Augustine: Conversions to Confessions

by Robin Lane Fox

In Augustine, celebrated historian Robin Lane Fox follows Augustine of Hippo on his journey to the writing of his Confessions. Unbaptized, Augustine indulged in a life of lust before finally confessing and converting. Lane Fox recounts Augustine's sexual sins, his time in an outlawed heretical sect, and his gradual return to spirituality. Magisterial and beautifully written, Augustine is the authoritative portrait of this colossal figure at his most thoughtful, vulnerable, and profound.

Genres: History, Biography, Religion, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Christianity, Theology

688 pages, Hardcover

First published September 22, 2015

About the author

Robin Lane Fox (born 1946) is an English historian, currently a Fellow of New College, Oxford and University of Oxford Reader in Ancient History.

Lane Fox was educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford.

Since 1977, he has been a tutor in Greek and Roman history, and since 1990 University Reader in Ancient History. He has also taught Greek and Latin literature and early Islamic history, a subject in which he held an Oxford Research Fellowship, and is also New College's Tutor for Oriental Studies.[1] He is a lecturer in Ancient History at Exeter College, Oxford.

He was historical adviser to the film director Oliver Stone for the epic Alexander. His appearance as an extra, in addition to his work as a historical consultant, was publicized at the time of the film's release.

Lane Fox is also a gardening correspondent for the Financial Times.

He is the father of the internet entrepreneur Martha Lane Fox, the founder of Lastminute.com.

They are not related to, and should not be confused with Robin Fox, anthropologist, and his daughter Kate Fox, social anthropologist.

Reviews

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was quite excited to read this book thinking that it was a biography of one of the leading philosophers of the Christian faith written by an atheist like myself, Robin Lee Fox. I loved his epic biography of Alexander the Great years ago. Well, in one sense I was disappointed because this is not a biography of Augustine of Hippo, it is a lengthy study of the first of Augustine's great works, Confessions. That being said, it is exhaustive in its look into Augustine's moral and religious odyssey from his Christian birth, to his phase as a Manichaean, his studies of Plotonius, and his re-conversion to 'Catholic' Christianity. Along with the greekophiile Libineus, whose life is also described in parallel to Augustine, these are the first two writers to write intimate autobiographies, something I was unaware of. Augustine also had to contend with the heretical Donatist sect. His life prior to writing Confessions was an interesting one which again was painstakingly researched by Fox. I had not realized how central the issue of sex was in these formative years of Christian thought - Augustine voluntarily gave up sex with much difficulty in order to 'purify' his mind and devote himself to studying the mysteries of God and Christ.

Curious anecdote from the book: the Manichaen sect (that followed a heretical gospel of Mani of Persia. At one point, adepts of Manichaeism spread from the Mediterranean basin all the way to China. They had this idea (somewhat similar to Spinoza in my mind) that the Light of god was shattered into fragments and needed to be purified by removing everything in the material world - they were vegetarians (no light in animals) and split into Hearers (Augustine was one, this was sort of the religious layman) and the Elect who disdained sex and were not allowed to work and so they lived off of Hearer's donations. Now, the most bizarre thing about this religion was a ceremony where an elect would have sex with a girl (or woman I suppose) on top of a pile of flour. The Elect would pull out just in time to ejaculate on the flour which would be made into bread and eaten by the Elect (talk about a snowball!) in order to recycle the Light in the sperm back in to their bodies.Back then, it was a custom among non-Manichaean Christians to exchange loaves of bread with correspondence as a token of the bounty of god and of friendship. Augustine exchanged letters with people across the entire Roman empire including a rich Senator who had converted to Christianity and was in the process of giving away his vast properties (some of which were in near Hippo and of interest to the Church there. Since Augustine was a Manichaean in his past, his appointment to being co-bishop of Hippo was controversial and created him not a few enemies. He actually got in trouble once because one of his jealous enemies falsely accused him of sending a Manichaean Elect's sperm-laden loaf of bread to this particular nobleman. Can you imagine the look on their faces, the aristocrat and his wife when they were told this (and sadly believed it)? Blech!!!

It is a heavy read, but nonetheless a fascinating one. A must read even for atheists like me that are interested in this particularly complex period of history in the development of Western philosophy.

[Toby · Rating 5 out of 5]

This epic part-biography of Saint Augustine (it covers only the period up to the writing of the Confessions) is not a book for the faint hearted. Readers who want an introduction to the life and thought of Augustine, or have perhaps been beguiled by the extremely attractive cover and big-name publisher may well find themselves overwhelmed early on. Familiarity with The Confessions and with the period is a must. And it will take a certain dedicated reader to plough through the seemingly exhaustive detail on Manichaeism, Plotinus and neo-Platonism.

Caveats aside, Robin Lane Fox is an extremely skilled writer who handles his material deftly. Whilst this book does not wear its scholarship lightly, it does keep the reader interested throughout and makes a genuine contribution to Augustine studies. Fox's case for the Confessions being written rapidly during Lent and Easter 397 as Augustine recovers from illness and anticipates episcopal responsibility seems a convincing one and, if accepted, will surely alter the way in which we read them.

