتباع ومريديين......... فقط ما أشيد به هي الترجمة التي ترجمت من اللاتينية الى العربية لم تكن سهلة .... رتيب

The Confessions of St. Augustine: Modern English Version

Just finished the Modern English Version.

First let me say that this is an amazing work that modern Christians would greatly benifit from reading.

Regardless of your faith you will appreciate the insight into Augustine's worldview and logical mind.

I enjoyed this version but will go back to Chadwick for the next read.

St. Augustine’s Confessions is such a lovely and honest book. I’d recommend it to everyone, if people who aren’t remotely religious. It’s one of those works that really manages to encapsulate certain feelings and articulate them in ways that are clear but also sort of startling in their clarity, saying obvious things in ways you’d never quite thought of before.

Take this bit from Book 8: “In my heart I kept saying ‘Let it be now, let it be now!’ and merely by saying this I was on the point of making the resolution. I was on the point of making it, but I did not succeed. Yet I did not fall back into my old state. I stood on the brink of resolution, waiting to take a fresh breath…And the closer I came to the moment whichw as to mark the great change in me, the more I shrank from it in horror. But it did not drive me back or turn me from my purpose: it merely left me hanging in suspense.”

It’s a distinctly theological feeling for Augsustine, but I also think it’s just generally a human one, and that’s what makes this book such a joy to read. Augustine is also just a lovely writer, and he’s honest and inquisitive about himself, his God, and his world. It’s one of the most accessible ways to get a look at the worldview of an early medieval Christian.

There are also two sections on memory and time (books 10 and 11) that are just loads of fun.

I started to read Agustin Confessions in July. It took me six months to read it, and I'm glad I took it slowly.

I won't try to give a complete analysis of the book, or get into deep theological questions. My purpose is to give a simple review of how the book related to me as a christian and reader.

First I'd like to comment on the translation of the book. I read it in Spanish, translated from the Latin into Spanish. I had tried to read this book in English, but the translation was older, and though possibly very beautiful, it was more difficult to me. The translation then worked, and the first books inside the book, the ones that dealt with his life as a sinner, up to his conversion, were on the overall easy to follow. I enjoyed his candor, and I related to many of his conversations and prayers to our Lord, giving Him sovereignty, praising Him, and showing a contrite heart after unmasking his rebellious or prideful attitude in life.

Agustin was a Gnostic and he proceeds to tell us about the false doctrines he held to, and how he learned about God's word, which led to his conversion. We come to an intimate part in the book where he talks about how his life changed, and that ends with the passing away of his mother. After, there comes the chapters that are epistemological (?) and theological too, where Agustin talks about our faculties, and how we learn and how we know about the world, and God. The last part that gives the book its title, consists of his confessions. This last part is devoted to explain how it is we sin with our different senses, and what it means to him the pride of life and the lust of the eyes.

While I benefited much from Agustin honest thoughts, his life, and his exposition of what he understood to be the christian life, and a true christian attitude, something changed in me while reading the book. I read Surprised by Hope in the middle of reading The Confessions. In Surprised by Hope, the author explains and debunks Gnosticism, and that platonic dualism (flesh and soul) that most of us take for granted since it's come to be part of how we understand christianity. Respectfully, I'd like to end saying that while I totally exhort any and all to read this book, I know I don't hold all Agustin's beliefs as true. While I have no quarrels with talking about the mind, the soul, the flesh, or our intellect, our spiritual life, our bodily functions, etc. (classifying and making distinctions is always useful), ultimately I do disagree with Agustin's portrayal of the senses, and his take on the christian life, on what is sinful and what's noble. I believe that, having lived a very worldly life initially, he swung the pendulum to the opposite direction, resulting in a completely suspicious view of anything that relates to our senses. Again, I don't mean there's no conflict, (Paul tells us so), all I say it's that I see a big chasm, a Platonic view of the body that I don't share.

The very disagreements make this book even more important. Reading The Confessions will help you understand the origin of much of what we nowadays hold in our common storage of what we understand by sin, flesh, soul, senses, and the spiritual life. And I cannot thank him enough for allowing me to meet him, for being so honest, and for inciting me to love the Lord, to make introspection, and to strive to be more humble and a better christian.

