The Confessions of Saint Augustine

The good portions were transcendent. The other portions ranged from dragging to dry. There are selections I will refer back to regularly and other portions that are entirely forgettable (to me). I can see, however, why so many people feel it is a seminal, classic work.

Gonna be a contrarian here. There are certain great Christian writers and thinkers whose works are to a certain extent separable from their faiths. That is, you don't have to buy their basic religiosity to appreciate them, and perhaps even appreciate them immensely. Giambattista Vico and Thomas Browne come immediately to mind. But others-- including Augustine-- are so theocentric that unless you buy into their world, you're not going to get much out of it.

Simply put, my irreligion made Augustine's thelogical deliberations all seem like dross. My problematic relationship with Platonist doctrine puts me at odds with his philosophical meanderings-- albeit with some notable exceptions-- and a dislike of his style as a perpetual beseeching of God makes the biographical parts unpalatable.

Historically important for sure, but not my scene.

somehow forgot to rate this initially, probably because i was too tired to write a review to do it justice. i am still too tired and there will never be a review to do it justice.

suffice it to say that if i sorted my books like dante sorted sinners this would be in the rose, and, since reading it, i have referenced it in class possibly even more frequently than mr choi has teased peter.

Note, Oct. 20, 2024: I've just edited one sentence below to incorporate a point made by another reader who commented.

As a first-semester college freshman needing an elective, I signed up for a speed-reading class. I never adopted any of the techniques the course touted, although I got an A in it; but the classroom had a paperback rack with various donated books we could practice on, and this was one I read. It turned out to be the most lasting educational benefit of the class, and did make a genuine intellectual impression on me. (Other than Lightfoot's translation of the Apostolic Fathers, which I read a few years later, this is the only reading in Patristics that I've ever done.)

Augustine (354-430 A.D.) was, of course, one of the major theologians in Christian history, and probably the most influential of the Latin Fathers, at least on the development of the church in the West. This is far from his only writing, and not his most important one; most scholars would give that accolade to The City Of God (which is on my to-read shelf). These two, though, are probably the two most widely read of his works. This one is not extremely long (a bit over 300 pages), and is divided into 13 “books,” each divided in turn into short, numbered chapters with numbered paragraphs. (The chapter numbers were added to the early printed editions of the 1400s and 1500s, and the paragraph numbers in the 17th century.) As the title implies, it's partially autobiographical; the first nine books telling the story of his early life, leading up to his Christian conversion at the age of 31, and continuing through his mother Monica's death a couple of years later, in 388. (By the time he wrote, he had already entered the priesthood and become a bishop, but this book doesn't continue his story that far.) Rather than being autobiographical, the last four books are mostly theological reflections, and so seem somewhat disconnected from the preceding nine.

Of course, I read this in English translation, but I no longer remember anything about the edition or the translator. (The copy I'm referring to now is of the 1991 translation by British scholar Henry Chadwick, a well-recognized authority on Augustine, published by Oxford Univ. Press. Besides a short bibliographical note, brief list of important dates in Augustine's life, and a bit over four-page index, it has a 16-page introduction, which would have been very helpful to me if the copy I read had included it.) It should be admitted that at the time of my life that I read this, I wasn't at the optimum place for appreciating it, either intellectually or spiritually (I'd become a Christian in high school, but still had no serious conception of discipleship and wasn't very familiar with the Bible). Also, as an intellectual who both studied and subsequently taught in the schools of that day, where teens and young men learned rhetoric and philosophy, Augustine was well versed in the classical Latin literary style, which can often come across as dry and ponderous, especially in the later “books.” (Then too, a particularly odd stylistic feature here is that the whole book is ostensibly addressed to God, not the reader, as though it were a 300+-page prayer. Though his attitude no doubt was prayerful in places, the fact that he's obviously writing this to be read by others makes the strictly God-ward address seem somewhat dishonest and gimmicky.) Although I did engage with the text, there's a good deal that didn't brand itself on my memory. And the reactions to various parts of the book that I do remember were both positive and negative.