Just occasionally, Lane Fox slips up. His numbering of the Psalms is a little erratic, sometime sticking to modern convention, sometimes using the Fourth Century numbering. This leads to The Lord is My Shepherd being referred to both as Psalms 22 and 23, which can be a little confusing. He is right that St Paul refers himself as a slave of God but when Augustine uses this term he is not taking Paul's mantle on for himself, Paul in Romans 6 refers to all baptised Christians under this term.

This said, the book is full of new and strange details that will (for better or worse) stick in the reader's mind. Who knew that monks were allowed one wet dream every four months, or that farting was an important part of Manichaean spirituality? As for the supposed events of a Manichaean sacred meal, I will never look at a multi-seed loaf in quite the same way again.

[Nick Spencer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Would have made a good 300 page book. As it stands, too detailed, frankly dull in large tracts.
Augustine comes across as intellectually very curious and wide ranging but also largely unpersuasive in most of what he writes (RLF clearly thinks so) with a distinctly unhealthy and obsessive attitude to sex, presumably aided by a oppressively attentive mother, with real Oedipal issues going on there. Mind you, compared to Jerome, who seems somewhere between a repressed narcissist and an outright shit, Augustine seems a model of sanity and good judgment.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an exhaustive story, although a bit of a slog as a read. Lane Fox likes his structural conceits very much - seeing Augustine's life in a triptych with the (kind of) contemporaneous Libanius and Synesius; seeing whether Augustine's life is a series of conversions on the way to the Confessions. These approaches are fairly illuminating but the author seems a bit too pleased with them, and worse when he goes for a while without mentioning one or other of his binding themes, he suddenly reminds us (and himself) of them with a bit of shoe-horning. Nevertheless, the insights into Augustine's many twists on the road to his masterpiece are many. Fox is particularly good at exploring the whys and wherefores of Manicheanism, and there's also a decent overview of the Donatists. He makes some bold claims - that the concept of original sin is based on a misreading of a Latin translation of Paul; that Augustine's prime movers in writing the Confessions are an accusation of sexual impropriety and a very bad case of piles; that the Confessions were written as the closing phase of an astonishing and very compressed burst of writing ending in AD397. The book never really decides whether it is a biography, a critical study, a series of comparative lives or a collection of academic papers readjusting some views and timescales. A bit of a mess, therefore, but with lots worth reading.

[Charles Haywood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most of us, or so I like to think in order to feel better about myself, steer away from actually reading St. Augustine. We know that he is an intellectual giant and one of the handful of core, key thinkers of Christianity, but everything he has to say seem so dense, and wasn’t he the mean proto-Calvinist who thought unbaptized infants go straight to Hell? Not to mention that, after all, it was all so long ago and far away. Like a lot of people, I own several works by Augustine, but mostly to show my erudition, not for, you know, actual reading. But after completing Robin Lane Fox’s “Augustine: Conversions to Confessions,” I think I’m inspired, or at least impelled, to sit down, concentrate, and read some of Augustine’s works. Assuming the feeling doesn’t pass, I think that’s exactly what I’ll do.

This is a theological biography of Augustine. That may seem like a tautology—since Augustine was a theologian, what else would a biography of him be? But he was also a bishop, a contemplative, and before all that, an indifferently religious worldly striver and a devotee of a peculiar heresy/religion, Manicheism, which this book taught me was vastly more complex, and vastly more bizarre, than I had known. Thus, any particular biography of Augustine might not engage fully with Augustine’s theology, but this one does. Given Augustine’s voluminous output and huge range of thought, this is not a full history of that theology, much less an explication of it, but rather a view of the man’s life viewed largely through his theology.

It’s a very good view of that life, and even more impressive when you realize that Fox is an atheist, something he mentions in passing, but which he does not emphasize, and which mostly does not color his explication of, or appreciation for, Augustine’s theology. The exception is more than one blunt claim that any belief that the Old Testament predicted the Gospel is “entirely false” because that’s “how historians consider [that claim] nowadays.” Using that yardstick, what atheist historians think, seems not very relevant to the truth of any part of Christianity. In any case, the book covers Augustine’s life only up until he wrote his “Confessions,” which Fox dates to being completed in 398 A.D. (apparently there is disagreement about this among Augustine scholars). Therefore, other than a few references, Fox does not cover the decades of Augustine’s later life as Bishop of Hippo, much of his writing, or his death.

Naturally enough, given that “Augustine” is a theological biography, it’s very dense, and it’s very long. Unless you are keenly interested in Christian theology, this is not likely to be a book that holds all that much interest for you. It is not filled with titillating descriptions of Augustine’s sex life—most references to sex are to a lack of it. Nor is it filled with titillating descriptions of pagan sex lives, either. In fact, the only thing titillating is several, vaguely creepy references to “not feeling the softness of a woman.” I would have felt better without those references. But, luckily, I am keenly interested in Christian theology, and I also am interested in the late Roman Empire, an underserved era in which Fox is an expert, so this book held a lot of interest for me.

