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Confessions of a Sinner
Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization, and helped make us who we are.
One of the greatest explorations of sin, epiphany and redemption ever written, the Confessions of Saint Augustine continue to shape our ideas with their passionate declaration of the life-changing power of faith.
132 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 400
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654 people want to read
About the author
Augustine of Hippo
3,339 books2,011 followersEarly church father and philosopher Saint Augustine served from 396 as the bishop of Hippo in present-day Algeria and through such writings as the autobiographical
Confessions
in 397 and the voluminous
City of God
from 413 to 426 profoundly influenced Christianity, argued against Manichaeism and Donatism, and helped to establish the doctrine of original sin.
An Augustinian follows the principles and doctrines of Saint Augustine.
People also know Aurelius Augustinus in English of Regius (Annaba). From the Africa province of the Roman Empire, people generally consider this Latin theologian of the greatest thinkers of all times. He very developed the west. According to Jerome, a contemporary, Augustine renewed "the ancient Faith."
The Neo-Platonism of Plotinus afterward heavily weighed his years. After conversion and his baptism in 387, Augustine developed his own approach to theology and accommodated a variety of methods and different perspectives. He believed in the indispensable grace to human freedom and framed the concept of just war. When the Western Roman Empire started to disintegrate from the material earth, Augustine developed the concept of the distinct Catholic spirituality in a book of the same name. He thought the medieval worldview. Augustine closely identified with the community that worshiped the Trinity. The Catholics and the Anglican communion revere this preeminent doctor. Many Protestants, especially Calvinists, consider his due teaching on salvation and divine grace of the theology of the Reformation. The Eastern Orthodox also consider him. He carries the additional title of blessed. The Orthodox call him "Blessed Augustine" or "Saint Augustine the Blessed."
Santo Agostinho
An Augustinian follows the principles and doctrines of Saint Augustine.
People also know Aurelius Augustinus in English of Regius (Annaba). From the Africa province of the Roman Empire, people generally consider this Latin theologian of the greatest thinkers of all times. He very developed the west. According to Jerome, a contemporary, Augustine renewed "the ancient Faith."
The Neo-Platonism of Plotinus afterward heavily weighed his years. After conversion and his baptism in 387, Augustine developed his own approach to theology and accommodated a variety of methods and different perspectives. He believed in the indispensable grace to human freedom and framed the concept of just war. When the Western Roman Empire started to disintegrate from the material earth, Augustine developed the concept of the distinct Catholic spirituality in a book of the same name. He thought the medieval worldview. Augustine closely identified with the community that worshiped the Trinity. The Catholics and the Anglican communion revere this preeminent doctor. Many Protestants, especially Calvinists, consider his due teaching on salvation and divine grace of the theology of the Reformation. The Eastern Orthodox also consider him. He carries the additional title of blessed. The Orthodox call him "Blessed Augustine" or "Saint Augustine the Blessed."
Santo Agostinho
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June 11, 2021
Due to unknown and mysterious reasons, each and every year, chiefly on Labour day (at my side it’s always celebrated on 1st May and of course a day off), I seem to fall under a moral paralysis, while suffering a bit of nervous physical inability, which converts me into the laziest person ever. Fortunately, this seems to last only one day and, additionally, as per my horoscope’s indications, this is not my worst fault. This year wasn’t any different than my collected past. So, while gazing for an hour or two at a blank wall (again, fortunately, I have only one blank wall in my room, all the others are veiled by furniture), dozing for a few times under a cosy sweet morning sleep, suddenly upon waking up I felt snapping into action and jumped on one of the bookcases and decided for the day to be under, maybe a bit, not so highly appetizing book. Obviously, an unconscious prejudice.
The choice for the day was this small light book. I don’t know why upon picking it up from the bookshop I thought that this is all of it, I mean it contains All of the Augustine saint's Confessions. But it is not. Of course, there are many texts chopped and left just with …. in the parenthesises.
Reading-wise it was very pleasant and smooth transition between the chapters. I felt that some things were more than reasonable enough to say and write anyone, anytime, anywhere. The areas where ideas were being converted into a heavier block of comments, suddenly were not... Again, some chapters were so short-length, just 1-3 pages which left me with a very unconvincing insight on the treated theme or subject. However, overall, I really had pleasure reading these passionate confessions. In some places, I even felt envy towards the saint. IF only, I could say the same for things that are under my umbrella. But, hopefully, the time is not yet lost.
In some parts of the book, I got under this strong impression that I am re-reading something that I once read in ‘God’s Pauper: Saint Francis of Assisi’ by Nikos Kazantzakis. Under the paint brush of Kazantzakis, Francis was one of the most loving characters but so desperately suffering that made me put away the book, time and again, so to (re)gain some strength for further reading. I recall I read some biography of St Francis of Assisi also by Herman Hesse. It was also a small light book that gave me some glimpses of the life of this well famous personage.
≪ …but in my memory the images of things imprinted upon it by my former habits still linger on. When I am awake they obtrude themselves upon me, though with little strength. But when I dream, they not only give me pleasure but are very much like acquiescence in the act. The power which these illusory images have over my soul and my body is so great that what Is no more than a vision can influence me in sleep in a way that the reality cannot do when I am awake. Surely it cannot be that when I am asleep I am not myself? And yet the moment when I pass from wakefulness to sleep, or return again from sleep to wakefulness, marks a great difference in me. During sleep where is my reason which, when I am awake, resists such suggestions and remains firm and undismayed even in face of the realities themselves? Is it sealed off when I close my eyes? Does it fall asleep with the senses of the body? And why is it that even in sleep I often resist the attractions of these images, for I remember my chaste resolutions and abide by them and give no consent to temptations of this sort? Yet the difference between waking and sleeping is so great that even when, during sleep, it happens otherwise, I return to a clear conscience when I wake and realize that, because of this difference, I was not responsible for the act, although I am sorry that by some means or other it happened to me.
