The Confessions: Saint Augustine of Hippo (Ignatius Critical Editions) Paperback – July 16, 2012

Confession, it is said, is good for the soul; and the "Confessions" of Saint Augustine of Hippo are good for any person’s soul, regardless of his or her religious or philosophical beliefs. There is something profoundly compelling in the rigorous, uncompromising manner in which Augustine describes the way he consciously, by an ongoing act of will, worked to bring his magnificent intellect into conformity with the dictates of Christianity – and gave God all the credit for the outcome.Some scholars have referred to the "Confessions" as the first true autobiography, or at least the first spiritual autobiography; and as with other masterpieces of autobiography in later years – Richard Wright’s "American Hunger," Annie Dillard’s "An American Childhood," the autobiographies of Benjamin Franklin and Malcolm X – Augustine’s "Confessions" benefits from the author’s unflinching, warts-and-all portrayal of his life.Among its other benefits, the "Confessions" does much to put one back in the time of the Roman Empire’s early Christian years – a time when Western Christianity grappled with a great many other strains of thought. Augustine is frank, for example, in setting forth what he once found seductive about Manichaean philosophy, with its belief that, because evil is so different from good, it had to be the subject of a completely different creation, the work of some being other and lesser than God Himself:“Since I still had enough reverence, of some sort, to make it impossible for me to believe that the good God created an evil nature, I posited two masses at odds with each other, both infinite, the bad with limited, the good with broader scope. From this pestiferous origin there followed other blasphemies. If my mind tried to recur to the Catholic faith, I was made to recoil, since the Catholic faith was not what I made it out to be” (pp. 100-01).Here, as elsewhere, I thought that Augustine was being awfully hard on himself; but his conclusions follow logically from his premises. Evil actions proceed from the imperfections of human nature as stained by original sin. For good actions, the glory belongs to God, who is all good and inspires all good action.Augustine is comparably unsparing in condemning himself for the sinful ways of his youth. A chapter on the theft of pears, written perhaps with an eye toward Adam and Eve’s own theft of fruit from the tree of knowledge in Chapter 3 of Genesis, becomes for Augustine a parable for the nature of sin generally; the fruit of the pear tree was “not enticing either in appearance or in taste”, but Augustine and his friends continued to steal, because “Simply what was not allowed allured us” (p. 32). Augustine is comparably tough on himself when it comes to sexual behavior – though he admits that his sins did not go as far as those of his fellows. Moreover, a large part of his sexual life seems to have involved a long-term, monogamous, mutually faithful relationship with a woman who eventually bore Augustine a son. This is not exactly fleshpots-of-Egypt stuff; but nonetheless, Augustine looks back at this part of his life in terms of how it took him away from God.Augustine, who loves God so, nonetheless reserves some of his fondest words of love for his mother Monnica – a devout Christian who never gave up hope while encouraging her son to leave his secular ways and embrace the Christian faith: “Her flesh brought me forth to live in this daylight, as her heart brought me forth to live in eternal light” (p. 196). That process of conversion involved Augustine going from North Africa to Milan, making friends with fellow converts, and eventually receiving baptism and holy orders; and his early training as a rhetorician (he praises Cicero’s "Hortensius" as a book that “changed my life”) made him a most eloquent, tenacious defender of the Christian faith.Along with describing the process by which he became a Christian – much of it in the second person, addressing God directly – Augustine of Hippo includes some thoughtful theological reflections of the kind that he would eventually build upon further in "The City of God." Readers who enjoy close reading and exegesis of Scriptural passages will enjoy those passages of the Confessions in which Augustine looks at the opening passages of Genesis, speculating on the manner in which time came out of God’s timeless eternity, and working to reconcile seeming paradoxes in Genesis regarding references to God alternately in the singular and the plural. Augustine reconciles that seeming contradiction thus:“For you make [humankind] capable of understanding the Trinity of your unity and the unity of your Trinity, from its being said in the plural ‘Let us make,’ followed by the singular ‘and God made man,’ and from its being said in the plural ‘to our pattern,’ followed by the singular ‘to God’s pattern.’” (pp. 337-38)This edition of the "Confessions" of Saint Augustine is noteworthy in that it was translated by the noted scholar and author Garry Wills, a renowned classicist and devout Catholic who nonetheless has been willing to criticize his beloved church whenever he has felt that, as a human institution, it has erred in its mission of bringing humankind closer to God. Wills also provides a perceptive and helpful introduction, though I can’t help thinking that footnotes of the kind that grace other Penguin Classics books might have helped further.By the time Augustine wrote the "Confessions," between 397 and 400 A.D., Christianity had already been made the official religion of the Roman Empire, in accordance with the emperor Theodosius I’s promulgation of the Edict of Thessalonica in 380 A.D. Yet it was still a world in which believers in Christian and pre-Christian religions competed for adherents, proselytes, converts. No one of his time worked on behalf of, or defended, the Christian faith with greater consistency or strength of heart than Saint Augustine of Hippo. His "Confessions" are inspiring, for that reason alone, to anyone who has ever cared enough about an idea to fight for it.

This is the first book on religion I have ever read from cover to cover. I cannot compare it literally to anything I have read, because of my academic background. The wording is extremely different, and comes across as clearly understandable. Although, it is probably unfair to compare a book on religion to a book on education.

I was struggling with some of the archaic nature of Pusey’s translation, so I thought I would give this version a try and go back to the “classic” one after I had some firmer understanding. I’m grateful that I did, because this expressed Augustine’s ideas in a much more digestible form. It is an abridged version, so I will probably wind up going back to another translation soon. But I’m happy to have picked this one up.Better to understand a work then half comprehending plow through it for the self congratulation of doing so.

I read the E.B. Pusey translation many years ago, which was great, though a bit archaic in some of it's phrasing. I got this copy of Maria Boulding's translation to read through for discussion with some friends and the notes and the language used are excellent. As for Augustine Confessions themselves, well, I can see why he's a Doctor of the Church. They're relevant in any age.

The Confessions of Saint Augustine is unforgetable!! The "Confessions" is a Conversion, it is the story of a man who has found God!! The Story of a heart touched and inflamed with love of the Eternal One. If out of your ken, please read immediately and taste the sweetness of the honeyed lines of a literary and religious genius. The whole Story is full of religion. He has found and experienced God- his whole world changed. He saw and judged this passing world with new eyes and a totally new mind and thought. He never recovered from the shock of seeing the world in a totally new way. Not only was it God, the Eternal and Omnipotent One, but now it was the Logos, the Mediator. It was the fact of "God reconciling the world to Himself in Christ." He now saw through the sophistry and self-deception. This is the Story that the modern world needs. Read about his struggles- sin had him in its grip, and he felt totally helpless. Desparately struggling to break away- but all to no avail!! Until he himself found himself in the "grip of God"! Read about the conversion and the release. It's heart-breaking. If words can touch you and the beauty of Language has any appeal to you, this is the book to read. I sincerely hope that it will transform you as you begin to live your life in a new way. And thank Amazon for making this gem so available at such a price.Ignotus.