From various phrasing that Fox uses, it’s evident that in the subculture of Augustine scholars, there is quite a bit of dispute about the details. Many of these disputes seem to center around the dating of various events in Augustine’s life; others revolve around the reasons why one thing or another happened, such as Augustine’s movements within Italy, or back to North Africa. Much of this seems like inside baseball, and lends the book a slightly stilted academic air in some parts. This is compounded, or at least emphasized, by an overt attack in the Introduction upon the former Librarian of the Bodleian Library, Sarah Thomas, for “breaking . . . the carefully planned link between pagan and Christian worlds which had underlain its lower reading rooms productively for many years. Research into Augustine now means crawling on hands and knees to find essential journals in a sub-basement, while the outer building publicizes newly build access points for the disabled.” We are all familiar with the virtue signaling project of exalting the supposedly disempowered at the expense of excellence, so I certainly sympathize, but it is a bit odd to see such an attack in the middle of a set of thanks and dedications to others.

Fox not only directly examines Augustine’s life and career, but views it through and against the life and career of two rough contemporaries who shared certain similarities: Synesius, a upper class scion and disciple of Hypatia of Alexandria, who like Augustine ended his life as a North African bishop, and Libanius, a Sophist pagan philosopher who spent most of his life in Antioch, who was a friend of the Emperor Julian the Apostate, as well as the teacher of St. John Chrysostom. These men pop in and out of the narrative, with Fox using them as foils to illustrate points about Augustine, many of them relating to how unique his path was, even among committed Christians. All three men began on a traditional track of oratory and philosophy, and ended at various points along the religious spectrum, in theory and practice. This framing both provides interesting insight and keeps the book moving along, where it might otherwise become overwhelming if it merely focused on Augustine.

The basic organization of the book is as a chronological history of Augustine’s life until 398 A.D., which at the same time focuses a great deal on his inner life and spiritual development, mostly through the prism of the Confessions (which after all are autobiographical), as well as through various other writings, including letters and other informal writings. Fox manages to give a thorough flavor of the different places Augustine spent time—Thagaste, where he was born; Carthage; Rome; Milan (with St. Ambrose); then back to North Africa, to Hippo. In each place, Augustine’s philosophy continued to develop, ranging from Christian-tinged classical philosophy; through Neoplatonism; to Manicheism; to baptized Christianity (though Augustine always believed firmly in Christ); to fully engaged (and then some) Christianity. Nearly as important to the narrative are Augustine’s close friends and other interlocutors, with whom he engaged in the development of his thought and practice, many of whom are described in interesting detail, such that they seem like real people, not just historical cardboard cutouts.

To me, one of the most interesting parts of the book was a great deal of information about the Manichees, who are commonly referred to as a Christian heresy, but whose beliefs are radically unconnected to anything resembling Christianity today. Mani was a Mesopotamian born in the early Third Century into a Christian sect, who created a syncretic dualist religion, revolving around the Kingdom of Light as opposed by the Kingdom of Darkness, both eternal and uncreated. Mani thought he was the Holy Spirit and he had a “Twin,” a heavenly interlocutor, who communicated truths to him. Orthopraxy in Manicheism consisted of practices designed to collect Light supposedly fragmented into the world, such that the Light could be ascended to the Moon, there collected and transmitted to the Sun and thence back to the Kingdom of Light, during which the Moon waned until it filled up with Light again. The basic mechanism of this was for the Manichee Elite, the Elect, to liberate the Light by eating foods considered rich in Light, only certain fruits and vegetables, prepared ritually by the Manichee Hearers, the initiates, and to avoid practices that kept Light bound. Certain Jewish and Christian doctrines are visible, but very dimly. Sins were less the individual’s personal responsibility but actions of the Kingdom of Darkness within him, to be combatted by adhering to the Light through ritual. Eventually Mani was killed by the king of Persia, whereupon the faith was spread by missionary work throughout Asia, including to China, where it remained modestly popular until the Middle Ages, though it was stamped out further west much earlier.

Fox accurately characterizes Mani’s theology as “more like “Star Wars” than [our] own Christianity.” It has an endless series of demigods, demons, angels, and other actors, all populating a bizarre universe where, for example, the firmament is the stretched skin of flayed demons defeated in battle. Augustine was a devout Manichee, though a Hearer, not an Elect, for nearly ten years. He used his oratorical and intellectual talents to convert others, as he did later to spread Christianity. Fox rejects the idea that Augustine was in any way a crypto-Manichee, but does see certain elements of Augustine’s thought being formed in reaction to Manicheism.

Fox also examines, although not with the intensity and depth of the Manichees, the Donatists, an undoubtedly Christian but heretical sect dominant in North Africa, who (among other beliefs) held that sacraments were not valid if the priest administering them was not in a state of grace. The Donatists had arisen during the persecutions of the Emperor Diocletian, when many priests knuckled under to the state, in particular by handing over their copies of the Scriptures to the authorities to be destroyed. The Donatists were those who did not, and their approach was similar to that of the also-heretical Novationists, who denied the efficacy of repentance to those who had recanted the Faith. Much of Augustine’s combat with the Donatists took place after the events of this book, while Augustine’s adherence to Manichaeism took place in his earlier life and was also much more important in his personal theological development. Thus, the Donatists occupy a less prominent place in this book.