I must now speak of a different kind of temptation, more dangerous than these because it is more complicated. For in addition to our bodily appetites, which make us long to gratify all our senses and our pleasures and lead to our ruin if we stay away from you by becoming their slaves, the mind if also subject to a certain propensity to use the sense of the body, not for self-indulgence of a physical kind, but for the satisfaction of its own inquisitiveness. This futile curiosity masquerades under the name of science and learning, and since it derives from our thirst of knowledge and sight is the principal sense by which knowledge is acquired, in the Scriptures it is called the gratification of the eye. >>
<< We can easily distinguish between the motives of pleasure and curiosity. When the senses demand pleasure, they look for objects of visual beauty, harmonious sounds, fragrant perfumes, and things that are pleasant to the taste or soft to the touch. But when their motive is curiosity, they may look for just the reverse of these things, simply to put it to the proof, not for the sake of an unpleasant experience, but from a relish for investigation and discovery. What pleasure can there be in the sight of a mangled corpse, which can only horrify? Yet people will flock to see one lying on the ground, simply for the sensation of sorrow and horror that it gives them. They are even afraid that it may bring them nightmares, as though it were something that they had been forced to look at while they were awake or something to which they had been attracted by rumours of its beauty.>>
<< Who can understand the omnipotent Trinity? We all speak of it, though we may not speak of it as it truly is, for rarely does a soul know what it is saying when it speaks of the Trinity. Men wrangle and dispute about it, but it is a vision that is given to none unless they are at peace.
There are three things, all found in man himself, which I should like men to consider. They are far different from the Trinity, but I suggest them as a subject for mental exercise by which we can test ourselves and realize how great this difference is. The three things are existence, knowledge, and will, for I can say that I am, I know, and I will. I am a being which knows and wills; I know both that I am and that I will; and I will both to be and to know. In these three – being, knowledge, and will – there is one inseparable life, one life, one mind, one essence; and therefore, although they are distinct from one another, the distinction does not separate them. This must be plain to anyone who has the ability to understand it. In fact, he need not look beyond himself. Let him examine himself closely, take stock, and tell me what he finds.
But when he has found a common principle in these three and has told me what he finds, he must not think that he has discovered that which is above them all and is unchangeable, that which immutably is, immutably knows, and immutably wills. For none of us can easily conceive whether God is a Trinity because all these three – immutable being, immutable knowledge, and immutable will – are together in him; whether all three are together in each person of the Trinity, so that each is threefold; or whether both these suppositions are true and in some wonderful way, in which the simple and the multiple are one, though God is infinite he is yet an end to himself and in himself, so that the Trinity is an itself, and is known to itself, and suffices to itself, the supreme Being, one alone immutably, in the vastness of its unity. This is a mystery that none can explain, and which of us would presume to assert that he can? ≫
All in one, I feel like repeating the same words that Bulgakov (The White Guard) put in the mouth of a soldier who claimed that one day God spoke directly to him, about God’s presence and of believers in his faith:
≪ Well, if they do not believe, what can you do? It’s up to each one of them. I do not care about this either. As you do not care either. And they don’t care either. As for your faith, you ought to know that I have neither gain nor loss. One believes, another does not believe, but your actions and deeds are all the same: one, two, and you will squeeze your throats… For me, you are all the same - soldiers fallen on the battlefield. That's what you need to understand, though it's not in everyone's power. And then, do not worry about stuff like that. Walk healthy and enjoy (your) life. ≫
The choice for the day was this small light book. I don’t know why upon picking it up from the bookshop I thought that this is all of it, I mean it contains All of the Augustine saint's Confessions. But it is not. Of course, there are many texts chopped and left just with …. in the parenthesises.
Reading-wise it was very pleasant and smooth transition between the chapters. I felt that some things were more than reasonable enough to say and write anyone, anytime, anywhere. The areas where ideas were being converted into a heavier block of comments, suddenly were not... Again, some chapters were so short-length, just 1-3 pages which left me with a very unconvincing insight on the treated theme or subject. However, overall, I really had pleasure reading these passionate confessions. In some places, I even felt envy towards the saint. IF only, I could say the same for things that are under my umbrella. But, hopefully, the time is not yet lost.
In some parts of the book, I got under this strong impression that I am re-reading something that I once read in ‘God’s Pauper: Saint Francis of Assisi’ by Nikos Kazantzakis. Under the paint brush of Kazantzakis, Francis was one of the most loving characters but so desperately suffering that made me put away the book, time and again, so to (re)gain some strength for further reading. I recall I read some biography of St Francis of Assisi also by Herman Hesse. It was also a small light book that gave me some glimpses of the life of this well famous personage.
≪ …but in my memory the images of things imprinted upon it by my former habits still linger on. When I am awake they obtrude themselves upon me, though with little strength. But when I dream, they not only give me pleasure but are very much like acquiescence in the act. The power which these illusory images have over my soul and my body is so great that what Is no more than a vision can influence me in sleep in a way that the reality cannot do when I am awake. Surely it cannot be that when I am asleep I am not myself? And yet the moment when I pass from wakefulness to sleep, or return again from sleep to wakefulness, marks a great difference in me. During sleep where is my reason which, when I am awake, resists such suggestions and remains firm and undismayed even in face of the realities themselves? Is it sealed off when I close my eyes? Does it fall asleep with the senses of the body? And why is it that even in sleep I often resist the attractions of these images, for I remember my chaste resolutions and abide by them and give no consent to temptations of this sort? Yet the difference between waking and sleeping is so great that even when, during sleep, it happens otherwise, I return to a clear conscience when I wake and realize that, because of this difference, I was not responsible for the act, although I am sorry that by some means or other it happened to me.
I must now speak of a different kind of temptation, more dangerous than these because it is more complicated. For in addition to our bodily appetites, which make us long to gratify all our senses and our pleasures and lead to our ruin if we stay away from you by becoming their slaves, the mind if also subject to a certain propensity to use the sense of the body, not for self-indulgence of a physical kind, but for the satisfaction of its own inquisitiveness. This futile curiosity masquerades under the name of science and learning, and since it derives from our thirst of knowledge and sight is the principal sense by which knowledge is acquired, in the Scriptures it is called the gratification of the eye. >>
<< We can easily distinguish between the motives of pleasure and curiosity. When the senses demand pleasure, they look for objects of visual beauty, harmonious sounds, fragrant perfumes, and things that are pleasant to the taste or soft to the touch. But when their motive is curiosity, they may look for just the reverse of these things, simply to put it to the proof, not for the sake of an unpleasant experience, but from a relish for investigation and discovery. What pleasure can there be in the sight of a mangled corpse, which can only horrify? Yet people will flock to see one lying on the ground, simply for the sensation of sorrow and horror that it gives them. They are even afraid that it may bring them nightmares, as though it were something that they had been forced to look at while they were awake or something to which they had been attracted by rumours of its beauty.>>
<< Who can understand the omnipotent Trinity? We all speak of it, though we may not speak of it as it truly is, for rarely does a soul know what it is saying when it speaks of the Trinity. Men wrangle and dispute about it, but it is a vision that is given to none unless they are at peace.
