Without doubt this is a very important historical document. But the essential question when reading it today is (unless you're an academic): what says it to me, today? And then the answer is rather mixed. On the positive side, Augustine is the first one to come in the neighbourhood of Plato and Aristotle in expressing deep, intellectual views and setting up a chain of reasoning that is consistent and profound (but of course his look at things is completely different than that of the ancient Greeks). Especially his chapter on God and Time was breathtaking, the work of genius. But on the down side, this is a difficult read because it is very pluriform (partly autobiography, partly testimonial, partly philosophical and theological), and from a literary point of view especially the autobiographical parts are rather disappointing, even disturbing, by its pathos and by the childish sense of notion of 'sin'.

I saw reflections of myself in Augustine's Confessions, and I was encouraged by it.

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.

9.0/10 - Lol how in the world did I miss adding thing for years into my Goodreads when it’s one of my all time greats?

I will certainly read this at least three times. And I’m soon due for the second.

n  "Day after day I postponed living in you, but I never put off the death which I died each day in myself. I longed for a life of happiness but I was frightened to approach it in its own domain; and yet, while I fled from it, I still searched for it."n

Reading Augustine of Hippo's Confessions is like plunging into a deep, dark abyss and seeing a slither of light at the far side of the endless tunnel, unaware of whether you reach it or not; for Confessions is a proto-existentialist work of a man attempting to achieve inner perfection in a world of material greed and spiritual emptiness. Sound familiar? Because these themes are universal and timeless in the eternal consciousness of man.

Augustine of Hippo is no stranger to this recurring trait of our species, and in the first part of the poetic masterpiece, he bears his fragile soul to all who dare to truly enlighten themselves. This book was his attempt at addressing the painful sins of his aesthetically dangerous past, and trying to rid of them through tortured prayers to God.

n  "But the time had now come when I stood naked before my own eyes, while my conscience upbraided me."n

It is obvious right from the start that Augustine refuses to give the reader an easy going reading experience. For a religious text, it is heart wrenching at times and, while offering a continually fresh perspective on Christianity and philosophy, he retains a strong hold on the reader as he deconstructs his flawed nature, for his suffering was also his redemption, his enlightenment, his forgiveness. One feels his morally destructive pain in each emotional page; for how can a man attempting to achieve inner perfection and a connection with God live with sorrowful reflections of sleeping with prostitutes—even living with one? He tears himself apart passionately describing a scene from his childhood when he stole some fruit, not out of desperation, but simply because it was wrong.

n  "It is in my own mind, then, that I measure time. I must not allow my mind to insist that time is something objective. I must not let it thwart me because of all the different notions and impressions that are lodged in it."n

These confessions continue well after his memoir. In part two, he confesses his theological and philosophical beliefs with extended theoretical examinations on the nature of man, the mind, the senses, time, Creation and its relation to God. Augustine delves deep into the mind, in an attempt to understand what gave Moses and Christ such inherently profound knowledge. His dissections into the memory of the rational mind is examined extensively and, upon reflection, his agonizing search for the Truth still provides acute psychological penetration into the human soul over 1,500 years on. His experiments still explain some deep truths in the vast network of human thought.

Ironically, however, there was an everlastingly warm presence throughout the book, for Augustine is not only talking to God, he is also talking to us, the reader. Part memoir, part philosophical and theological investigation into the nature of existence, Augustine of Hippo's Confessions is an honest and beautiful work of non-fiction, where the unexplained might not be explained, but the door is opened slightly more to the Truth.


That sleep may wearied limbs restore,
And fit for toil and use once more...
Saint Ambrose

https://youtu.be/xL9SXQfIvsM?si=fZIly...

The matter of heaven and earth is one, the beauty of heaven and earth is another.

Even when I disagree with Augustine, there is a subtlety to his mind and a blazing passion that comes through in his writing. This still resonates after more than a millennium, though today it is for his probing writing on memory and time rather than as a how-to guide for conversion. Augustine prefigured much of what we consider original in the modernists’ streams of consciousness and our current obsession with auto-fiction. This remains the key to all of Augustine’s other works and a seminal work in world literature.

Written during the waning of the Roman Empire around 400AD, this account of the early life of a seminal theologian of the Catholic church is a personal perspective on what he regards as his sinful life leading up to his conversion. His writing is surprisingly accessible, almost modern in its approach to weighing the factors that contribute to growing up. His mother was a Christian, but he took a long time to come around. He excelled in school and hungered to elucidate abstract knowledge, eventually becoming a master of rhetoric, like his hero Cicero. Yet from his youth, he cherished sexual and other worldly pleasures while paradoxically aligning himself with the Manicheeism theology that condemned the Christian tenet of a human Christ for not being spiritual enough.

His explorations of how he worked his way toward conversion represents an early advance in psychology. He covers well how his character was shaped by maternal nurturing, paternal discipline, peer relations, early loves, positive role models, and personal tragedies. His reflections on the relationship of sensory perception to knowledge, the relativity of perception and emotions, the prime role of memory to consciousness, and constructive capacity of language are refreshing precursors to current perspective. He tries to make sense of the issue of human free will vs. God being part of everything, but doesn't have a compelling solution to me. I enjoyed his musings on the nature of time, logically concluding past, present, and future are all meaningful only from a present perspective (with "now" ultimately infinitesimally short). His struggle to account for creation having a beginning with God existing outside time (and the meaning of the pre-creation "ithout form and void"version of matter) resembles to me the challenge for modern physics of what existed before the Big Bang.

