The Confessions of St. Augustine

His relationships with woman and birth of his son out of wedlock, his friends, mentors, and his mother Monica leading to his conversion. The second part of the book get more into philosophical discussions. His discussion on time is both interesting and honestly confusing to me. I found many of his discussions long and winding roads that lead us to his understanding of time. It was at times difficult to follow yet fascinating. His argument for the existence of God who is good and how evil can exist simultaneously is here and all of it is written beautifully.

The entire novel is readable and enjoyable regardless if you are a believer or not. There is much here to mine. It is a novel that could be read several times and probably should be to fully grasp all that is in it. I have no doubt most would read and be startled to know how relatable it is to our own individual doubts on the existence of God. The fact that this Saint could have many of the same doubts in his life as me gave me pause.

As he lays out many streams of thought I caught myself wondering why I had not thought of that myself. And then there were times I read his thoughts and was lost and found myself rereading parts to try to grasp it all.

The entire confession is eye opening and revealing that we are all human. The titles of Bishop and Saint matter not. We all struggle with the same issues. I struggled with many of the concepts but the writing was beautiful. However I think many would read the second half or the last three of four books and enjoy these pieces more than I.

There is much in here to enjoy and think about. Mar 21, Katie rated it it was amazing Shelves: Take this bit from Book 8: 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: There are also two sections on memory and time books 10 and 11 that are just loads of fun. I used to hate Augustine of Hippo. I found him too anxious, too focused on the sexual sins he was sure he was committing, and too sure about the fallen nature of human beings. The Confessions changed all that for me. It's like how when you meet someone you can't judge them in the same way any more; The Confessions helped me understand that Augustine--like everyone--was trying to understand his life, his place in the world, and his motivations for doing things.

Most importantly, The Confessions helped me understand my own yearning for something bigger than myself, and why placing myself front and center had always been disastrous, and always would be. Augustine has made me a wiser person, surely--I understand God, people, politics, art, and beauty better thanks to him--but he's also made me a better writer and critic, and this is the best place to make his acquaintance and for some, to finish. Augustine was trained as a classical orator, and he is not an easy read, even in a good translation like this. Fala do desejo, da perda, da busca, dissecando em profundidade o modo como se vai concebendo aquilo que somos, ou que parecemos ser.

Sep 03, Jerome Peterson rated it it was amazing. Saint Augustine doe not hold back in his shortcomings. He paints a black, very personal, wicked youth. He confesses all and bares his soul. The passages about his mother were extremely soulful revealing the man as an affectionate son.

He writes with hopeful authority; yet in a humble voice and always in a way that I could relate with it in today's hectic pace. His sty "Confessions" is the type of book with a heavy dynamic caliber that it should be read slow, thoughtfully, and with a highlighter. His style was unique to me for he included and addressed God as one of his readers not as a truth seeker, such as myself, but as The Almighty. The content itself is woven with scripture in such a way that it drew me in instead of losing me or making me feel like a wretch.

The author covers his sinful youth and years of his adult life; pursuit for truth; his faithful mother; his pagan father; even a friend that was addicted to attending gladiatorial shows! He also covers subjects such as invisible nature, memory, and time. Saint Augustine lived A.

He was a prolific writer of books, letters, and sermons. I highly recommend this book; especially to anyone who is seeking truth and answers about the seen and unseen world around them as well as self-evident mysteries such as memory and time. I hate to say it, but I have some bad news about the Penguin Great Ideas series with which I'm so smitten. I'm not sure if you'll find this as shocking as I did, but here it is: And I say "excerpted" only so as to avoid an uglier word: To Penguin's credit, they don't try to hide the abridgment, as some expurgators have done before them.

Right on the title page, they let you know "this extract first published in Penguin Books ," and as the text commences they mark each omission with a [ There are MANY such symbols. My full edition of the Confessions is pages of dense, close-set text; the Great Ideas edition is only smaller, wider-set pages. Based on that and on my remembered reading of the whole thing in my senior seminar in college, I think it's a safe bet that about two-thirds of the entire text has been removed, if not more.