I will be forever grateful that I did Professor Cook and Professor Herzman's Course, St. Augustine's Confessions on this classic work of antiquity, so misunderstood today. If you plan to read this book, do yourself a favor and take this course.

The most important thing Professor’s Cook and Herzman's Course taught me was something which I felt but could not articulate and that is St. Augustine’s Confessions, although often classified as an autobiography, is actually a PRAYER.

It is not a diary or a set of memoirs. Augustine is not justifying or excusing himself; he is talking to His God, literally in confession and as Augustine knows that God is omniscient, there is no point in trying to impress Him. So instead, he begs forgiveness for his actions and praises God for His forbearance, Goodness, and Love.

This is not a book to be read once or twice, casually or without some assistance. Once upon a time it used to be part of the Western canon and was included in religious as well as secular reading programs. Now you will be lucky to find it even mentioned as suggested reading in Catholic universities. It is an amazing book, staggering in its brilliance, yet sadly neglected. I am truly at a loss when I think about how to review it in a way which it deserves.

We talk about ‘Social Justice’ today but in fact we are reinventing the wheel. The ancients, especially Augustine, understood very well about Justice in Society and how difficult it was to establish. It is exactly what he was trying to explain in his story of the stealing of the pears.

This was only my fourth (or fifth?) read; some parts I have read more than that. God willing, it will not be my last because I truly do not think I have scratched the surface of all that is here. But then I know I would also like to go on and read more of the writings of this great Saint, Doctor and Father of the Church. We shall see...

10 stars if I could!



I don't write reviews for likes. I write my reviews according to what I believe and people either agree with me or not, often as not they don't, which is fine. They are entitled to their views just as I am to mine. But in this case, I care tremendously that it be known what an amazing book The Confessions is and that it is every bit a FIVE star book, so I am rereading it in order to write the best review I know how...

I do realize ratings are subjective, just as much as likes are ... but ... but ... 3 stars for the most popular review for The Confessions!?

Confession is said to be good for the soul; and the Confessions of Saint Augustine of Hippo are good for any person’s soul, regardless of their religious or philosophical beliefs. There is something profoundly compelling in the rigorous, uncompromising manner in which Augustine describes the way he consciously, by an ongoing act of will, worked to bring his magnificent intellect into conformity with the dictates of Christianity – and gave God all the credit for the outcome.

Some scholars have referred to the Confessions as the first true autobiography, or at least the first spiritual autobiography; and as with other masterpieces of autobiography in later years – Richard Wright’s American Hunger, Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood, the autobiographies of Benjamin Franklin and Malcolm X – Augustine’s Confessions benefits from the author’s unflinching, warts-and-all portrayal of his life.

Among its other benefits, the Confessions does much to put one back in the time of the Roman Empire’s first decades as a Christian state. It was a time when Western Christianity grappled with a great many other strains of thought. Augustine is frank, for example, in setting forth what he once found seductive about Manichaean philosophy, with its belief that, because evil is so different from good, it had to be the subject of a completely different creation, the work of some being other and lesser than God Himself:

“Since I still had enough reverence, of some sort, to make it impossible for me to believe that the good God created an evil nature, I posited two masses at odds with each other, both infinite, the bad with limited, the good with broader scope. From this pestiferous origin there followed other blasphemies. If my mind tried to recur to the Catholic faith, I was made to recoil, since the Catholic faith was not what I made it out to be” (pp. 100-01).

Here, as elsewhere, I thought that Augustine was being awfully hard on himself; but his conclusions follow logically from his premises. Evil actions proceed from the imperfections of human nature as stained by original sin. For good actions, the glory belongs to God, who is all good and inspires all good action.

Augustine is comparably unsparing in condemning himself for the sinful ways of his youth. A chapter on the theft of pears, written perhaps with an eye toward Adam and Eve’s own theft of fruit from the tree of knowledge in Chapter 3 of Genesis, becomes for Augustine a parable for the nature of sin generally; the fruit of the pear tree was “not enticing either in appearance or in taste”, but Augustine and his friends continued to steal, because “Simply what was not allowed allured us” (p. 32).