There are three things, all found in man himself, which I should like men to consider. They are far different from the Trinity, but I suggest them as a subject for mental exercise by which we can test ourselves and realize how great this difference is. The three things are existence, knowledge, and will, for I can say that I am, I know, and I will. I am a being which knows and wills; I know both that I am and that I will; and I will both to be and to know. In these three – being, knowledge, and will – there is one inseparable life, one life, one mind, one essence; and therefore, although they are distinct from one another, the distinction does not separate them. This must be plain to anyone who has the ability to understand it. In fact, he need not look beyond himself. Let him examine himself closely, take stock, and tell me what he finds.
But when he has found a common principle in these three and has told me what he finds, he must not think that he has discovered that which is above them all and is unchangeable, that which immutably is, immutably knows, and immutably wills. For none of us can easily conceive whether God is a Trinity because all these three – immutable being, immutable knowledge, and immutable will – are together in him; whether all three are together in each person of the Trinity, so that each is threefold; or whether both these suppositions are true and in some wonderful way, in which the simple and the multiple are one, though God is infinite he is yet an end to himself and in himself, so that the Trinity is an itself, and is known to itself, and suffices to itself, the supreme Being, one alone immutably, in the vastness of its unity. This is a mystery that none can explain, and which of us would presume to assert that he can? ≫
All in one, I feel like repeating the same words that Bulgakov (The White Guard) put in the mouth of a soldier who claimed that one day God spoke directly to him, about God’s presence and of believers in his faith:
≪ Well, if they do not believe, what can you do? It’s up to each one of them. I do not care about this either. As you do not care either. And they don’t care either. As for your faith, you ought to know that I have neither gain nor loss. One believes, another does not believe, but your actions and deeds are all the same: one, two, and you will squeeze your throats… For me, you are all the same - soldiers fallen on the battlefield. That's what you need to understand, though it's not in everyone's power. And then, do not worry about stuff like that. Walk healthy and enjoy (your) life. ≫
Read
November 5, 2009I 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: some of these books are excerpted. And I say "excerpted" only so as to avoid an uglier word: if pressed, I must admit that this edition of Augustine's Confessions is - I can barely stand to write it - ABRIDGED.
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 2004," and as the text commences they mark each omission with a [...:] symbol. There are MANY such symbols. My full edition of the Confessions is 305 pages of dense, close-set text; the Great Ideas edition is only 114 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." People should know what they're getting before the book arrives in the mail, and what they're getting in this case is a MUCH different experience than they'll have if they read the full document.
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. Got it? He's seriously tortured about the pears. HOW COULD HE HAVE TAKEN 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.
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. Whereas in fact Augustine is not reasonable AT ALL, and he's certainly not concise. 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:
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:
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: he never looks back or regresses; he is cleansed of all sinful urges and dedicates himself completely to the work of the Church. (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: early church members didn't want to acknowledge that spiritual life might still be a struggle after conversion. 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: whereas previously he had been writing a story about himself and his actions, his post-epiphanic text is straight theology, with little or no narrative at all. 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: the reader can literally see and feel the difference in the person Augustine was versus the person (or saint) he becomes. 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.co.uk offers their "Look Inside" feature on most of the volumes in the series, so I've done a little research about how many are affected. (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: in many cases, it just means that certain essays were taken from Penguin's "Complete Essays" edition of the author's work. 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: realistically, I'm never going to read the entire Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, so I don't really mind getting a taste of it here and there. But a few of the abridged volumes are things I'm actually interested in reading independently of the Great Ideas series: Christine de Pizan's The Book of the City of Ladies, Marco Polo's Travels, and Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem are the three that leap to mind. 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.
So...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.
The next in the series, Thomas à Kempis's The Inner Life, is another expurgated title: an extract from The Imitation of Christ. 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!
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 2004," and as the text commences they mark each omission with a [...:] symbol. There are MANY such symbols. My full edition of the Confessions is 305 pages of dense, close-set text; the Great Ideas edition is only 114 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." People should know what they're getting before the book arrives in the mail, and what they're getting in this case is a MUCH different experience than they'll have if they read the full document.
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. Got it? He's seriously tortured about the pears. HOW COULD HE HAVE TAKEN 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.
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. Whereas in fact Augustine is not reasonable AT ALL, and he's certainly not concise. 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: he never looks back or regresses; he is cleansed of all sinful urges and dedicates himself completely to the work of the Church. (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: early church members didn't want to acknowledge that spiritual life might still be a struggle after conversion. 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: whereas previously he had been writing a story about himself and his actions, his post-epiphanic text is straight theology, with little or no narrative at all. 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: the reader can literally see and feel the difference in the person Augustine was versus the person (or saint) he becomes. 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.co.uk offers their "Look Inside" feature on most of the volumes in the series, so I've done a little research about how many are affected. (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: in many cases, it just means that certain essays were taken from Penguin's "Complete Essays" edition of the author's work. 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: realistically, I'm never going to read the entire Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, so I don't really mind getting a taste of it here and there. But a few of the abridged volumes are things I'm actually interested in reading independently of the Great Ideas series: Christine de Pizan's The Book of the City of Ladies, Marco Polo's Travels, and Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem are the three that leap to mind. 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.
So...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.
The next in the series, Thomas à Kempis's The Inner Life, is another expurgated title: an extract from The Imitation of Christ. 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!
October 16, 2024
A avaliação é pela edição, não pelo livro em si. Eu comprei este livro a pensar que era diferente das "Confissões" e acontece que é a mesma obra, mas com menos texto. Não percebo a existência desta edição.
March 22, 2022
beautiful and easy to follow translation. condom fell out of my wallet as I bought this book: "give me chastity and continence, but not yet" ♥.
August 31, 2024
This was great. I really recommend it be read simultaneously with CS Lewis’ “Mere Christianity.”
December 18, 2019
“I confess to you, Lord, that I still do not know what time is. Yet I confess to that I do know that I am saying this in time, and that this long time would not be a long time if it were not for the fact that time has been passing all the while. How can I know this, when I do not know what time is? Is it that I do know what time is, but do not know how to put what I know into words? I am in a sorry state, for I do not even know what I do not know!” Stephen Hawking would be proud.