One important aspect of the book that struck me is that this is very much a window into the mindset of ancient Platonic philosophy in the Hellenistic world, and its influence in shaping post-apostolic Gentile Christianity in its early centuries. (As I was learning in my early college years, this is a strand of philosophy which has pre-Platonic roots in the thought of Pythagoras, and ultimately in the Hindu worldview of the sages of India, with whom Pythagoras studied as a young man.) This was basically a worldview that glorified the non-corporeal (“spiritual”) and disparaged the physical world and the body. It reached its most extreme form in the Gnostic and Manichean heresies of Augustine's time (though these had precursors already in New Testament times, which Paul and other NT writers warn against), with the idea that the physical world is evil and not of Divine origin at all, and that salvation consists of the soul ridding itself of the evil body. As Augustine frankly discusses here, he was a committed Manichean as a young man; and he explains the reasoning and influences that led him eventually to reject that system, and to embrace Christianity with its belief in God as creator of the world and of Christ as truly incarnate in a human body. But despite his conversion, he didn't wholly jettison all of his Manichean attitudes. In one revealing passage here (chapter 31, paragraph 44 in Book 10), which had me rolling my eyes big-time, he speaks of God teaching him that food should only be taken like medicine, in the quantity just necessary for the sustenance of the body, which is always less than the quantity which would actually give “dangerous” pleasure in eating, which he seriously speaks of as “an insidious trap of uncontrolled desire,”and which he speaks of as a daily struggle against temptation. The contrast of this attitude with Scripture texts like Ecclesiastes 9:7 (“Go, eat your food with gladness....”) couldn't be more marked; we see here a glorification of asceticism that would express itself in things like monasticism, and the whole tradition of the “if you enjoy it, it's a sin!” school of pseudo-spirituality. (Augustine himself would become the founder of a monastic order, the Augustinians.) We can also see Platonic and Manichean roots for the penchant he displays here in a number of places for adopting allegorical interpretations of the Bible rather than straightforward readings of the text.

Despite his theoretical deploring of bodily impulses, Augustine is also frank (though never titillating) in his admission that, in his teens, he indulged in quite a bit of promiscuous sex. At the age of 17, he settled down to faithful cohabitation with a lower-class “concubine” (whom he never names, which struck me at the time I read this as sort of dehumanizing; but it's been credibly, and more charitably, suggested that suppressing her name was actually simply a way of protecting her reputation from disrespect), with whom he lived for about 13 years. (She bore him a son, Adeodatus, though sadly the boy died in his teens.) The year before his conversion, he dumped her in order to get engaged to an upper-class woman who could provide a dowry –though that marriage never took place, since he subsequently broke the engagement when he decided to enter the priesthood. (He kept custody of his son, though it's not explicit in the book whether or not that arrangement was what the boy's mother wanted.) Even granting that the long illicit union wasn't based on love (at least on his part), and that he was not yet at that time a Christian, his treatment of his partner impressed me then, and still does, as shabby. He deplores his own behavior in indulging in unmarried sex, but he never evinces much feeling of guilt about unkindness to a fellow human; and I'm inclined to see that blind spot as also related to his Manichean attitudes.

On a more positive note, a major take-away from this book was the insight into the nature of eternity: that God, as the eternal creator, created time itself along with the universe, but Himself exists outside of time, and experiences all time as something like an infinite, omniconscious present, rather than sequentially, the way that we do. As I've recently learned, this idea wasn't original with Augustine; he derived it from Plato (a more constructive contribution than some of the latter's other ideas!). But nonetheless, it makes considerable sense to me and explains some Biblical concepts in a way that I've found immensely helpful. I'm glad to have read the book on that account, even if it hadn't been illuminating in other ways. (There are some other deep philosophical concepts dealt with here as well.)

Although Augustine is perhaps best known as the first Christian theologian to explicitly advocate the doctrine (with which I personally disagree vehemently) of unconditional double predestination of humans to either salvation or damnation, with no volition on their part, a view which later greatly influenced John Calvin, he doesn't go into that at all here (at least, not that I can recall). He describes his own conversion and the lead-up to it in considerable detail (and his was a fairly dramatic conversion experience); but as he tells it here, there's no indication that its climax was anything other than a voluntary turning to God through Christ.

