Confessions (Oxford World's Classics)

Augustine’s Confessions is a classic in theology, philosophy, church history, and early autobiographies—and not without reason. Confessions provides modern academics with details about daily life in the fourth century Roman Empire, Augustine’s pivotal theological and philosophical arguments, and a vivid view of the struggles and aspirations of fourth-century Christians. Various themes permeate Augustine’s writings—themes that, perhaps because of Augustine’s massive effect on Christian culture, happen to continue in relevance in modern life. Augustine’s autobiography is rife with similar and familiar concerns between our time and Augustine’s own time. Sexual promiscuity, rebellion against authority, conversion, differing interpretations of divine message, and parental concern are all major themes in this book that continue to carry a heavy weight in modern cultural conflicts. Not unlike many life stories today, Augustine was rebellious as a youth; after experiences of conversion, he turned his life 180 degrees around. This must be a reminder that humans have, for the most part, stayed the same over the last 1600 years, but also a reminder of the widespread influence Augustine’s writing has held over so many years of Western culture. The most striking aspect of Augustine’s Confessions as a window into late antiquity is, in fact, this very reminder that people in late antiquity shared many of the same struggles and conflicts of worldview that those in Western culture share today. Augustine organizes his autobiography into thirteen books. The first three books deal with his life as a student; Augustine discusses his early years in detail that shows his very relatable, human side—childhood opinions on school, peer pressure towards vandalism, and strong sexual drive towards promiscuity as an adolescent. The next six books concern his conversion. He discusses his long process from a smart, passionate, and hedonistic scholar to Manichaeism to (at long last) Christianity. The last three books contain the philosophical and theological discussions Augustine’s Confessions is known for—discussions of age-old questions like eternity, the radical evil of humanity, and the integrations of Greek philosophy into Christian theology. Together, these thirteen books work together to make his masterpiece at once endearingly human and relatable as it is brilliant in its theological authority. Augustine’s discussion of his life, with all the personal details and the ex-post-facto lens, shows us more than anything else the similarity of struggles people in late antiquity and modernity went through. In his second book, Augustine repents of the acts of theft he committed in his adolescent years. He tells a story about how he would go to an orchard with some friends, steal pears, and throw them to pigs, only eating a few of the pears. He confesses this story—a story that has been impressed upon his conscience and memory as a deep, dark secret—to God, writing, “‘What fruit had I’, wretched boy, in these things (Rom. 6:21) which I now blush to recall, above all that theft in which I loved nothing but the theft itself?” (II. viii (16)). He explains that this was not an individual act of crime, but rather an act of foolish adolescent peer pressure: The theft itself was a nothing, and for that reason I was more the miserable. Yet had I been alone I would not have done it—I remember my state of mind to be thus at the time—alone I would never have done it. Therefore my love in that act was to be associated with the gang in whose company I did it…. my pleasure was not in the pears; it was in the crime itself, done in association with a sinful group. (II. viii (16)) Reading this passage, one realizes that adolescents faced the same peer pressure that they face today. The phenomenon of vandalism is not, it appears, a modern one: “As soon as the words are spoken ‘Let us go and do it’, one is ashamed not to be shameless” (ix (17). Augustine’s own lens of retrospective confession shows us that he felt and confessed his guilt in a way not unfamiliar to modern readers. Perhaps the most influential theme of Augustine’s autobiography is that of chastity and purity. Throughout the book, Augustine repents over and over again for his licentious years, disgusted at his own deeds. Although Augustine might be seen as a terrible hypocrite—condemning his past sins after he committed them all—one must understand that Augustine is not being holier-than-thou. After all, he is writing to God, and is thus incredibly careful to show his repentance for previous deeds. Augustine believes in the radical depravity of man, but his Confessions is ultimately a book of personal repentance, not a book of condemning others’ sins; without God, all men are equally depraved of good. Because of the personal nature of this book, those who choose to read it and be convicted by it do so at their personal choice to be convicted. We are given a view of the family dynamic of the ancient world as well. The modern family of parents with differing religions does not appear to be unusual in late antiquity. Augustine, writing about his parents’ desire to educate him, tells us that “Both of them, as I realized, were very ambitious for me: my father because he hardly gave a thought to you at all, and his ambitions for me were concerned with mere vanities; my mother because she thought it would do no harm and would be a help to set me on the way towards you, if I studied the traditional pattern of a literary