Rereading this book I am reminded once again how powerful it is and how modern it seems to be. Like all classics it bears rereading and yields new insights each time I read it. But it also is unchanging in ways that struck me when I first read it; for Augustine's Confessions is both an apologetic account of his intellectual search for understanding and wisdom, yet in pursuing that search finding a rootlessness due to an ultimate dissatisfaction with different philosophical positions that he explores. From the carnality of his youth to the moment in the Milanese Garden when his perspective changed forever you the story is an earnest and sincere exposition of his personal growth. You do not have to be a Catholic or even a believer to appreciate the impact of events in the life of the young Augustine. The certainty for which Augustine strives is not found in philosophy alone, but rather in faith, only Christian faith, is this certainty possible for him. Having recently read Cicero myself, I was impressed that Cicero's writing had an important impact on Augustine.

His relations with his mother, Monica, are among those that still have impact on the modern reader. The combination of his personal insights, relations with friends and teachers, and the unusual (for his time) psychological portrait make one realize that this is one of those "Great" books that remind you that true insight into the human condition transcends time and place.

I taught pieces of this for decades, in both sophomore "World/Western Lit" pt 1 and around the High Holidays, subbing for my rabbi friend (and Philosophy Ph.D). Augustine was converted by Ambrose in Mediolanum/ Milan, where my daughter has lived two decades, and where now the oldest church is named Ambrosiana. Before appointed bishop, he had been the governor-"prefect" of Liguria, as had his father of Gaul.
Augustine had gone to hear the First Bishop of Milan's rhetoric, since Aug had studied rhetoric in Rome--I think with a Gk teacher, probably a rich slave. Augustine had brought his lover and child from Hippo, No Africa; when he finally decides, converted, to marry, he keeps his child, sends the mother back to Africa, and waits a couple years for his fiancee to achieve majority.
What is wrong with this picture? Nothing, for an Evangelical. Confessions, indeed.
This was long before seven Popes lived in France, Avignon, in the 1300s. Milan was the capital of the Western Roman empire 286-ca 400, when the Pope had to move to Ravenna.

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.

pain

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.

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.

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.).

Been over a decade since I last read this, but still it enraptures me. This time around I noticed just how much scripture was weaved into everything he said. Often he blends St. Paul into whatever he is talking about; especially in the later chapters after the main part of his conversion story.

Also this time I tried an audiobook version for my commute.

The narrator was Bernard Mayes whose voice matched the material. Kind of British professorial.

Didn't know who he was and looked up his Wiki entry. Oddly for a narrator of St. Augustine the man was a priest who left the priesthood became an atheist and had same-sex attraction. Still he did an excellent job of narration.

I managed to get this audiobook for basically $3.99, by buying the .99 Kindle ebook and then the Audible version for another $2.99. Thank you Amazon.

„Ce ești tu, Doamne, pentru mine? Îndură-te de mine ca să pot spune!”

Nimic nu pare mai evident şi, totodată, mai obscur decît adevăratul destinatar al Confesiunilor sfîntului Augustin. Dumnezeu este invocat la tot pasul şi, totuşi, Dumnezeu fiind omniscient prin definiţie nu are nevoie să-i asculte mărturisirea. Știe deja ce va rosti autorul. Și atunci care e semnificația titlului?

Titlul anunță, evident, o mărturisire a lui Dumnezeu (destinatarul prim al ei): „Pe Tine, Doamne te mărturisesc și te slăvesc ca pe unicul meu Stăpîn”. La fel de evident, al doilea destinatar al acestei mărturisiri este turma de păcătoși. Augustin îl mărturisește pe Dumnezeu și îl ia ca garant suprem al sincerității sale. Dumnezeu e o dovadă a veracității narațiunii: „Povestea convertirii mele este adevărată, fiindcă, iată, îl iau ca martor pe însuși Dumnezeu”.

Probabil că nu ar fi cu totul inutil să recapitulez semnificaţiile principale ale verbului confiteor. El semnifică a face cunoscut, a vădi, a revela, a destăinui, a arăta, a recunoaște un adevăr interior (unui confessor). În al doilea rînd, cum am sugerat deasupra „confiteor” semnifică a-l slăvi, a-l preamări pe Dumnezeu. Și, în al treilea rînd, el introduce mărturisirea de credință: „Cred... Sînt unul dintre creștini...”.

„Fiindcă vorbesc înaintea ta, Doamne, aș vrea să spun întregul adevăr” (XIII: 27).

Prvo, Avgustin je veliki mislilac, beskrajno uticajan teolog, prefinjen psiholog i sjajan stilista. Drugo, Avgustin je zli smarač.
Zli. Smarač.
Koliko god da su ispovedni delovi Ispovesti - po slobodnoj proceni oko polovine - fenomenalan uvid u spor i mučan proces preobraćanja i psihologiju ne-tako-ranog hrišćanina, toliko umeju i da zaškripe u sukobu sa modernim senzibilitetom: manje kad npr. piše o svom odnosu sa dugogodišnjom ljubavnicom, sa kojom je imao i dete, a više u trenucima poput onog kad uz veliko kajanje priznaje kako je zgrešio tako što je plakao kad mu je majka umrla, ili kad na više strana raspravlja o tome da li je prihvatljivo da se verske himne pevaju na prijatne melodije, ili je to preveliki ustupak grešnom zadovoljstvu u čulnim uživanjima.
Dakle, Ispovesti su sjajno štivo ako vas zanima istorija teologije, istorija ideja, uvid u duševna stanja manihejca koji prelazi u (vr-lo neoplatoničarsko) hrišćanstvo, rane rasprave o prirodi vremena i pamćenja - ali istovremeno su izbezumljujuće na onom čisto ljudskom nivou, kao kad krenete da škrgućete zubima i pominjete svetom Pavlu sve po spisku zbog njegovog pogubnog uticaja na hrišćanski svetonazor.

This is one of the most life changing book I have read. I shall give a full review at a later date.

Well, I will definitely need to revisit this book. Augustine was a great thinker, and I was thinking throughout this book, though not what Augustine was thinking about. This book required a focused attention that I did not always have when I picked up to read. Maybe with a little bit of training, and a strong desire to learn something, I can return to Augustine’s confessions and understand everything that he has to say. Overall, a challenging, but not impossible read.