Fox covers not just Augustine’s theological development, but what might be called his mystical development as well. He starts with elements of the Neoplatonism of Plotinus, relating to “turning inwards and passing beyond thought” to elevate one’s mind, until a “vision fills one’s eyes with light, [which] does not make one see something else by it, but the light itself is what one sees.” This progression to foretaste of what is in essence the Beatific Vision is at least potentially available to all who form their minds appropriately; it is the possible fruit of contemplation, in the trained-but-passive Josef Pieper sense, not in the sense of active struggling to reach the desired point. Augustine reached that point three times, and left detailed impressions which have fascinated generations of Christian readers, and Fox as well. Moreover, the metaphor of ascent derived from this process becomes important in the “Confessions,” where it is used as a framework for much of the book.

Augustine also preached a great many sermons to the local populace, mostly in Hippo, a large number of which seem to have survived, surprisingly, and they are still being uncovered. These are dense expositions, frequently revolving around subtle and complex allegories Augustine found in the Scriptural passages for the day. Augustine, like all the Church fathers, was very focused on Biblical exegesis, in contrast to the stereotype Protestants like to spread about, that before the Reformation the Bible was ignored. He focused heavily on the Psalms and on the writings of St. Paul, with an “insistence that scripture has a multiplicity of meanings, no one of which can be upheld as the right one so long as each is consistent with God’s Truth.” These sermons sound very interesting, and may be more approachable then the “Confessions” or other longer works of Augustine.

While Fox extensively discusses the “Confessions,” the (untutored) reader only gets a fragmentary picture of that famous work—he gets the famous stories of stealing pears, of conversion, and so on, and he gets an explanation of the work’s structure, but the work itself never takes complete shape in the reader’s mind. This is not necessarily Fox’s fault, since this is a biography, not an exegesis of a difficult and complex work. It helps those interested in further study that the glittering Sarah Ruden has recently published a new translation of Augustine’s “Confessions;” I have a copy and haven’t read it yet—but now I have a place to start when it’s time!

I don’t think this is the best biography to read if you are just dipping into Augustine (although it’s the first I read). That honor seems, by common agreement, to go to a book I have not read: Peter Brown’s “Augustine of Hippo,” recently re-issued in a forty-fifth anniversary edition with new supplementary material by the author. Fox refers repeatedly to this book with glowing admiration, including as “a work of genius.” But this book, Fox’s book, is still a very good book, which (surprisingly, in some ways) manages to retain the reader’s interest throughout, probably because of the framing choices made by Fox, along with his cogent and direct writing style.

[Melora · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent supplement to Peter Brown's Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, focusing more narrowly than Brown's book on the period of Augustine's “conversions,” from approximately 372, when he “became fired with the love of 'wisdom' on encountering Cicero's Hortensius to his final conversion (according to Fox) to celibacy and renunciation of earthly ambition in 386 in the garden in Milan. (Fox clarifies his use of the word “conversion” as follows...

“a conversion requires a decisive change whereby we abandon a previous practice or belief and adopt exclusively a new one. It involves a 'turning which implies a consciousness that the old way was wrong and the new is right'.... I do not restrict conversions to changes from one religion to another. Conversions are possible within one and the same religious commitment, as historians of early and medieval Christianity recognize.”

Actually, Augustine's final conversion only takes us up to page 294, with the remaining 268 pages concerned with his conversions of others, and the experiences and developments in his thought that led the writing of his Confessions. In addition to Augustine and Christianity and its competition in the Roman world, Fox broadens the picture by looking at the lives of two other men, comparable to Augustine in education and experience, who help place Augustine's words and actions in the context of his world.

“Modern readers find it hard to remember that much of it [the vividness with which Augustine lays his past before God] may have been less startling in the context of its time. I will therefore present it against two near-contemporaries' lives. My aim is not to write a biography of all three persons, but to place Augustine, with the Confessions in his hand, as the central panel in a triple set of sketches, like a triptych on a medieval Christian altar. On the left side stands a sketch of his older contemporary Libanius, casting a look of profound disapproval up at Augustine, not least because he himself was a pagan and a committed Greek teacher, one who detested Latin and the technical skill of shorthand. On the right side, looking up with tempered adoration, is a sketch of his younger Greek-speaking contemporary Synesius, a Christian, a bishop and a fellow lover of philosophy.

The lives of Libanius and Synesius do not overlap with all of Augustine's early career, but they help to bring out aspects of it, his social class and the demands which it imposed on him, the pressures of his schooling and his worldly ambitions, his relations with close family members and the ideals of friendship which he projected onto those around him. Like Augustine, Libanius and Synesius wrote about ascents to a divine presence. More mundanely, they illustrate the social perils of travel abroad to great cities, followed by a return, like Augustine's, to a home town. They address their own and others' sexual lives in ways which contrast with Augustine's. They also illumine the bitterness which appointments to prominent jobs could ignite, especially, as ever, in a Christian church.”