Which is a huge percentage. Frankly, even with their omissions clearly marked throughout the text, I think it's disingenuous of Penguin to market this book as St. Augustine's Confessions of a Sinner a very similar title to the more standard Confessions , rather than as something like "Selections from the Confessions. Take the famous pear-stealing scene. In both versions, Augustine relates that one night in his adolescence, he and a band of other teenagers stole some pears from a neighborhood tree - not because they wanted or needed the pears, but just for the joy of stealing.

In the original text, he then goes on to angst about the theological implications of the pear theft for six densely-packed pages. He's seriously tortured about the pears. In the abridged version, this angsting is cut to barely one small, medium-spaced page, giving the impression that he's merely remarking, reasonably enough, at the perversity of a humanity that commits a crime solely for the wicked joy of sinning, and that he's then moving on to other subjects.

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I bring up the pears not because I have some burning desire to read about them in their entirety yet again. I may not quite agree with Richard , who claims that his definition of hell is having to read the pear-stealing scene one more time, but I've certainly had my fill of it. No, my point in mentioning this passage is that it's one example of how the Penguin abridgment distorts Augustine's character. It makes him out to be a pious, reasonable man, a bit overwrought perhaps, but able to write clearly and concisely about his spiritual journey and eventual conversion to Catholicism.

In fact, I think two big points of his narrative are that the spiritual realm evades reason, and that to portray his journey as less than the long, brutal struggle he found it would be to minimize something that he wants, on the contrary, to emphasize. The struggle with reason, for example, is at the forefront of young Augustine's grappling with the church doctrines.

He writes about finding many of these doctrines nonsensical, since for a long time he tries to interpret them literally. Only when Bishop Ambrose explains them to him figuratively can he grasp their value. And there are pages and pages in which he tries to get a handle on "figurative" - all excised from the abridgment.

Likewise he is only able to make real progress toward conversion when he relinquishes his need to prove and understand things: Then, O Lord, you laid your most gentle, most merciful finger on my heart and set my thoughts in order, for I began to realize that I believed countless things which I had never seen or which had taken place when I was not there to see - so many events in the history of the world, so many facts about places and towns which I had never seen, and so much that I believed on the word of friends or doctors or various other people.

Unless we took these things on trust, we should accomplish absolutely nothing in this life. Most of all it came home to me how firm and unshakable was the faith which told me who my parents were, because I could never have known this unless I believed what I was told. When Augustine's conversion finally does come, it is a completely non-rational process, described in language more akin to physical ecstasy than reasoned argument. In terms of the curated Great Ideas series, I think this is an important point: Augustine breaks with the Stoic tradition of rationality and constrained emotion represented by Seneca and Marcus Aurelius.

His emotions run rampant all over the Confessions , and he depicts his relationship with God in language modern readers will recognize from the subsequent literature of erotically-charged romance: For love of your love I shall retrace my wicked ways. The memory is bitter, but it will help me to savour your sweetness, the sweetness that does not deceive but brings real joy and never fails.

For love of your love I shall retrieve myself from the havoc of disruption which tore me to pieces when I turned away from you, whom alone I should have sought, and lost myself instead on many a different quest. Removing the angst from Augustine is kind of like removing the cabbage from coleslaw. And while the Penguin folks don't manage to get all of it, their abridged Augustine is a much different fellow than the full-force version available elsewhere - too bad, since I think he's theoretically a great choice to illustrate the transition from Stoic rationalism to early Christian mysticism.

Similarly, the structure of the complete Confessions is an excellent if excruciating example of form reflecting content. The story Augustine wants to tell is one of a disgustingly sinful young man, who knows in his soul that he should convert to the true church, but lacks the decisiveness and strength of character to do so. He struggles over this for nine years, almost converting several times and then losing courage at the last moment.

Finally, he is driven to distraction and has an epiphanic moment, wherein the chains of his self-imposed slavery fall away and he is born again in God. From that day on, he is a completely different man: The completeness of Augustine's conversion experience rings very false to me, and it's something we discussed a lot in my seminar. Apparently Augustine set the standard for conversion narratives for many years: According to my professor, it wasn't until the writings of Teresa of Avila in the sixteenth century that Christian leaders started telling conversion stories in which the converted person still struggled with sin and doubt even AFTER adult baptism.