On the downside for a non-religious person reading this book today is that he obviously couldn't escape the worldview of dualism between matter/body and spirit/mind/soul. Yet he doesn't come to cast worldly experiences and pleasures as meaningless or evil or speak much of the devil or Hell. For him, the origin of evil lies in being out of God's light or in willful ignorance, not from a separate source. It's a shame that this worldly Christian thinker didn't evolve more to the mystical view of God really being in the world, following the example of Christ for the "Word made flesh".

On my second reading, now less fascinated by Augustine's story as it unfolds, I became more aware on its deeper meaning, the continuity of the book's composition, the frankness and frailty of its author. It doesn't surprise me that this time it was actually harder to read the whole thing so fast, as each chapter brought solid food for thought.

Augustine's is the story of a slow realization how one individual simply can't tame their will, their urges (however natural) and keep going without inevitably failing even though they decided firmly on their principles. To be human is always to be weak, in quite a special and non-degrading way. His faith then crystallizes into acceptance of this fact with full trust in God, whose infiniteness will make up for the human lacking.

This leads into wonderful philosophical passages on time, memory and history, which are for me the highllight of the whole book, along with a wonderful part on the death of his mother, saint Monica. This episode foreshadows the beautiful reflections in the last parts of the book, as it was a memorably visceral encounter with eternity for Augustine. I find it beautiful to see how evident it is that she was such an important inspiration of his philosophy, not only because she was a strong female character in times when it seemed it was at odds with people's general worldview, but also because such wisdom and acute philosophical insight as Augustine's was not possible without the experience of deep true love. No man's an island, we grow through our encounters.

So if you every visit my home and see Confessiones sitting on a prominent shelf in my library or anywhere near just within a reach, this is why.

I'm reading this for our Catholic women's book club ... it's the November selection so if I begin now I should finish on time.

I have tried reading this book twice before and always gotten bogged down in Augustine's complaints about being beaten by his tutor. This time I am going to just skim or skip those complaints in the interest of seeing what I DO like about the book rather than letting road bumps throw me off track.

It's kind of ironic that Augustine is one of my earliest saint "friends" who I became attracted to after reading Restless Til We Rest in You, a wonderful daily meditation book focusing on his writing in digestible chunks. Now, I will go for the whole enchilada!

UPDATE 1
I'm actually benefiting quite a bit from having read Restless Flame, Louis De Wohl's bio of St. Augustine. Augustine intersperses his life story with asides to God, expressions of his innermost feelings and spiritual understanding as it were. This helps me pick out the source material for his life, as seen in the context of his Christian understanding.

UPDATE 2
Picked it back up because it is time for our book club to discuss Books V - IX. I am enjoying the middle of the book much more than the first part, which is a relief. I have to say that I can see why people who aren't Catholic, or even Christian, are drawn to this book. Augustine works his formidable brain to a nubbin examining what God must be like and how evil can exist if God is all good.

This is a book that any thoughtful searcher can relate to. It is also the book that makes me realize just how lazy those people are who toss out, "Can't believe in God because evil exists" and leave it at that after a cursory examination of the subject. It is clear that Augustine wanted the truth and nothing but the Truth, as it were.

Restless seekers of complete truth find a kindred soul here. People who want the truth dropped in their laps are shown up as slackers, whether back in Augustine's day or right here and now.

UPDATE 3
Picked it up again since we'll be discussing the final third of the book next week. I was not crazy about the first third and LOVED the second third ... now this last third seems completely different so far. And I'm not loving it. But I'm leaving the door open for Augustine to wow me since there is about 80 pages left to go.

FINAL
Thank the Lord (literally) that I am finally done. I enjoyed the middle third of the book but the first third was not that interesting to me and the final third was like trying to read metaphysics ... which, to be fair, was an interesting insight into how Augustine would puzzle his way through scripture and matters of God, but which I did not connect with that much.

Am I glad I read it? Not that much. But now I suppose I can say that I have.

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.

I am going to take my time with this book. It'd be the first time I read this sort of thing just for the joy of it. I'm just a bit familiar with St. Augustine and while I know this can be a hard read due to my personal beliefs, it is always great to read what other people's take on religion, love, hate and the human meaning.

In his "Confessions", Augustine tells the story of his early life and ultimate acceptance of a Christian life. Augustine was born in 354 on a farm in Algeria, the son of a Christian mother and a pagan father. He describes his early life, during which time he mastered Latin literature and became a teacher of literature and public speaking.

Augustine describes in detail his secular life, marriage of 15 years, as well as his personal spiritual journey from a life of earthly desires towards the acceptance of the Christian values that he had learned from his mother. Early in his life, Augustine became interested in Manichee theosophy, but ultimately abandoned Manicheeism for the Neoplatonic mysticism of Plotinus. At the age of 32, after a vision in a Milanese garden, he renounced his secular life and devoted himself to Christianity.

The story of Augustine's early life and search for a spiritual philosophy is interesting reading, though not a short story. The "Confessions" can be read as more than just a spiritual journey, but also as a cultural history of the Roman world of the late 4th century. Augustine's descriptions of his friends and family are very real and give a good picture of life at that time in Algeria and Italy.

In the last four books of the "Confessions", Augustine moves from a description of his own personal history to a theological discussion of the Christian view of creation and the nature of time, among other topics. For someone not interested in theological hair-splitting, these books can get pretty tedious. As an example, Augustine spends many, many pages discussing exactly what God created when he made the "heavens and the earth" and which he created first. This is quite a bit less compelling to read than his earlier discussions of life in Milan.