Fox does not spend a huge amount of time with these two, bringing them in periodically to cast light on Augustine's experiences and choices, but I found their presence helpful.

Fox's non-Christian perspective adds a useful objectivity to this narrative. He doesn't feel obliged to point out where Augustine is headed in the right direction and where he's not, and his expertise on pagan religion and Manichaeism adds tremendously to his presentation of how Augustine's thought differed from and built on other ideas current in his time. Also, if you've ever wondered exactly how Manichaeism differed from catholic Christianity, look no further! Fox explores this in great, great detail. Speaking of detail, this is probably the place for me to mention that this is a very detail-oriented book. Shadings of belief, minutiae of theological quarrels, in-depth consideration of Manichaean practices, etc. did occasionally become a bit much for me, but, in fairness to Fox, I “read” this with my ears (thanks to my friend Nicole for this expression!) while walking a lively young golden retriever, so readers who are better focused might well not have this issue. Anyway, given the length of the book and the ideas under discussion, Fox really does an excellent job. His explanation of the development of Augustine's ideas on free will, grace, and predestination is notably clear, and, while recognizing how disconcerting and unattractive some of Augustine's views on celibacy and perfectionism will be to modern readers, Fox nevertheless manages to render him, on the whole, an admirable and appealing figure.

I'll conclude with Fox's transition, in Chapter 21, from focusing on Augustine's conversions to examining his confessions, as this encapsulates his themes far better than my words could.

”So far, we have followed Augustine's memories with a constant eye on his conversions. There have been three, to philosophy, to celibacy and within Christianity to the supposedly 'true Christianity' preached by Mani. Conversion has been the obvious theme to pursue in his early life because he himself looks back on it in terms of a turning from and towards God. It is also the theme which makes him special for modern historians. He is the only early Christian who has told us in detail about his conversions. They are not conversions to Christianity from non-Christian belief. They have emerged as conversions away from rhetoric, worldly ambition, and sex.
After his decision in the garden many modern scholars continue to look for yet more conversions and make them a guiding theme in their accounts of the following years. Augustine continued to try to convert others, but in my view he underwent no more conversions himself. However, he is also special for being the author of a masterpiece, the Confessions. Confessing, therefore, is the thread which I will trace in the next eleven years until this masterpiece's beginning. Gradually, he will assemble in his mind the pieces which enable him to confess in a novel way. If he had confessed his sins to God after coming indoors from the garden, his prayer would have sounded very different. Eleven years later, he had written on deep questions of free will and grace, sin, faith and predestination, questions which were to become central parts of his legacy to Christian thinking. They are also the themes with which Luther, Calvin, and many others would engage through knowledge of his writings and which would earn him his status as a Doctor of the Catholic Church. They are a far cry from his days as Milan's Libanius, 'selling lies for a living.'”

Four and a half stars, recommended for readers with a real interest in early Christianity, and especially those who have already read Peter Brown's book on Augustine and want to dig a bit deeper.

[Illiterate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fox puts Augustine in intellectual (eg. Manichaeism, Neoplatonism) and social (eg. Libanius and Synesius as contrasting lives) contexts.

[Teo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating look into one of the most significant influencers in Western history. To help us understand Augustine the author compares him with two contemporaries. Libanius is a pagan rhetorician in Antioch, Syria. Synesius is a Libyan-born bishop, educated in Alexandria. I was especially intrigued by him. He seems adamant about demonstrating that a sincere follower of Jesus, a bishop no less, can be married with children and doesn't have to join a monastery and be celibate. He likes to hunt. He is involved in his community. Fox does a great job of showing the influences of Platonism and Manichaeism on Augustine. Now I will have to reread the Book of Concord and the debates about the bondage and freedom of the will. Those all have Augustine in the background.

Also very interesting was the realization that there had developed a spiritual ranking system in the church by that time with celibate men/women at the top, followed by celibate widows, followed by married people. Well, no wonder being celibate was such a big deal, and no wonder they were forced into a position on the Virgin Mary's status! Fascinating comments on the entrance to Muslim communities with the gospel because of their differing views on Mary's motherhood/celibacy. We still create these pecking orders today in different ways, sometimes even with good motives.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an extraordinary and engrossing biography of the most towering figure in western/Christian thought. I remember one of my seminaries professors remarking dryly once that whenever he had encountered a bishop he had never felt "in receipt of illumination." The same could certainly not be said of the Bishop of Hippo, who wrote an incredible number of texts, many of which stand today, 17 centuries later, as essential reading for believers and all who seek to understand Christian theology. While Lane Fox makes the life of the mind the riveting focus of much of the book, he doesn't neglect Augustine's bodily life, noting the way everything from dentistry to sexuality played a part in his understanding of grace. There's even an exceedingly bizarre and bawdy incident involving a loaf of bread that might make even certain presidential candidates blush. The true accomplishment is the way Lane Fox conveys Augustine's fortitude and originality and insight as a reader, both of classic works by Virgil and the scriptures that changed his life.