And Augustine is just as tough on himself when it comes to sexual behavior – though he admits that his sins did not go as far as those of his fellows. Moreover, a large part of his sexual life seems to have involved a long-term, monogamous, mutually faithful relationship with a woman who eventually bore Augustine a son. This is not exactly fleshpots-of-Egypt stuff; but nonetheless, Augustine looks back at this part of his life in terms of how it took him away from God.

Augustine, who loves God so, nonetheless reserves some of his fondest words of love for his mother Monnica – a devout Christian who never gave up hope while encouraging her son to leave his secular ways and embrace the Christian faith: “Her flesh brought me forth to live in this daylight, as her heart brought me forth to live in eternal light” (p. 196). That process of conversion involved Augustine going from North Africa to Milan, making friends with fellow converts, and eventually receiving baptism and holy orders; and his early training as a rhetorician (he praises Cicero’s Hortensius as a book that “changed my life”) made him a most eloquent, tenacious defender of the Christian faith.

Along with describing the process by which he became a Christian – much of it in the second person, addressing God directly – Augustine of Hippo includes some thoughtful theological reflections of the kind that he would eventually build upon further in The City of God. Readers who enjoy close reading and exegesis of Scriptural passages will enjoy those passages of the Confessions in which Augustine looks at the opening passages of Genesis, speculating on the manner in which time came out of God’s timeless eternity, and working to reconcile seeming paradoxes in Genesis regarding references to God alternately in the singular and the plural. Augustine reconciles that seeming contradiction thus:

“For you make [humankind] capable of understanding the Trinity of your unity and the unity of your Trinity, from its being said in the plural ‘Let us make,’ followed by the singular ‘and God made man,’ and from its being said in the plural ‘to our pattern,’ followed by the singular ‘to God’s pattern.’” (pp. 337-38)

This edition of the Confessions of Saint Augustine is noteworthy in that it was translated by the noted scholar and author Garry Wills, a renowned classicist and devout Catholic who nonetheless has been willing to criticize his beloved church whenever he has felt that, as a human institution, it has erred in its mission of bringing humankind closer to God. Wills also provides a perceptive and helpful introduction, though I can’t help thinking that footnotes of the kind that grace other Penguin Classics books might have helped further.

By the time Augustine wrote the Confessions, between 397 and 400 A.D., Christianity had already been made the official religion of the Roman Empire, in accordance with the emperor Theodosius I’s promulgation of the Edict of Thessalonica in 380 A.D. Yet it was still a world in which believers in Christian and pre-Christian religions competed for adherents, proselytes, converts. No one of his time worked on behalf of, or defended, the Christian faith with greater consistency or strength of heart than Saint Augustine of Hippo. His Confessions are inspiring, for that reason alone, to anyone who has ever cared enough about an idea to fight for it.

What. A. Read. An astonishingly vulnerable and powerful account of a saint’s search for God that I will unquestionably return to in the future.

I’ve been journeying through Confessions with Fr Gregory Pine and Fr Jacob-Bertrand Janczyk and their “Catholic Classics” podcast. Highly, highly recommended. They made a terrific observation in their commentary of the last episode at the conclusion of the book: that what appeared initially to be an affliction ultimately turned out to be a mercy. They were referring, of course, to arguably the most well-known quote from the book: “For You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” Augustine’s restlessness is what motivated his spiritual quest for truth, and despite the agony and turmoil of this quest, it is what ultimately lead Him to Christ. And because He ends with commentary on the creation account, he brings the book full circle—starting with chaos and restlessness and ending in the Sabbath rest waiting for all of us in God Himself.

Along the way, he opens up to us his struggles and shares with us his questions, several times in total despair and hopelessness that he will see his way through. And yet, because we journey through the struggles and questions alongside him, the answers he finds become logical and relatable answers for us, too! Through the sharing of his own journey, he proves an incredible guide to us in ours.

Maybe it’s the nature of reading someone else’s testimony of faith, but in such a similar way to when I read C. S. Lewis’s faith story, I found Augustine articulating struggles and questions I didn’t even know I had, about eternity, time, the nature of God, the true and real redemption of our past errors, sins, and failures, and the infinite and unchanging goodness of God and His unfathomable love for us, His children. What an encouragement through this Lenten season!