education. That at least is my conjecture as I try to recall the characters of my parents” (iii (8)). The lack of surprise with which Augustine writes of his parents’ differing religions makes it apparent that such mixed marriages were not uncommon. However, Augustine also shows us the regularity of domestic abuse within late antiquity. Augustine’s father “was exceptional both for his kindness and for his quick temper” (IX. ix (19)), yet Augustine’s mother, Saint Monica, in her piety bore the abuse, knowing “that an angry husband should not be opposed, not merely by anything she did, but even by a word” (IX. ix (19)); after his bout of anger had passed, she would reason with him again. “[M]any wives,” writes Augustine, “married to gentler husbands bore the marks of blows and suffered disfigurements to their faces” (IX. ix (19)). Yet she was so dedicated to her husband “as her lord” that she even rebuked other wives for complaining about their husbands’ abuse. Augustine certainly does not dismiss his father’s behavior as acceptable, but it does seem from his writing that such abuse was common behavior with few consequences. Although the marital relationships of ancient antiquity differed significantly from the modern dynamics, the process of Augustine’s conversion bares many parallels to contemporary religious conversions. The close involvement of family, the fervent prayer over many years, and the passionate and bright young scholar’s realization and conversion are all familiar motifs that are found in Augustine’s conversion process. While still a Manichaean, Augustine’s mother asked her priest to debate with Augustine in order to convince him to become a Christian. The priest refused, saying that Augustine “was still unready to learn,” still in the pliable conceits of youth. He simply told her to continue to pray for Augustine, whilst assuring her that Augustine would eventually come to realize the truth of Christianity in his reading. Naturally, she was unhappy with such a response from the priest. In any case, this scenario closely reflects the familiar case of the religious parent who worries for her child’s obsession with a certain religion—in Augustine’s case, Manichaeism. The partisan aspect of religious disagreement so widespread within today’s culture is also apparent in Augustine’s writing: “[H]e [the priest] told her [Saint Monica] how he himself as a small boy had been handed over to the Manicheans by his mother, whom they had led astray” (III. xii (21)). Disagreement on interpretation of Saint Monica’s vision about Augustine’s conversion also adds to the realism of Augustine’s account; while Augustine believed that Saint Monica would convert to Manichaeism, Saint Monica interpreted the vision to mean that Augustine would become Christian. Augustine’s conversion from a young rebel to an austere conservative from a series of realizations is reminiscent of the twentieth-century Jesus movement that stemmed largely from the hippie movement. Although Augustine was no hippie—not even an intellectual hippie—he was nonetheless a rebel, and during his conversion he channeled all of his anti-establishmentarian attitude into becoming averse to the common practices of worldly pleasures. One controversial form of entertainment in late antiquity was the gladiatorial games. Augustine writes vehemently against them in Book VI chapters vii-viii, lamenting the love of the gladiatorial games some of his close friends held. Somehow the games possessed an incredible ability to enliven the bloodlust in a person, and people could become addicted to the games from first sight. Describing a friend who had been resistant to watch a gladiatorial game, Augustine writes: “As soon as he saw the blood, he at once drank in savagery and did not turn away. His eyes were riveted. He imbibed madness. Without any awareness of what was happening to him, he found delight in the murderous contest and was inebriated by bloodthirsty pleasure. He was not now the person who had come in, but just one of the crow which he had joined, and a true member of the group which had brought him” (VI. viii (13)). Roman gladiatorial fights do not exist in the modern world, yet this form of entertainment was a common part of the daily life of many Roman citizens. Augustine’s perspective sheds light both on the widespread access to such entertainment and the controversial nature this entertainment held—not unlike many modern controversial issues that concern libertarian principles—and gives us a great insider’s view of the phenomenon of the Roman gladiatorial fights and its place in society while under the magnifying glass of controversy and going through the transition that led to its extinction. Writing in the late antiquity, Augustine’s personal autobiography gives us an authentic, honest, open-hearted view of his life. The details Augustine discusses when writing about his struggles as a youth show us that people in late antiquity had many similarities and faced similar challenges as do people in modern times. To be sure, some things have changed: Roman gladiatorial fights are illegal in most countries, and domestic abuse is much less common in first-world countries. Nonetheless, the striking similarities between people in late antiquity and today are revealed by the personal perspective Augustine’s autobiography provides. People may have enjoyed different forms of entertainment at the time, but ultimately the struggles and social forces that propelled people to right and wrong have remained the same.