[Deborah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Michael Page presents an impeccable narration of Robin Lane Fox’s Augustine: Conversions to Confessions. Augustine, product of a marriage between a Christian mother and a pagan father, is presented alongside contemporary figures Synesius, a Christian, and Libanius, a pagan. His multicolored life is expounded from a youth to adulthood with all its persuasions. Page recounts Conversions to Confessions in a clean, clear and concise manner, though the material is academic at times, this should prove to be an easily understood rich portraiture of the influence Augustine had on Christian thought and belief via philosophies and theology of this time in Church history.

[Taymaz Azimi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t really understand how (or why) this book has received such positive reviews from the media. More than half the content is identical to Augustine’s Confessions, without using other sources (except for those few instances of using Augustine’s sermons). The comparisons with the lives of Libanius and Synesius were seldom illuminating or interesting (if anything they made the narrative dull if not cumbersome). The book offered no new insight on Augustine’s life or the place he holds in the development of human culture. It is much more likely for people to appreciate this gigantic figure if they read Confessions (an absolute joy to read), instead of this book.
I gave the book a two-star review (instead of one) only because of the chapters on Manicheanism, which is seldom explained in any accessible way to the general audience.

[Nathan Bell · Rating 4 out of 5]

"For Your mercies’ sake, O Lord my God, tell me what You are to me. Say to my soul: 'I am your salvation.' So speak that I may hear, O Lord; my heart is listening; open it that it may hear You, and say to my soul: “I am your salvation.”

These are the thoughts of a Christian convert in North Africa who had lived the life of a sinner. Augustine had not always been a saint- in fact, he had lived a promiscuous life with two concubines and fathered a child with one of them. He had spent nine years in the heresy of Manichaeism and had led others astray. He had lied to his mother and brushed off her pleas for his conversion. Yet later in life, in his long series of books called the "Confessions," the sin that he considered worst of all was stealing pears from a neighbor's tree. Sin, he said, was a free choice in the human heart that resulted from the original sin of Adam in the Garden.

Saint Augustine was born in 354 AD in Thagaste, (Now in Algeria). His father was a pagan named Patricius, and his mother was a devout Christian named Monica. Contrary to popular belief, Christianity had been in Africa centuries before European missionaries took it there in the 15th century. Islam did not even exist until nearly three centuries later. As an extension of the Roman Empire, there were gladiatorial games in North African arenas where men would kill each other. There were even students under one teacher who would fight with students of another teacher. There was also plenty of slavery. Some men had wives, some had concubines, and some had both. It might even be against the law for a man in one class to marry a concubine beneath his class, and so they would take another. This may be why Augustine did not marry his concubine even after she bore him a son.

Augustine's family did not have enough money to send him to school, and so they found a man named Romanianus, who agreed to pay for his education in Carthage. While Augustine was not always interested in learning, he was intrigued with Virgil and especially Cicero, who spoke of 'wisdom.' There were bibles to read in Latin, but Augustine was not impressed with what he read. Despite his own behavior, he was shocked to read about human behavior in the Bible. He fell in with a rough crowd, and a group of them robbed a neighbor's peach tree just for the thrill of it. It was sin just for the sake of sin, and that is what made it so terrible. However, one group of religious people appealed to him. The followers of Mani claimed to have a secret revelation. They were led by an inner circle of the Elect, who abstained from sex, meat, and pleasure, while their followers in the outside circle could do those same things, as long as they provided for the Elect. Mani claimed to be the Holy Spirit and said that Jesus did not create the earth himself, nor did he really die. The purpose of life, he said, was to liberate light particles from darkness. Catholic Christians to Mani were 'Semi-Christians.' Soon Augustine believed that Manichaean logic surpassed all others.

When he returned to Thagaste, instead of lodging with his believing mother, he lodged with Romanianus. Then disaster struck: one of his closest friends died. He had converted his friend to Manichaeism, yet before he died, his friend had been baptized a Christian against his will. Yet his friend had not apologized for his Christian conversion. Manichaeism offered little comfort at the death of Augustine's friend. He still had questions that even the best teachers in this false religion couldn't answer. All this time, Monica had been praying for Augustine's conversion. A bishop prophesied that before she died, her son would convert. But this would take a while. Augustine decided to head to Rome where his speaking ability could make him money teaching rhetoric. Monica tried to follow him, but he lied to her and left her in Africa. Little did he know that she would follow him.

It didn't take him long to learn that students in Rome were no different than students in Carthage. They might pretend to listen and learn, but before their tuition was due, they would vanish. He also did not like being an orator for political leaders because they were known to lie. Then he found a teaching job in Milan. At the time, Rome was ruled by a boy king who was under Empress Justina, a follower of the Arian heresy. One man who refused to follow the Arian heresy was the local bishop and governor named Ambrose. Ambrose was not afraid to die for his faith- even when Justine sent in troops to make his church a part of the Arian heresy. He knew the scriptures, and through persuasion was able to win the soldiers over to his side. Monica had followed Augustine to Milan and began listening to the sermons of Ambrose. Unlike the Manichaeans, he believed that the Old and New testaments fit together. Besides theology, he knew the philosophies of Plotinus and introduced Augustine to Neoplatonism. The author of this book seems to think that Christianity copied off Plato. But the fact is that while Plato and Plotinus were not necessarily Christians, their philosophies included parts of God’s truth. Neoplatonism also worked well to explain Christian thought.

