The son of a pagan father, who insisted on his education, and a Christian mother, who continued to pray for his salvation, Saint Augustine spent his early years torn between the conflicting religions and philosophical world views of his time. His Confessions, written when he was in his forties, recount how, slowly and painfully, he came to turn away from the licentious lifestyle and vagaries of his youth, to become a staunch advocate of Christianity and one of its most influential thinkers, writers and advocates. A remarkably honest and revealing spiritual autobiography, the Confessions also address fundamental issues of Christian doctrine, and many of the prayers and meditations it includes are still an integral part of the practice of Christianity today. ( )

Written in the 4th century by an early intellectual christian who is famous (to me anyway) for his prayer - "Lord grant me chastity, but not yet"!. The book is in the form of an autobiography, interspersed with lots and lots of beseeching of the lord. The biography is interesting, and all the beseeching has a strong echo in the formulaic rants of the TV preachers. The book ends with some ponderings - on memory, and on the creation. Augustine believes god made the world, but he has some interesting questions about exactly how this was done. I couldn't help wondering, if Augustine was alive now, when there are much better explanations, whether he wouldn't be in the Richard Dawkins' camp. Read February 2009 ( )

I began reading this once years ago, but it failed to engage me and I put it aside. When I started again I couldn't understand my previous lack of interest. The work ranges from philosophical speculation to personal memoir, and each kind has it's appeal. I was surprised by how must variety of belief and opinion late antiquity held on so many topics. Some of the debates and issues Augustine describes sound shockingly contemporary, though put in different terms. The passages covering Augustine's personal life can be poignant, especially those concerning death.

The scholarly consensus is that the Confessions was meant to be a preamble to a longer work: a detailed exegesis of the entirety of Christian scripture. The last three books cover the first chapter of Genesis, with careful attention given to an allegorical interpretation of the creation story. This is apparently as far Augustine ever got, thus adding to the long tradition of great, unfinished masterpieces. ( )

I don't know whether 'review' is the right word here. Can one pass judgment on a work so seminal to the Western literary canon? Whether the reader be Christian or merely curious, The Confessions of St. Augustine conveys a remarkable look into the interior life of a man living in the latter stages of the Roman empire, circa 400CE. As a confession, the book is cast as an open letter to God, with all of humanity as coincidental readers who, it is hoped, would thereby profit from his story. These comments cover the first eight chapters, or fully half the book, which proceeds chronologically from his birth to the time of his conversion at the age of thirty-two.

I had access to two translations from the Latin. The first, by Edward Bouverie Pusey, is available in the public domain and as Volume 18 of the Encyclopedia Britannica's Great Books of the Western World, 1952 edition. And the second translation was by one R.S. Pine-Coffin (now there's a creatively hyphenated last name). I read the first four chapters using the Pusey and then switched to the Pine-Coffin. I do not recommend the Pusey which is very Victorian, ornate and cumbersome. It requires lots of effort to read comfortably, usually obscuring rather than illuminating the meanings which Augustine wished to make clear.

Augustine was – to put it bluntly – obsessed with feelings of guilt and remorse to a degree which makes modern day expressions of faith and humility sound pale and whiny in comparison. I am sunk in 'flagitious concupiscence,' he says (what ??!) - courtesy Pusey trans. - when all he did during his libertine days, apparently, was to attend the theater, read popular fiction and speak to unmarried women. And the worst crime he can remember, the one which highlights his youthful evil spree, was to have stolen pears from a neighbor's tree, not out of hunger but to throw to some hogs. In between outpourings of humility and adoration, impressive not only for their earnestness but for their command of Biblical references, Augustine wrestles with determinism, the problem of evil, the substance of God, and the Manichean influence he fell under as a young man. A summarizing quote: "What profited me then my nimble wit,' he writes, 'in those sciences and all those most knotty volumes, unraveled by me without aid from human instruction; seeing I erred so foully, and with such sacrilegious shamefulness in the doctrine of piety?"

On the whole (or half, in this case – my reading plan has me returning to the second part later this year..,), The Confessions is a good workout, heavy at times, famous for its place in early Christian thought and western cultural history.

Well, I'm finished with this book at last!

I originally became interested in reading Confessions when I saw a special twelve years ago about the beginnings of Christianity, because I thought "Confessions" sounded like a juicy book. It's really not juicy at all, so it's a good thing I approached it interested in theology and not scandal by the time I finally got around to reading it. This time around, I mainly felt like it was important for me to read firsthand the philosophy that is so much a basis of Catholic thought.

Like most books written in the middle ages, St. Augustine's would have benefited from a good editor. There were a lot of times where I felt he repeated himself, which is fine for a spiritual seeker's personal musings, but a bit annoying for an outside reader hundreds of years later. And even though he wrote his Confessions both to strengthen his understanding/relationship with God and to further the same for others, a lot of it really did feel like naval-gazing. Still, I found myself appreciating a LOT of Augustine's theology, such as his insistence that people could come to diverse interpretations of Scripture without any of them being "wrong" (take that, fundamentalists!). Indeed, Augustine's perception of Christianity seems a lot more open than the Catholic Church of today would lead you to believe, although the hierarchy HAS kept his puritan perceptions of sexuality fully intact. Thank God for that. ( )