These `Confessions' comprise a beautifully written and very personal summary of what lead Augustine of Hippo to Catholic Christianity. They are confessed in the form of an epic, highly digressive 300-page psalm. This psalm is personal and unconventional, with many long asides to the earthly readers. But the structure and essence from start to finish are those of an open letter of praise and petition to God. And the result is a literary masterpiece, whose author proves himself to be an inspired genius. Augustine grew up in Roman-dominated Northern Africa in the last half of the 4th century C.E., and converted to Christianity only as a 33-year-old adult, despite being brought up by a Christian mother whom he adored. Because of his gifts in persuasive rhetoric, he moved closer to the more cosmopolitan areas of the Roman Empire to learn and teach others how to peddle their own influence, spending time in Corinth, Milan, and Rome before eventually returning to Northern Africa after his conversion; and so his milieu became the late and entropic Roman Empire, which was still powerful but in the beginning of its' death throes. Augustine was influenced early in life by Neoplatonism and its' own antecedents in classic Greek and Roman thought, and particularly by a kind of Neoplatonic-Christian gumbo known as Manichaeism. But while the Neoplatonist influence remained with Augustine to some degree at least in terms of a few philosophical concepts and his rhetorical style, he would nonetheless later become a very forceful and generative exponent of the many things about his Christian philosophy which distinguish it from Neoplatonic and Manichaeistic thought. In a sense his 'Confessions' becomes a polemic against his own early Manichaeistic ideas, in favor of his corresponding later ideas conceived after his conversion. And as intellectually challenging as many of the ideas are, they concern far more than the navel gazing questions about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but rather address what God wants humans to do on this earth (although there is also quite a bit of philosophizing here.) Augustine was interested in the Christian community above all his own personal concerns and questions -- he gave up all his inheritance and became a bishop in Hippo after his conversion, and his new-found selflessness was a big part of the philosophy that he gained and promoted upon becoming a Christian. As my review title already said, the writing is extremely modern, discussing intimate personal feelings and including Augustine's friendships, sadness, lust ('Lord make me chaste -- but not yet.'), a youthful crime, vanity, his mistress and his child out of wedlock, and his often painful intellectual uncertainty. It is worth repeating that this kind of personal memoir is striking when one considers the time it was written: a passage about Augustine stealing pears with his cronies has the forgiving pathos of a Charles Dickens or Mark Twain story, even as it shows that Augustine felt later that he was on the wrong path, and why. In this litany of personal foibles, Augustine exposes much that is universal in the human heart everywhere and at all times, with a precise and detailed yet humble and often poetic analysis of his own psychology, and that of all of those around him whom he cared about, especially his mother Monica (the famous 'Santa Monica'.) Then there is the theology itself. On that score perhaps there is a little too much harvesting of Christian signs within so much biblical word-parsing (especially on Genesis and, above all, the Psalms, which he quotes on nearly every page.) But if one can bear with these non-critical theological speculations, then there is also a tremendous amount of deep philosophical analysis within that Christian framework, showing a depth of rigor that I frankly did not think possible for a believing Christian 1600 years ago. The components of this analysis are also (like the discussion of his past experiences) written as personal and eloquent arguments, in which the passion, conviction and precise sense of a feeling conveyed, can almost be heard and felt. The most amazing one of these philosophical soliloquies (not surprisingly one where he gets away from directly interpreting Biblical verses) is Augustine's analysis late in the book of the ideas of time, memory, and how they interact. This has a great deal in common with much of what made Marcel Proust's 'In Search of Lost Time' such a great modern philosophical novel written more than 1500 years later. I read these 'Confessions' right after I had read the 'New Testament' for the first time in my life, to get a sense of what propelled Christianity beyond the fragile status it held when it began (i.e., as a counterculture, theologically and culturally at odds with established Judaism, early Jewish Christianity, and the Roman Empire, everywhere that it existed)-- into a socio-political entity that would not only merge with and then outlive the empire, but grow, and eventually dominate the world for centuries in ways both good and bad. The bad should never be understated. There is much to be cynical of, about how Augustine's early Catholic Christianity played out as a political instrument of cultural hegemony. But there had to be something deep and human there that drove it on as a force in the human affairs of nearly every country in the Western Hemisphere. I was not disappointed in this aspect, or in any others, of this marvelous memoir of the most important Christian thinker of his time. If I had more time to devout to Augustine, I might have tried to read his 'City of God', which is much longer and supposedly explains his theology in greater detail than does 'Confessions'. Instead I have moved on from Augustine to Dante's Divine Comedy, to follow Christian thought another 900 years further into the aftermath of its humble beginnings.

I should have read this decades ago. The first 1/2 of the book is incredibly interesting as it reveals so much about life back in the beginning of the 5th century. It is written with remarkable insight and wisdom that rivals that of many authors today. It offers perspective that predates the enlightenment and modernity, which is also helpful for us who are saturated in both. Finally, it is filled with references to the Gospels and Pauline letters, demonstrating just how widely they had been circulated since the 1st Century.

What can i write about the Great Saint Augustine. I am so grateful of God for having his book. I would like also express my gratitude to the Oxford University Press for providing his readers with such a magnificent work.

This is an excellent book written by one of the most influential Fathers of the Church, St. Augustine. The translation is good, with easy-to-understand language for all readers especially those looking for a modern translation. This book it is an absolute must-read for any true Christian.

Confessions is a classic. My review is about the translation. A very good translation and also full of footnotes which is very much appreciated. It gives us a glimpse into the world and the thoughts of Augustine and makes the reading much more valuable.

Excellent

Lindo livro, ótimo para quem deseja entender mais sobre o Santo Agostinho.