Due to financial reasons, Augustine broke up with his concubine. She vowed never to love another man and spent the rest of her life in chastity. He then became engaged to a wealthier woman and took a second concubine. While he had once prayed to God- 'give me chastity, but not yet’- it was clear that lust still controlled him. Manichaeism had enabled his worst habits, and he would spend the rest of his life denouncing them. In the meantime, his plan was to retire to the countryside and contemplate philosophy with his friends. But there was little peace. He went into the garden by himself and wept. As legend has it, he heard the voice of a child say, "take up and read." A friend had introduced him to books written by the apostle Paul, who was a great Christian and had lived a celibate life. Besides Paul, there were other celibate Christians like Jerome who were well-known. Christian perfectionism suddenly became appealing. By denying himself sex, he could focus on God- and his views on celibacy were still far more moderate than those of Jerome, who even had his own group of celibate women followers. Augustine decided to break off his engagement and was baptized by Ambrose as a Christian. For so many years Monica had prayed, and now her prayer was answered.

Mother and son then supposedly had a religious experience together in a garden in Ostia where they saw into their own hearts. When she died shortly thereafter, he did not seem to mourn, and many would criticize this. Due to his views against mourning for departed saints, political turmoil, and his desire to retire back to Africa, he had to leave without formally mourning his mother. His plan was to start another commune with other Christians. But upon reaching Africa, his son died, and the Christians in Hippo made him a bishop. He did not want to be a bishop. He did not want responsibility and the distraction from his meditations, but there was work to be done and heresies to fight. A local Manichaean named Fortunatus wanted to debate, and Augustine soundly defeated him. There had been a split between the Catholics and the Donatists. He rebuked them almost as if they were fallen Christians and accused them as being dividers of God's church. But mostly he took to writing in his free time. He would write over 1000 works. Manichaeism was declared a capital offense in the Roman empire, but since it still existed in North Africa along with many other heresies, Augustine decided to write about his experiences as warning to all who had fallen into heresy. One of his writings was a series of books called the "Confessions."

The most famous autobiography of the time was probably by a man named Libanius in Antioch. He was a pagan who had lived a prominent life and had had many accusations leveled against him. In his long oratory, Libanius credited 'fortune' for his successes, defended himself against accusations, and slandered his accusers. Augustine's confessions would be nothing like this. Instead of crediting the gods of fortune, he credited the grace of Jesus. Instead of boasting of his successes, he wrote 9 books about what he 'once was.' He wrote about his deepest regrets, his sexual immorality, his heresy, his disillusionment with worldly success, and even his own ignorance. He did not consider himself worthy of praise or of God’s love. The remainder of the Confessions were about his conversion, his continued struggles, and the changes God had made in his life. While scholars debate about how long it took him to write the Confessions, the author of this book thinks that it took 6 weeks due to the help of scribes and Augustine's knack for rapid writing. He was in pain when he wrote. His condition may have been similar to hemorrhoids, and it made it hard to sit or stand. He likely finished the Confessions 10 years after his conversion. Around the same time, Ambrose died back in Europe. Some compared Ambrose to Elijah and said he had defeated his Jezebel- Empress Justina.

In 410 AD, barbarians invaded Rome and the empire began to crumble. Some blamed the Christians. Some looked on in horror as the city they thought was eternal crumbled. It seemed as if it was the end of the world. It was around this time that Augustine composed "City of God" as a defense of Christianity and a vision of what God's eternal city would be like. Rome was not his home. Rome was not all Christians had to look forward to. The physical world as they knew it would disappear and be reshaped by others. After Rome fell, North Africa was invaded too, and the birth of Muhammad saw former Roman territory overrun by Islam. But Christianity lived on. Augustine's ideas set the tone for the Middle Ages, and even today critics of Christianity still consider Augustine among the greatest and most influential of thinkers. His views on predestination and celibacy cause controversy. He believed that man had free will, but he also believed that our free will was corrupted by the Fall and by our sin nature. He believed in predestination centuries before John Calvin. He did not believe that sex was a sin, but he believed that the celibate life was superior for church leaders like him. Maybe this helped inspire many priests to live a celibate life like him, and history has proven that celibate priests and pastors can easily get themselves in trouble. He was not necessarily a ‘nice’ guy. Debating heretics, dodging false accusations, and defending the church sometimes makes Christian leaders more like lions than lambs. Yet they are the shepherds of God’s flock. We can not only learn from Augustine, we can learn from the fall of Rome. Like Rome, our world will not last forever. This physical world is not our home. For believers, the eternal city of God is in heaven. Jesus is our King, and He is our hope.

[Robert Stevenson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written by Robin Lane Fox

This is a biography on the great Catholic thinker Saint Augustine. The book examines the years from Augustine's youth (born 354 AD) until he started writing his masterpiece "Confessions" (circa 394 AD). There is maybe three pages of post confession historical analysis in the book which was a time when his contributions to Caltholic Church where greatest in terms of centralizing its doctrine and practice and ending various Calthotic agnostic cults.