In any case, the structure of the Confessions reflects this story beautifully; it's one of the things I most appreciate about the original document. Augustine's pre-conversion struggles go on for such a painfully long time that the reader, unable to stand any more, joins him in his desperation to make some kind of change.

After the conversion happens, Augustine's voice becomes almost completely disembodied: This reflects the heightened, unchanging realm in which his post-conversion existence is supposed to be happening. And while it makes the second half pretty darned boring to a religious agnostic like myself, I still think it's highly effective: In the abridged version, we get neither the excruciatingly long lead-up to the conversion, nor as much of the change in mood after baptism. Which I think is a shame. On the plus side, and rather predictably, the abridged version is much more readable than the original.

It flows briskly along, like a fourth-century version of some snappy modern memoir. Had it been published as "Selections from the Confessions ," it could have served a valuable role as a quick-and-dirty introduction to the more famous and influential passages from Augustine - and it can still serve that function, albeit not as easily given that people ordering it won't know what they're getting. Am I still in love with the Great Ideas series? I have to admit that this discovery gives me pause. I've found that Amazon. The second page of this preview, for example, reassures me that Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own is presented whole.

I could never have forgiven them for altering a single word. And while most of the remainder of Series One is uncut, the vast majority of Series Two are extracts. This can mean, I think, a couple of things: That kind of excerpting doesn't bother me at all, as long as each essay remains complete. But a few editions are, like Augustine, out-and-out abridged, which really rubs me the wrong way.

It's one thing if I would never seek out the author on my own: But a few of the abridged volumes are things I'm actually interested in reading independently of the Great Ideas series: I don't think I want to experience those in abridged form, but neither do I want to give up on the curated experience that is the Great Ideas series.

Even among the three volumes I've finished, there has been such an interesting dialog that I'm still convinced reading these series in order will be a rewarding exercise. I think what I'll do is to keep ordering them in sets of four, but when I reach an abridged one that I'm independently interested in, I'll find a complete version to substitute for the expurgated one. It kind of hurts me to give up the idea of the full eighty-volume set with all its pretty matching covers, but I think it would bother me even more to wonder what I was missing all the time.

Alternatively, if I'm feeling flush it might be interesting to buy both editions and see which parts the Great Ideas people wanted to stress and which they thought could be done away with. But I get the impression that the cuts are nowhere near as radical as in the Confessions. Anyhow, we'll see how I enjoy the jump of almost a thousand years into medieval Germanic Christianity! 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 exp Considering that the style of Augie's work is completely and utterly impenetrable, this is actually a pretty decent read. 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.

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. Finally, be aware that you'll need to think long and hard about what he says and why he says it when he does. 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. 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. Jan 22, Genni rated it it was amazing Shelves: What can I say about The Confessions that has not already been said?

So I will just mention my slightly unusual reason for reading it. I recently read the only Latin novel to survive in it's entirety from antiquty, The Golden Ass , translated by P.

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In the introduction, Walsh made this statement, "On two occasions Augustine associates him Apuleius specifically with the town; it must have been during his brief studies there that he first gained acquaintance with Apuleius' philo What can I say about The Confessions that has not already been said? In the introduction, Walsh made this statement, "On two occasions Augustine associates him Apuleius specifically with the town; it must have been during his brief studies there that he first gained acquaintance with Apuleius' philosophical works and with The Golden Ass , which was to play so large a part in shaping The Confessions.

The reference for this statement was a book by Nancy J. Shumate, Phoenix , which I could not find anywhere. So I was curious how the risque Latin novel influenced the saintly Augustine. The most obvious point of similarity is the conversion experiences of Apuleius and Augustine, Apuleius to the Isis cult and Augustine to the God of Christianity. If Augustine really was influenced by The Golden Ass , then what he did in The Confessions was set his conversion experience up as a point of comparison, of course believing that of the two, his was true.

