Le confessioni: ”se nessuno me lo chiede so cos'è, ma se mi chiede che cos'è, non lo so più”

Anche se volessi fare una vera riflessione su questo libro non ne sarei capace: è troppo. Alle Confessioni si potrebbe attribuire il gioco di parole che nel libro undicesimo introduce all'esperienza del tempo: ”se nessuno me lo chiede so cos'è, ma se mi chiede che cos'è, non lo so più”.
Per farlo:
mi bisognerebbe la fede, che non ho, per capire il colloquio a tratti passionale tra Agostino e Dio;

mi bisognerebbe, per penetrarne la filosofia e la spiritualità, la conoscenza dei padri della chiesa interpreti delle scritture e di Plotino di cui francamente non sono mai riuscita a capire quel pochissimo che ho letto;

mi bisognerebbero cinquant’anni di meno come ai tempi della prima lettura - non so più se ne capii qualcosa - per non sembrarmi esagerati sensi di colpa e vergogna per atti e fatti comuni a tutte le adolescenze e gioventù di ogni epoca e a maggior ragione per quella società di decadenza;

mi bisognerebbe non avere, sempre, nella mente la “shoah” per accettare che il male non esiste essendo semplicemente mancanza di bene.

E allora?
Stupiamoci e chiniamo la testa di fronte alla più grande e profonda riflessione sul tempo che sfiora l’intuizione dello spazio-tempo e in cui il compiacimento del bel ragionamento, che permea tutto il libro, quasi scompare davanti al sincero sbigottimento di Agostino per i proteiformi aspetti del tempo, “ancorato al soggetto che porta in sé il passato, e si tende verso il futuro, conoscibile attraverso lo stesso passato» come scrisse Maria Betterini, studiosa di Agostino.

Having read the comments of a GR friend about the difficulty of reading the unabridged Confessions, I'm glad it was this excerpted version that I ended up with instead. (I inherited it from a friend who went abroad and couldn't take his books with him.) I have to say, even this edition was challenging at times: I had to reread a lot of paragraphs to unpack the author's meaning, and some of them were still so dense to me that I just gave up and moved on.

Nevertheless, I'm very glad to have finally read at least a basic version of this Christian classic for myself. As others have been, I was impressed by Augustine's honesty and self-reflectiveness, especially his open admission where his understanding of God failed him. I love that the book is addressed to God, rather than to the readers, which makes the experience of reading it sort of like participating in a prayer. The way Augustine continuously glorifies God throughout his confessions is beautiful to me, and something I hope to incorporate more into my own prayer life.

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!?

Reading the Confessions I feel like I am encountering Augustine face to face, his voice has such passion and immediacy.

Memory, experience and expectations filtered through our now shade our reckoning for how we think we think about our past, present and future when all we really have is our grasp of the now through our being, actions and our will as he analogously states in reference to the mystery of the Trinity. Augustine tells his life as it unfolds in time and his beliefs on time, creation, memory and ‘on the nature of things’ while professing his faith through confessing as an individual who is in awe of the infinite as it has been revealed to him by living right and with right character inspired by the writings of Cicero while incorporating St. Paul into his belief system as a whole.

Augustine gave one of the most cognizant lessons I have ever seen on how women can stop being beaten by their husbands while not having to show up the next day with bruises that can’t be easily hidden. As St. Monica (Augustine’s mother) demonstrated by her words a wife should not engage their husband as the husband is going off and they should at the best do everything in their power to minimize the situation and wait till calmer times come before engaging verbally with their spouse. When one ignores the absurdity of a society or a religion that accepts beating spouses in any sense of the word, the advice is actually not bad because most disagreements between people aren’t really worth losing emotional capital over and one can profit from realizing that the person is just speaking emotional truths for themselves and there really is not room for disagreement. Even if a simpleton says something like ‘the dark web within the government purposely has spread Covid-19 in order to make Trump look bad and to propagate child molestation because nobody loves a quarantine more than a predator’ (that is actually a real Qanon argument), there is really nothing to say except ‘uh huh’, because irrefutable premises are nothing but pseudo-science and there is no data or experiment that I could design to show them wrong. Similarly, a spouse or acquaintance who is vulnerable to losing their temper and heading towards anger the best strategy is just to say ‘uh, huh’, because in the end they are speaking emotionally and it is part of their emotional truth and to everybody except that person emotions are not things so just let them spout their emotional truths because to them they are things and it is the truth. St. Monica gave good advice even for those who aren’t afraid of being beaten.

I would rank this book on the list of the greatest 100 books ever written. It reminds me of Proust’s ‘In search of Lost Time’ especially volume 6, The Fugitive. Augustine is way ahead of the curve with this book. Augustine overall gets something, that we are in a paradox that keeps us from understanding since our memories come from our previous experiences which were tainted by our expectations and that our now is all that we ever have. (Proust did exactly that with his oeuvre). Now, Augustine resolves his paradox by promising us an infinite existence after this life and makes God's love the thing in itself that provides our meaning, value and truth and believes Adam and Eve are real as well as a talking snake acting as a tempter and that a mediator is necessary between Man and God and that the 'Son of Man’ can suffer vicariously for your sin and that the Devil is real and will never have eternal life since the wages of sin is death and a lot of other such things.

I think all modern day Evangelicals who write their convoluted books would be well served to limit their arguments to what Augustine presented here in this book because Augustine has a consistency, coherence and a foundation that they seemed to have forgotten if one were only to look past some of the absurdities.