Read
April 2, 2024“Our salvation is founded upon the hope of something [...].”
July 25, 2024
Wanted to like this but lost me at natural law
July 11, 2021
Good book, but it is severly upsetting that the same tactics used to confuse Christians on South African tiktok were already in use in ancient Rome.
June 28, 2020
This book is about what it feels like when you've just joined a cult. As far as spiritual guidance or development goes, 'trust in Almighty God' and 'use his only begotten son as a Mediator' are not pieces of advice I find helpful or relatable. I presume in the end Augustine was mainly trying to convince himself; I wonder if he succeeded.
"The Church demanded that certain things should be believed even though they could not be proved. for if they could be proved, not all men could understand the proof, and some could not be proved at all."
The Church gaslit St Augustine; you heard it here first.
"As for the passages [of scripture] which had previously struck me as absurd, now that I had heard reasonable explanations of many of them I regarded them as of the nature of the profound mysteries."
Why does this sound familiar? Oh wait -
“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
"I had prayed to you for chastity and said 'Give me chastity and continence, but not yet'."
I mean that is worth reading this slush for, not gonna lie.
"O Lord God, grant us peace, for all that we have is your gift. Grant us the peace of repose, the peace of the Sabbath, the peace which has no evening. For this wordly order in all its beauty will pass away. All these things that are very good will come to an end when the limit of their existence is reached. They have been allotted their morning and their evening.
In that eternal Sabbath you will rest in us, just as now you work in us. The rest that we shall enjoy will be yours, just as the work that we do now is your work done through us. But you, O Lord, are eternally at work and eternally at rest. It is not in time that you see or in time that you move or in time that you rest; yet you make what we see in time; you make time itself and the repose which comes when time ceases."
Now, Augie has done absolutely nothing to resolve how God does good through a) Donald Trump b) coronavirus or c) the whole history of humanity, but I'll grant him this much, that passage is sublime.
"The Church demanded that certain things should be believed even though they could not be proved. for if they could be proved, not all men could understand the proof, and some could not be proved at all."
The Church gaslit St Augustine; you heard it here first.
"As for the passages [of scripture] which had previously struck me as absurd, now that I had heard reasonable explanations of many of them I regarded them as of the nature of the profound mysteries."
Why does this sound familiar? Oh wait -
“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
"I had prayed to you for chastity and said 'Give me chastity and continence, but not yet'."
I mean that is worth reading this slush for, not gonna lie.
"O Lord God, grant us peace, for all that we have is your gift. Grant us the peace of repose, the peace of the Sabbath, the peace which has no evening. For this wordly order in all its beauty will pass away. All these things that are very good will come to an end when the limit of their existence is reached. They have been allotted their morning and their evening.
In that eternal Sabbath you will rest in us, just as now you work in us. The rest that we shall enjoy will be yours, just as the work that we do now is your work done through us. But you, O Lord, are eternally at work and eternally at rest. It is not in time that you see or in time that you move or in time that you rest; yet you make what we see in time; you make time itself and the repose which comes when time ceases."
Now, Augie has done absolutely nothing to resolve how God does good through a) Donald Trump b) coronavirus or c) the whole history of humanity, but I'll grant him this much, that passage is sublime.
January 28, 2017
A prayer-guided translation, warm and humbling.
The Penguin Great Ideas version of Confessions, to me, is a well thought-out translation and editorial job. The text feels spiritual as the monk who wrote it and the editor did well to include the parts that were. This version includes about 80% of the original text. It is endearing to me through-out.
Augustine was Sainted by the Catholic church and after reading this most will find out why. A beautiful story of seeing beyond oneself to greater things and the humbleness involved is touching. The penitence we feel when we see bigger things is so often expressed in this book. It is as near to the New Testament to me in ways.
The Penguin Great Ideas version of Confessions, to me, is a well thought-out translation and editorial job. The text feels spiritual as the monk who wrote it and the editor did well to include the parts that were. This version includes about 80% of the original text. It is endearing to me through-out.
Augustine was Sainted by the Catholic church and after reading this most will find out why. A beautiful story of seeing beyond oneself to greater things and the humbleness involved is touching. The penitence we feel when we see bigger things is so often expressed in this book. It is as near to the New Testament to me in ways.
February 25, 2021
How do you rate the work of a Saint out of five? Well, I've given it a three. Saint Augustine starts out as fun-loving as you'd expect a 5th century Roman North African. Spoiler alert: in the end he finds God in a big way.
I'm not religious, so can't comment on the theological value of this text. That said, the central message of a person struggling with themselves about who they are and what gives them self worth will have resonance with anyone who has passed, or is passing, the first phase of their youth. If I'd read this 10, or even 5 years ago I'd have thrown it down a well. As it is, I got some pleasure from it and found some cause to reflect.
The decent into metaphysics at the end is a bit much though.
I'm not religious, so can't comment on the theological value of this text. That said, the central message of a person struggling with themselves about who they are and what gives them self worth will have resonance with anyone who has passed, or is passing, the first phase of their youth. If I'd read this 10, or even 5 years ago I'd have thrown it down a well. As it is, I got some pleasure from it and found some cause to reflect.
The decent into metaphysics at the end is a bit much though.
February 6, 2014
Couldn't be more happy to finish this and put it away.
Ok, so, I get it. He's a man who has turned towards God and yes, it is very interesting to read his thoughts and how his mind operated with all his questions. But still...couldn't be more happy to start the next book.
Ok, so, I get it. He's a man who has turned towards God and yes, it is very interesting to read his thoughts and how his mind operated with all his questions. But still...couldn't be more happy to start the next book.
September 5, 2016
Wait a minute guys: this is the guy that used his rhetoric gifts to develop and popularize the concept of original sin? Excuse me, I need a minute...
February 16, 2016
Didn't quite live up to my expectations. I expected more mental exercise in theoretical Christian philosophy, in its stead I got served with a very dogmatic stance in religious axioms.
July 7, 2018
“Confessions of a Sinner” by Augustine of Hippo
ISBN 0141018836 (ISBN13: 9780141018836)
This is an ancient classic, no doubt about it. But all I can say is that it bored me terribly. Still worth reading.
“Pride hates a fellowship of equality under God, and wishes to impose its own dominion upon its equals, in place of God's rule.”
“.. because you [God] made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in you.”
“Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”
“And men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, yet pass over the mystery of themselves without a thought.”
“The punishment of every disordered mind is its own disorder.”
“What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.”