Apuleius's conversion did, indeed, leave much to be desired, since he was much the same as he was at the beginning of his journey. Curiosity was his point of weakness and after his conversion it continued to be. Augustine was transformed from the inside out in his experience with his God. The best example of this was the issue of celibacy. Lucius's celibacy was a requirement, Augustine's was an offering. Augustine overcame his desire for sex by means of a spiritual ephinany.

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Lucius's own vice, curiosity, was the means of overcoming his desires. So one wonders, did Lucius truly experience a metamorphosis? Other, seemingly blatant, references to The Golden Ass: Nevertheless, the free ranging flux of curiosity is channeled by discipline under Your Law.

They do not kill their own pride like high- flying birds, their curiosity like 'fishes of the sea', and their sexual indulgence like the 'beasts of the field', so that you, God, who are a devouring fire, may consume their mortal concerns and recreate them for immortality. His chapter on memory was very reminiscent of Plato's treatment of recollection. It was a bit different in that he believed ideas existed before, but not in his memory. I still don't know what I think about his allegorical exegesis of Genesis. And now for my confessions: I slept through the first chapter when Augsutine "recalls" his infancy.

I slept through the numerous panegyrics on Monica. She is a wonderful picture of every longsuffering, prayerful mother that has ever existed. However, even after mentioning her brief bout with alcoholism, I felt very removed from her. I think his portrayal of her was still too saintly to make her relatable. Overall, the most inspiring aspect of this book is Augustine's humility and love for his God.

This will probably be a book that I read and reread through the years. Chadwick's footnotes were helpful, but I noticed that every time Augustine used language even remotely similar to Plotinus or some other middle Platonist he would point this out. It gave me the impression perhaps incorrectly that Chadwick did not think Augustine had an original idea in his head. Prvo, Avgustin je veliki mislilac, beskrajno uticajan teolog, prefinjen psiholog i sjajan stilista. View all 3 comments. Jun 11, G.

Feels rather like reading the Psalms. That should tell you it's good. Written during the waning of the Roman Empire around AD, 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, eventua Written during the waning of the Roman Empire around AD, 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.

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.

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".

View all 4 comments. Reading the Confessions I feel like I am encountering Augustine face to face, his voice has such passion and immediacy. 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 thoug I started to read Agustin Confessions in July. 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. 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? 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. 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. Outler, a Professor of Theology at Southern Methodist University, argues that Confessions is a "pilgrimage of grace [ Written after the legalization of Christianity, Confessions dated from an era where martyrdom was no longer a threat to most Christians as was the case two centuries earlier.

Augustine clearly presents his struggle with worldly desires such as lust. Such rapid ascension certainly raised criticism of Augustine. Confessions was written between AD —, suggesting self-justification as a possible motivation for the work. With the words "I wish to act in truth, making my confession both in my heart before you and in this book before the many who will read it" in Book X Chapter 1, [15] Augustine both confesses his sins and glorifies God through humility in His grace, the two meanings that define "confessions," [16] in order to reconcile his imperfections not only to his critics but also to God.

Augustine does not paint himself as a holy man, but as a sinner. For example, in the second chapter of Book IX Augustine references his choice to wait three weeks until the autumn break to leave his position of teaching without causing a disruption. He wrote that some "may say it was sinful of me to allow myself to occupy a chair of lies even for one hour.

Due to the nature of Confessions, it is clear that Augustine was not only writing for himself but that the work was intended for public consumption.

The Confessions, Saint Augustine Of Hippo, Full-Length Catholic Audiobook

Confessions thus constitutes an appeal to encourage conversion. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article needs additional citations for verification.

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Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. November Learn how and when to remove this template message. Augustine, Confessions ed. Harmonds worth Middles ex, England: Book IX, Chapter 1. Book X, Chapter 1. Book IX, Chapter 2. The Body and Society. The Confessions of Saint Augustine. Retrieved from " https: Articles needing additional references from November All articles needing additional references Articles with LibriVox links. Views Read Edit View history. In other projects Wikiquote Wikisource.