Take up and read, has there ever been a more apt affirmation? Regretfully, Augustine took the affirmation to be only in defense of one narrow system of beliefs, because he brought a depth to questions we still wrestle with such as what is my purpose, what should I do, how should I act and what should I believe in as well as what is time, memory, or why is there something rather than nothing and how does form come out of the formless and what was God doing before his will started to act through his thought and created a universe out of nothing, Augustine had an answer for that, ‘God was making hell for those who asked such questions’, at least he quoted an anonymous friend who jokingly said that.

Chadwick's translation of Augustine's Confessions (note that this is a confession to God, while read by men) is one of the best. It is not costly in a monetary sense; new it is a mere 6.95. However, it is deceptively short. A chapter will take you two hours if you give it the attention it deserves. Augustine is a circular writer. He is not a bad writer - he was known to be a merciless editor, in fact. But he goes around and around, especially later on in the last chapters of the book when he is wondering aloud, in a sense, about more neo-platonic and loftier, metaphysical questions he is asking of God and thinking aloud/reasoning as best he can with his brilliant mind on paper; recognizing that that mind is a gift from God and he is to steward it. It gets hairy. It gets *hard* to stick with.

If you can, and you do, you will find yourself perhaps having some of the same reactions I did:
a)I always wondered the same thing!, or
b)I am not even smart enough to have even thought to have wondered that
or possibly even
c)I have no idea what he's even talking about anymore.

Had I not taken a course solely on The Confessions, when I had to read De Trinitate in a later theology class I most likely would have had a crisis of faith and quit. Because I was used to his style of writing and knew who the Manichees were, what the background was and the Neo-Platonic, socio-historical setting Augustine was situated in, I could confront De Trinitate and later, "for fun," I was brazen enough to take on The City of God.

There was nothing Augustine didn't talk about or no issue he didn't confront as Bishop when he was alive, because he was a very prolific writer. He spent his time not in fancy robes as one may imagine, but answering questions of the people - he was an ad hoc theologian. We are still reaping the benefits of that today, for his answers were good ones and are still relevant. Before he became bishop, though, he lived the life he spells out on the pages of the Confessions, which are not tales of endless days skipping carelessly along smooth paths by any stretch of the imagination. He reveals facets of himself not very becoming of a bishop; facets that are human. He was the first to admit to having such personality traits and publish a book about it and turn it back into praise to God when it was previously just material for gossip.
Remaining human all the while, he points steadfastly to God, which is why this book is so crucial to know intimately. He speaks of heartbreak and loss in a way that you want to turn to it when you go through it (I did). He speaks of those who will naysay you when you have changed, speaking of who you were and not who you are, and you will again want to turn to his words. It is invaluable.

Basically inventing the psychological autobiography Augustine tells the story of his deeply troubled and ruckus life. But then he encounters God’s care and everything changes for him. His confession is that he still sins and disappoints himself, but he is now striving to serve the God who saved him from himself—his self destructive behavior.

The second half or so is on the nature of memory and time and why these reflections matter.

It is clear that he is a master of words and his poetic style combined with his straight forward vulnerability explain why this is not just a great work of Christian literature, but is considered among the most important and influential books ever pinned.

**
I should add that for a book written over 1600 years ago, I love how my students felt like it was deeply relatable and relevant to them today.

It was slow, it was dense, and it was militantly Christian. So why is that The Confessions is such an unavoidably fascinating work? Augustine appears here as a fully realized person, with all the good and the bad that that implies; it's as if the book was a conversation with God and a fly-on-the-wall was taking dictation. Since God obviously would have known Augustine's transgressions before they even occurred, Augustine thus has nothing to hide in this personal narrative, or at least makes it appear that way. The prose of this translation must be incredibly different from its Latin source, but it's obvious that Augustine has a force of personality that appears through his work that few writer have matched in the centuries that have followed this original Western autobiography. The power and beauty of his writing was no doubt aided by his devotion not only to The Bible, but to Cicero, Plato, and especially Virgil. It's also an incomparably fascinating window into the culture of the time: the Manicheans, Astrologers, Christians, and Pagans are all interesting studies through the eyes of this saint. His contributions to philosophy in this text cannot be ignored even today. Bertrand Russell (not exactly a churchgoer) admired his work on time, and it's still an enlightening experience to read these thoughts. And of course the story of spiritual awakening is an inspiring and beautiful one, a story that is not altogether dissimilar to that of the Buddha centuries before Augustine.

Although, especially at the start, it can be slow and cold reading, The Confessions more than justifies its position as one of the most important books ever written.

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.

Feels rather like reading the Psalms. That should tell you it's good.

Unmissable! I've been reading this slowly for 6 months, trying to get every possible drop of juice out of it, and boy is it worth it.
I soared in the passages that waxed poetical about God's immutable aseity and then plumbed the depths of Augustine's beautiful vulnerability and psychological brilliance as he grieved the loss of an irreplaceable friend. But most important, it seems to me, is Augustine's very method of interpreting your life according to a profoundly theological hermeneutic: where you settle for nothing less discerning what the Living God, my sweetness and truth and my very Self, has been doing in scene after scene.
I won't refrain from admitting that there were parts I struggled with, especially the last 4 books. But mostly it was for my lack of knowledge. And the more you put into working out what exactly Augustine's doing there, the richer the rewards you reap. Take up and read!

The guy with the soothing voice on YouTube recommended this book. Honestly, it is probably just mind control, but I had to add this book. FYI....guy with soothing voice is actually called Jared Henderson. This is the video where he said this book was one of his Top 10 Books of All Time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-56bg...

Also, part of James Mustich's 1,000 Books to Read: https://www.listchallenges.com/1000-b...