“The mind commands the body and is instantly obeyed. The mind commands itself and meets resistance.”
“How can the past and future be, when the past no longer is, and the future is not yet? As for the present, if it were always present and never moved on to become the past, it would not be time, but eternity.”
“You never go away from us, yet we have difficulty in returning to You. Come, Lord, stir us up and call us back. Kindle and seize us. Be our fire and our sweetness. Let us love. Let us run.”
“Belatedly I loved thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new, belatedly I loved thee. For see, thou wast within and I was without, and I sought thee out there. Unlovely, I rushed heedlessly among the lovely things thou hast made. Thou wast with me, but I was not with thee. These things kept me far from thee; even though they were not at all unless they were in thee. Thou didst call and cry aloud, and didst force open my deafness. Thou didst gleam and shine, and didst chase away my blindness. Thou didst breathe fragrant odors and I drew in my breath; and now I pant for thee. I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst. Thou didst touch me, and I burned for thy peace.”
“I held my heart back from positively accepting anything, since I was afraid of another fall, and in this condition of suspense I was being all the more killed.”
“Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.”
“The Bible was composed in such a way that as beginners mature, its meaning grows with them.”
“Tolle, lege: take up and read.”
“For what am I to myself without You, but a guide to my own downfall?”
“I was in misery, and misery is the state of every soul overcome by friendship with mortal things and lacerated when they are lost. Then the soul becomes aware of the misery which is its actual condition even before it loses them.”
“Too late came I to love you, O Beauty both so ancient and so new! Too late came I to love you - and behold you were with me all the time . . .”
“Da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo (Give me chastity and continence, but not just yet)!”
“You called and shouted and burst my deafness. You flashed, shone, and scattered my blindness. You breathed odors, and I drew in breath and panted for You. I tasted, and I hunger and thirst. You touched me, and I burned for Your peace.”
“You are my Lord, because You have no need of my goodness.”
“No one knows what he himself is made of, except his own spirit within him, yet there is still some part of him which remains hidden even from his own spirit; but you, Lord, know everything about a human being because you have made him...Let me, then, confess what I know about myself, and confess too what I do not know, because what I know of myself I know only because you shed light on me, and what I do not know I shall remain ignorant about until my darkness becomes like bright noon before your face.”
“Free curiosity has greater power to stimulate learning than rigorous coercion. Nevertheless, the free ranging flux of curiosity is channeled by discipline under Your Law.”
“For I wondered that others, subject to death, did live, since
he whom I loved, as if he should never die, was dead; and I wondered
yet more that myself, who was to him a second self, could live, he
being dead. Well said one of his friend, "Thou half of my soul"; for
I felt that my soul and his soul were "one soul in two bodies": and
therefore was my life a horror to me, because I would not live halved.
And therefore perchance I feared to die, lest he whom I had much loved
should die wholly.”
“I look forward, not to what lies ahead of me in this life and will surely pass away, but to my eternal goal. I am intent upon this one purpose, not distracted by other aims, and with this goal in view I press on, eager for the prize, God's heavenly summons. Then I shall listen to the sound of Your praises and gaze at Your beauty ever present, never future, never past. But now my years are but sighs. You, O Lord, are my only solace. You, my Father, are eternal. But I am divided between time gone by and time to come, and its course is a mystery to me. My thoughts, the intimate life of my soul, are torn this way and that in the havoc of change. And so it will be until I am purified and melted by the fire of Your love and fused into one with You.”
“Life is a misery, death an uncertainty. Suppose it steals suddenly upon me, in what state shall I leave this world? When can I learn what I have here neglected to learn? Or is it true that death will cut off and put an end to all care and all feeling? This is something to be inquired into.
But no, this cannot be true. It is not for nothing, it is not meaningless that all over the world is displayed the high and towering authority of the Christian faith.
Such great and wonderful things would never have been done for us by God, if the life of the soul were to end with the death of the body. Why then do I delay? Why do I not abandon my hopes of this world and devote myself entirely to the search for God and for the happy life?”
“Give me yourself, O my God, give yourself back to me. Lo, I love you, but if my love is too mean, let me love more passionately. I cannot gauge my love, nor know how far it fails, how much more love I need for my life to set its course straight into your arms, never swerving until hidden in the covert of your face. This alone I know, that without you all to me is misery, woe outside myself and woe within, and all wealth but penury, if it is not my God.”
“The soul is "torn apart in a painful condition as long as it prefers the eternal because of its Truth but does not discard the temporal because of familiarity.”
“I recall how miserable I was, and how one day you brought me to a realization of my miserable state. I was preparing to deliver a eulogy upon the emperor in which I would tell plenty of lies with the object of winning favor with the well-informed by my lying; so my heart was panting with anxiety and seething with feverish, corruptive thoughts. As I passed through a certain district in Milan I noticed a poor beggar, drunk, as I believe, and making merry. I groaned and pointed out to the friends who were with me how many hardships our idiotic enterprises entailed. Goaded by greed, I was dragging my load of unhappiness along, and feeling it all the heavier for being dragged. Yet while all our efforts were directed solely to the attainment of unclouded joy, it appeared that this beggar had already beaten us to the goal, a goal which we would perhaps never reach ourselves. With the help of the few paltry coins he had collected by begging this man was enjoying the temporal happiness for which I strove by so bitter, devious and roundabout a contrivance. His joy was no true joy, to be sure, but what I was seeking in my ambition was a joy far more unreal; and he was undeniably happy while I was full of foreboding; he was carefree, I apprehensive. If anyone had questioned me as to whether I would rather be exhilarated or afraid, I would of course have replied, "Exhilarated"; but if the questioner had pressed me further, asking whether I preferred to be like the beggar, or to be as I was then, I would have chosen to be myself, laden with anxieties and fears. Surely that would have been no right choice, but a perverse one? I could not have preferred my condition to his on the grounds that I was better educated, because that fact was not for me a source of joy but only the means by which I sought to curry favor with human beings: I was not aiming to teach them but only to win their favor.”
“For you [God] are infinite and never change. In you 'today' never comes to an end: and yet our 'today' does come to an end in you, because time, as well as everything else, exists in you. If it did not, it would have no means of passing. And since your years never come to an end, for you they are simply 'today'...But you yourself are eternally the same. In your 'today' you will make all that is to exist tomorrow and thereafter, and in your 'today' you have made all that existed yesterday and for ever before.”