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.

Augustine truly appreciated the vastness of the majesty of God and set out on the journey of knowing him deeply and thoroughly. This book is a beautiful picture of a personal relationship with God in action. Augustine speaks to God in joy and in despair, he confesses, he praises, he questions, and he seeks for answers. He does all this in language steeped in scripture and a growing awe of his savior.

Because of that, this book is in a very personal style. It’s a conversation between Augustine and God. And like any other Christian’s relationship with God, one we can learn from and be encouraged by, but always as an outsider. We can’t participate in Augustine’s conversation. We must have our own. This book is a call for us to have our own “Confessions”, our own conversation and relationship with God.

(I do think this book would better in group discussion, especially with someone who is very familiar with it and is able to pull out the best parts. It can be very repetitive at points, and certain topics didn’t seem to warrant the amount of pages they were given.)

—

“I was afraid of being rid of all my burdens as I ought to have been at the prospect of carrying them.”

“You took me up from behind my own back where I had placed myself because I did not wish to observe myself, and you set me before my face so that I should see how vile I was, how twisted and filthy, covered in sores and ulcers.”

“You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you…you called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radient and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. 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.”

“How deep is your profound mystery, and how far away from it have I been thrust by the consequences of my sins. Heal my eyes and let me rejoice with your light.”

“Terrified by my sins and the pile of my misery, I had racked my heart and meditated taking flight to live in solitude. But you forbade me and comforted me saying: “that is why Christ died for all, so that those who live should not live for themselves, but for him who died for them.”

St Augustine of Hippo had a profound effect on the Catholic Church that many people don't appreciate.

In these Confessions, Augustine argues that it was human choice - Adam's sin or original sin - that brought mortality and sexual desire upon the human race and so deprived Adam's progeny of the freedom to choose not to sin.

When Augustine was a younger man and had a mistress, he wrote a book On Free Will which agreed with the views of Pelagius, but he changed his mind later in life as indicated in these Confessions.
In this book, he argues that human beings are not free, as Adam was, to resist sin. Humans have no power to choose not to sin and we can't even control our sexual impulses.

In this book, Augustine refers to his past dalliances with women, his involvement with the Manichaean version of Christian doctrine, and his subsequent conversion to the way of Christ.

Ever since Augustine, the hereditary transmission of original sin has been the official doctrine of the Catholic Church.

The first nine Books are brilliant, revolutionary, both as a confession and as theology. I wish Augustine had ended it there, and I wish someone could explain why he doesn’t end it there. But given I’m a slacker, I guess I don’t deserve an explanation. I’m sure it’s what I said before: “It probably all relates to the nature of humanity, the nature of God, the nature of His creation, and the nature of sin, all in the context of Augustine's early life and conversion. I just don't understand it...lol.” The last four books are way too philosophical for me, but I am assured that it ranks with the great philosophers.

I do like Kerstin’s final questions. Let me take a crack at them.

What did you think of the book overall?
Brilliant, difficult, insightful, revolutionary, honest, unlike anything in its day. Finally I think holy. His voice of continuous prayer just exudes holiness.

What surprised you?
How the entire book was one long, continuous prayer to God. An actual confession.

What touched you?
His relationship with his mother. We all know how much she loved him through her constant prayer for his conversion, but he apparently had the same love for her, and in his times I’m not sure how common that was. That moment after his conversion and just before she dies where they sit in the garden and contemplate heaven is very striking. And of course his prayer for her soul at the end of chapter nine was most touching.

What made you laugh?
I don’t know if this is funny (probably not) but a heck of a lot of his friends kept dying from fever. If I ever read Confessions again I’m going to have to count how many.

What inspired you?
The continuous prayer. His prayerful voice just entered my ear and has stayed there. It’s a wonderful way to speak to God, an almost constant confession, with praise and blessings thrown in.