“O Lord my God, tell me what you are to me. Say to my soul, I am your salvation. Say it so that I can hear it. My heart is listening, Lord; open the ears of my heard and say to my soul, I am your salvation. Let me run toward this voice and seize hold of you. Do not hide your face from me: let me die so that I may see it, for not to see it would be death to me indeed.”
“For a sentence is not complete unless each word, once its syllables have been pronounced, gives way to make room for the next...They are set up on the course of their existence, and the faster they climb towards its zenith, the more they hasten towards the point where they exist no more.”
“What do I love when I love my God?”
ISBN 0141018836 (ISBN13: 9780141018836)
This is an ancient classic, no doubt about it. But all I can say is that it bored me terribly. Still worth reading.
“Pride hates a fellowship of equality under God, and wishes to impose its own dominion upon its equals, in place of God's rule.”
“.. because you [God] made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in you.”
“Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”
“And men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, yet pass over the mystery of themselves without a thought.”
“The punishment of every disordered mind is its own disorder.”
“What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.”
“The mind commands the body and is instantly obeyed. The mind commands itself and meets resistance.”
“How can the past and future be, when the past no longer is, and the future is not yet? As for the present, if it were always present and never moved on to become the past, it would not be time, but eternity.”
“You never go away from us, yet we have difficulty in returning to You. Come, Lord, stir us up and call us back. Kindle and seize us. Be our fire and our sweetness. Let us love. Let us run.”
“Belatedly I loved thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new, belatedly I loved thee. For see, thou wast within and I was without, and I sought thee out there. Unlovely, I rushed heedlessly among the lovely things thou hast made. Thou wast with me, but I was not with thee. These things kept me far from thee; even though they were not at all unless they were in thee. Thou didst call and cry aloud, and didst force open my deafness. Thou didst gleam and shine, and didst chase away my blindness. Thou didst breathe fragrant odors and I drew in my breath; and now I pant for thee. I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst. Thou didst touch me, and I burned for thy peace.”
“I held my heart back from positively accepting anything, since I was afraid of another fall, and in this condition of suspense I was being all the more killed.”
“Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.”
“The Bible was composed in such a way that as beginners mature, its meaning grows with them.”
“Tolle, lege: take up and read.”
“For what am I to myself without You, but a guide to my own downfall?”
“I was in misery, and misery is the state of every soul overcome by friendship with mortal things and lacerated when they are lost. Then the soul becomes aware of the misery which is its actual condition even before it loses them.”
“Too late came I to love you, O Beauty both so ancient and so new! Too late came I to love you - and behold you were with me all the time . . .”
“Da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo (Give me chastity and continence, but not just yet)!”
“You called and shouted and burst my deafness. You flashed, shone, and scattered my blindness. You breathed odors, and I drew in breath and panted for You. I tasted, and I hunger and thirst. You touched me, and I burned for Your peace.”
“You are my Lord, because You have no need of my goodness.”
“No one knows what he himself is made of, except his own spirit within him, yet there is still some part of him which remains hidden even from his own spirit; but you, Lord, know everything about a human being because you have made him...Let me, then, confess what I know about myself, and confess too what I do not know, because what I know of myself I know only because you shed light on me, and what I do not know I shall remain ignorant about until my darkness becomes like bright noon before your face.”
“Free curiosity has greater power to stimulate learning than rigorous coercion. Nevertheless, the free ranging flux of curiosity is channeled by discipline under Your Law.”
“For I wondered that others, subject to death, did live, since
he whom I loved, as if he should never die, was dead; and I wondered
yet more that myself, who was to him a second self, could live, he
being dead. Well said one of his friend, "Thou half of my soul"; for
I felt that my soul and his soul were "one soul in two bodies": and
therefore was my life a horror to me, because I would not live halved.
And therefore perchance I feared to die, lest he whom I had much loved
should die wholly.”
“I look forward, not to what lies ahead of me in this life and will surely pass away, but to my eternal goal. I am intent upon this one purpose, not distracted by other aims, and with this goal in view I press on, eager for the prize, God's heavenly summons. Then I shall listen to the sound of Your praises and gaze at Your beauty ever present, never future, never past. But now my years are but sighs. You, O Lord, are my only solace. You, my Father, are eternal. But I am divided between time gone by and time to come, and its course is a mystery to me. My thoughts, the intimate life of my soul, are torn this way and that in the havoc of change. And so it will be until I am purified and melted by the fire of Your love and fused into one with You.”
“Life is a misery, death an uncertainty. Suppose it steals suddenly upon me, in what state shall I leave this world? When can I learn what I have here neglected to learn? Or is it true that death will cut off and put an end to all care and all feeling? This is something to be inquired into.
But no, this cannot be true. It is not for nothing, it is not meaningless that all over the world is displayed the high and towering authority of the Christian faith.
Such great and wonderful things would never have been done for us by God, if the life of the soul were to end with the death of the body. Why then do I delay? Why do I not abandon my hopes of this world and devote myself entirely to the search for God and for the happy life?”
“Give me yourself, O my God, give yourself back to me. Lo, I love you, but if my love is too mean, let me love more passionately. I cannot gauge my love, nor know how far it fails, how much more love I need for my life to set its course straight into your arms, never swerving until hidden in the covert of your face. This alone I know, that without you all to me is misery, woe outside myself and woe within, and all wealth but penury, if it is not my God.”
“The soul is "torn apart in a painful condition as long as it prefers the eternal because of its Truth but does not discard the temporal because of familiarity.”
“I recall how miserable I was, and how one day you brought me to a realization of my miserable state. I was preparing to deliver a eulogy upon the emperor in which I would tell plenty of lies with the object of winning favor with the well-informed by my lying; so my heart was panting with anxiety and seething with feverish, corruptive thoughts. As I passed through a certain district in Milan I noticed a poor beggar, drunk, as I believe, and making merry. I groaned and pointed out to the friends who were with me how many hardships our idiotic enterprises entailed. Goaded by greed, I was dragging my load of unhappiness along, and feeling it all the heavier for being dragged. Yet while all our efforts were directed solely to the attainment of unclouded joy, it appeared that this beggar had already beaten us to the goal, a goal which we would perhaps never reach ourselves. With the help of the few paltry coins he had collected by begging this man was enjoying the temporal happiness for which I strove by so bitter, devious and roundabout a contrivance. His joy was no true joy, to be sure, but what I was seeking in my ambition was a joy far more unreal; and he was undeniably happy while I was full of foreboding; he was carefree, I apprehensive. If anyone had questioned me as to whether I would rather be exhilarated or afraid, I would of course have replied, "Exhilarated"; but if the questioner had pressed me further, asking whether I preferred to be like the beggar, or to be as I was then, I would have chosen to be myself, laden with anxieties and fears. Surely that would have been no right choice, but a perverse one? I could not have preferred my condition to his on the grounds that I was better educated, because that fact was not for me a source of joy but only the means by which I sought to curry favor with human beings: I was not aiming to teach them but only to win their favor.”
“For you [God] are infinite and never change. In you 'today' never comes to an end: and yet our 'today' does come to an end in you, because time, as well as everything else, exists in you. If it did not, it would have no means of passing. And since your years never come to an end, for you they are simply 'today'...But you yourself are eternally the same. In your 'today' you will make all that is to exist tomorrow and thereafter, and in your 'today' you have made all that existed yesterday and for ever before.”
“O Lord my God, tell me what you are to me. Say to my soul, I am your salvation. Say it so that I can hear it. My heart is listening, Lord; open the ears of my heard and say to my soul, I am your salvation. Let me run toward this voice and seize hold of you. Do not hide your face from me: let me die so that I may see it, for not to see it would be death to me indeed.”
“For a sentence is not complete unless each word, once its syllables have been pronounced, gives way to make room for the next...They are set up on the course of their existence, and the faster they climb towards its zenith, the more they hasten towards the point where they exist no more.”
“What do I love when I love my God?”
September 5, 2023
Honest. Some of his thoughts are true and will be good for anyone to think likewise, some aren’t, and in the entirety certainly not faultless. It’s his thoughts, after all, a sinner like all of us. It would serve Augustine and his readers much better if he were to shed more light, give more focus on the Gospel. His repentance would be much more fruitful and completely explained if paired with the redemption and forgiveness that God has graciously, mercifully given us in Christ. We won’t be left with merely his reflections on who God is through creation or others' faiths, or whatever else, even He in His holiness, because any explanation is incomplete without expressed comprehension of the Gospel, which I don't find written at length in this short excerpt.
“His gifts are good and the sum of them all is my own self. Therefore, the God who made me must be good and all the good in my is his. I thank him and praise him for all the good in my life, even my life as a boy. But my sin was this, that I looked for pleasure, beauty and truth not in him but in myself and his other creatures, and the search led me instead to pain, confusion and error.”
Very true. And I agree with his understanding of, partially, what sin is.
(Re Moses) “He is no longer here and I cannot see him face to face. But if he were here, I would lay hold of him and in your name I would beg and beseech him to explain those words to me. … But deep inside me, in my most inmate thought, Truth, … would whisper, ‘He speaks the truth.’ And at once I should be assured.”
Simple linear logic: Why would you ask Moses to explain to you the words of God in God’s name if you could ask Him yourself and for sure know the truth, instead of measuring the ‘truth’ he speaks with the ‘truth’ in your own heart? It just doesn’t make sense, nor is true!
Granted he closed the last chapter with, “What a man can teach another to understand this truth? … We must ask it of you (God), seek it in you; we must knock at your door. Only then shall we receive e what we ask and find what we seek; only then will the door be opened to us.”
Struggled to understand the latter parts of the book as I find his arguments rather circular or take long to reach its conclusion, and left unconvinced to read the full ‘Confessions.’
“His gifts are good and the sum of them all is my own self. Therefore, the God who made me must be good and all the good in my is his. I thank him and praise him for all the good in my life, even my life as a boy. But my sin was this, that I looked for pleasure, beauty and truth not in him but in myself and his other creatures, and the search led me instead to pain, confusion and error.”
Very true. And I agree with his understanding of, partially, what sin is.
(Re Moses) “He is no longer here and I cannot see him face to face. But if he were here, I would lay hold of him and in your name I would beg and beseech him to explain those words to me. … But deep inside me, in my most inmate thought, Truth, … would whisper, ‘He speaks the truth.’ And at once I should be assured.”
Simple linear logic: Why would you ask Moses to explain to you the words of God in God’s name if you could ask Him yourself and for sure know the truth, instead of measuring the ‘truth’ he speaks with the ‘truth’ in your own heart? It just doesn’t make sense, nor is true!
Granted he closed the last chapter with, “What a man can teach another to understand this truth? … We must ask it of you (God), seek it in you; we must knock at your door. Only then shall we receive e what we ask and find what we seek; only then will the door be opened to us.”
Struggled to understand the latter parts of the book as I find his arguments rather circular or take long to reach its conclusion, and left unconvinced to read the full ‘Confessions.’
June 7, 2022
A rare and fascinating gem of philosophical musings. Packed with deep insights, a fiercely sharp intellect and frequently beautiful prose, I was astonished at how drawn in I was by Augustine's writing. Part of the appeal is the deeply personal nature of the writing, written as it is as confessions directly to God, opening up about Augustine's deepest fears and uncertainties, as well as their clear devotion and passion for the works of God and philosophy, and how to reconcile the two.
I think the uncertainty here is what wins me over. So many philosophers (particularly later in the enlightenment) are so convinced of their belief in God and the correctness of their ideas that they often overlook fatal logical or ideological flaws in their own work. But Augustine is wracked by doubt and confusion, doing their absolute best to come to conclusions but admitting that they are shadowed by uncertainty, all the while still confident in the piercing light of true wisdom that God can provide. I'm by no means Christian or even religious, but being exposed to Augustine's innermost thoughts expressed in such clever and beautiful ways, it's hard not to feel a deep sympathy for them. And, given that they were a philopsher before "seeing the light" of Christianity, they do have some insightful approaches to various themes- what is time? What is the nature of God/goodness? What defence is ignorance against guilt? And many others.
My honest only regret about this book is that it is abridged, I will now have to search out the full edition to read the rest. Riveting and fascinating stuff.
I think the uncertainty here is what wins me over. So many philosophers (particularly later in the enlightenment) are so convinced of their belief in God and the correctness of their ideas that they often overlook fatal logical or ideological flaws in their own work. But Augustine is wracked by doubt and confusion, doing their absolute best to come to conclusions but admitting that they are shadowed by uncertainty, all the while still confident in the piercing light of true wisdom that God can provide. I'm by no means Christian or even religious, but being exposed to Augustine's innermost thoughts expressed in such clever and beautiful ways, it's hard not to feel a deep sympathy for them. And, given that they were a philopsher before "seeing the light" of Christianity, they do have some insightful approaches to various themes- what is time? What is the nature of God/goodness? What defence is ignorance against guilt? And many others.
My honest only regret about this book is that it is abridged, I will now have to search out the full edition to read the rest. Riveting and fascinating stuff.
November 10, 2022
ive been putting off writing or rating this book for about 2 weeks because a multitude of reasons relating to who i was with when i read this book (too deep for a goodreads review)
the way he describes love and the desire to be loved was genuinely beautiful. Everything modern day authors write about in regards to wanted to be loved etc and how they love should be based off of this, honestly.
I know this is technically a religious book (and from about half-way forward, it is) but im choosing to focus on the first half of the book because it was so very good. It’s written from the pov of the author thinking these feelings were almost wrong (which is part of the long train journey as to why he ended up repenting etc whatever) but i marked a lot of the pages and descriptions
id quote them now but im in an rs class and dont have the book with me,, but i plan on rereading it so many times that i can quote from it like i (shamefully) can with acotar.
Im giving this book 3 stars because 2 would be too little and 4 would be too many. (solid desc i know)
the way he describes love and the desire to be loved was genuinely beautiful. Everything modern day authors write about in regards to wanted to be loved etc and how they love should be based off of this, honestly.
I know this is technically a religious book (and from about half-way forward, it is) but im choosing to focus on the first half of the book because it was so very good. It’s written from the pov of the author thinking these feelings were almost wrong (which is part of the long train journey as to why he ended up repenting etc whatever) but i marked a lot of the pages and descriptions
id quote them now but im in an rs class and dont have the book with me,, but i plan on rereading it so many times that i can quote from it like i (shamefully) can with acotar.
Im giving this book 3 stars because 2 would be too little and 4 would be too many. (solid desc i know)
June 16, 2023
WOW - What a lot of fun!!
Not as in light and laughter, but as in deep joy and inner thrills
So many beautiful quotes and wonderful stories of his progress to true faith.
The exquisite sharing of the role of his mother, with her life ending as soon as her chief purpose (his conversion) was complete. She did live a long full life...
Every Christian should try to read this litle book!!!!!!!!!!!
Not as in light and laughter, but as in deep joy and inner thrills
So many beautiful quotes and wonderful stories of his progress to true faith.
The exquisite sharing of the role of his mother, with her life ending as soon as her chief purpose (his conversion) was complete. She did live a long full life...
Every Christian should try to read this litle book!!!!!!!!!!!
January 26, 2025
I confess, I bought this abridged copy because I’ve always been fascinated, perhaps a little rebelliously, with the prayer that is embossed on the cover.
As a youth I had prayed to you for chastity and said, give me chastity and continence but not yet.
As I am no longer young, the quote has lost some of its forbidden charm. The devil-may-care flippancy presents itself as peevishness in middle age.
As a youth I had prayed to you for chastity and said, give me chastity and continence but not yet.
As I am no longer young, the quote has lost some of its forbidden charm. The devil-may-care flippancy presents itself as peevishness in middle age.
April 6, 2025
I really liked how he described this book as being written in such a way “that a reader could find re-echoed in my words whatever truths he was able to apprehend.” One of those truths I apprehended was how we can understand ourselves in three parts like the trinity is in three parts. We are “existence, knowledge and will” (111).
“I am a being which knows and wills; I know both that I am and I will; and I will both to be and to know.”
“I am a being which knows and wills; I know both that I am and I will; and I will both to be and to know.”
June 19, 2025
randomly fire even though like yes modern institutionalised christianity began him like he was just tortured as fuckkkkkk. bless. I find a lot of philosophy/religion books kind of an annoying read because they can be so verbose and I genuinely think this is a better read because he's just like confessing to his sins and suffering... I would read the full version but the cover of this is so gorgeous #using my senses for material and aesthetic purpose sorry Augustine. read on my birthday!
April 10, 2023
Was alright. Quite liked the opening books of him being a confused little sinner and coming to grips with his faith. Towards the end gets into kinda boring cyclical god cock-sucking but I guess that's to be expected. Preferred the more personal story-telling. Surprisingly for an old philosophy book it's actually written in a pretty engaging way at times.
March 17, 2024
3.5
The diaries of a man with l inordinate shame for his earlier years, followed by his confessions and redemption.
Powerfully human, extremely pious (almost to a fault). Slightly metaphysical towards the end. A fascinating read overall. But, given I have now tasted a flavour of his writings, I have no burning desire to read the entirety of Confessions.
The diaries of a man with l inordinate shame for his earlier years, followed by his confessions and redemption.
Powerfully human, extremely pious (almost to a fault). Slightly metaphysical towards the end. A fascinating read overall. But, given I have now tasted a flavour of his writings, I have no burning desire to read the entirety of Confessions.
December 7, 2025
I hadn't realised the text was so incomplete. Augustine does a kind of autobiography where we learn he was very smart but slept around a lot. Then he is magically converted by reading a bible verse. Then we get a little bit of theology, but he only gets through the first little bit of Genesis.
Update: it's not the original text, it's those sneaky buggers at Penguin cutting out huge chunks.
Update: it's not the original text, it's those sneaky buggers at Penguin cutting out huge chunks.
January 5, 2022
obviously very heavily abridged [as it's literally only 84 pages] but i really do appreciate having read this before committing to the whole thing - i won't for a long while but... eventually....
starting to think that i'd be best mates with augustine [sin of sodom aside]
starting to think that i'd be best mates with augustine [sin of sodom aside]
February 12, 2023
Super interesting to read this at the same time as blankets (graphic novel). An antithetical combination.
The text is still somewhat coherent and insightful even given the large amount of trimming involved in this abridgement. Would recommend.
The text is still somewhat coherent and insightful even given the large amount of trimming involved in this abridgement. Would recommend.
September 28, 2023
It seems St. Augustine struggled the most with chastity. In his dreams and real life, he struggled to remain chaste. So he calls upon the Lord to purge him on this addiction. Overall, the most candid confession of a man and his struggles to live a just and peaceful life.
July 26, 2025
Un compendio de parte de las confesiones de Agustín de Hipona. Una reflexión sobre su vida y cómo Dios le llevó a sus pies. Una introspección que sirve también para el autoanálisis de todos quienes leemos sus memorias. Me quedo con las ganas de leer el libro completo. Lo tendré en mis pendientes.
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