Augustine grew up in Thagaste in northern Africa (now Souk Ahras, Algeria) and his father died while he was young, his father converted to Christianity on his deathbed. His mother was a very pious Christian woman who had big plans for her sons. Of Monnica's children Augustine showed the greatest promise when he was young and a fellow rich merchant, Romanianus, of the neighborhood, sponsored Augustine's education in Carthage and later in Rome and Milan.

Initially Augustine was captured by the philosophical works of the Plutonists in his early education. This included Cicero, Pluto, Plotinus, Virgil and others. He enjoyed their logical based arguments, the deduction based thinking, the skepticism and the rhertoric based speaking. Cicero's Hortensius (a lost book which taught happiness could be found in the study of philosophy) was particularly influential. Later he came across Plotinus works and fell in love with the romantic perspective of philosophy and Plotinius's stages of enlightenment. Ultimately he secured a public speaking role in Milan fo the governor. However, he felt he was always selling lies in his working career life and he seeked a greater calling. In a moment in a garden in Milan, Augustine had a divine inspiration and began his conversion to Universal Cathlotism.

Prior to his first conversion Augustine was a follower of an agnostic Christian cult called the Manicheans. The Manicheans believed in a sun light based Christianity one of darkness and light interruptions of heaven and earth as taught 75 years earlier by their prophet Mani. The Manicheans embraced the New Testament but dismissed the Hebrew bible aka Old Testament. Augustine converted followers to the Machee ways early in his life but begins to struggle with Manichee doctrines particularly under the light of his philosophical studies.

Two key ideas that turned him away from Manicheans were the concept of God's knowledge and the creation of evil including a Manichiean perspective that implies God is corruptible and a second idea regarding personal responsibility and free will. His thinking here would eventually lead into the concept of original sin and man's fall with Adam and a belief in interrupting your life via the lenses of scripture. With his serious doubts of the Manicheans while in Milan under the tutelage of Saint Ambrose, Augustine he is baptized and still later in life back in North Africa he becomes a priest.

This was his first great conversion, turning from the Manichaeans. He has two additional conversions but neither is change from a life he rejects but more of an embracing of Celibacy and Priesthood. There after Augustine writes a series of book pointing out failures in the thinking of the Manicheans. And ultimately after winning a great public debate against Fortuanious in Carthage, which also including his books bring him greater respect and ultimately an appointment as co-bishop.

Augustine continues to write books on how to be a good priest and sets up monastery for monks. And slowly comes to the his master work "Confessions" and a life as a slave of god and his love.

The author is quite comprehensive in his research, but at times he drifts off into more sexual innuendo and analyisis of things less certain. Either way an atheistic perspective does give a rounded understanding of Saint Augustine's life. I enjoyed the book. It was interesting reading about Augustine intellectual development both philosophical and spiritual. Although later in life he loses interest in the Greek philosophers and looks to scripture for understanding his meaning and purpose, taking the stages of intellectual life discovered among the Platonists and improving on it and using the framework to understand the stages of spiritual development.

At the same time in history, Rome is about to fall, Saint Jerome is translating ancient Hebrew texts to remove the translation errors in the Bible from the Greek to Latin translations. And you also see additional agnostic cults sects like Donatist struggling agains the new emerging Universal Cathlotism. Saint Augustine writing will ultimately shape Saint Thomas Aquistas and also lead to the Luther and Calvin breaks with Cathlotism later in history.

[Marks54 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will note at the start that I am not a deeply religious person, but Robinn Lane Fox has written a book that is fantastic - engaging, erudite, interesting, and many more positives than I can think of right now.

"Augustine: Conversions to Confessions" is a biography of the first fifth years or so of Augustine of Hippo - St. Augustine. Augustine was arguably one of the two or three most influential of the fathers of the Roman Catholic Church who intellectually influenced most of the intellectual debates up through the Reformation and continues to exert influence today. Augustine is also the author of perhaps the most famous autobiography (or sorts) ever - his Confessions, which were written in the years following 397. This book is well known as a long, detailed, and highly structured prayer that also recounts Augustine's life up through his baptism and ordination. It is also a very honest book and a nearly unique account of an individual's progress through a series of conversions or "turnings" away from the world, carnality, fame and career success, and fortune and the allure of the material world of the late Roman Empire. Along with writing his Confessions, Augustine was also a philosopher, theologian, rhetorician, and liver of a successful and world life. He was a prodigious writer, leaving a record of work that is in excess of all but a few scholars today - and this was before typewriters, computers, or social media.

The key intuition for this book is the wish to provide a biography of Augustine from his key conversions to the time when he actually wrote his Confessions. The point is that Augustine was a work in progress and that the accounts in his Confessions represent developments in his thinking since the time of his conversions - around 386. How did Augustine come to understand his life and faith so well 11 years after the fact when he could not have produced such a work right at the time of conversion? It is hard to begin to suggest all the material that Mr. Fox needed to master to produce this book. Readers should be prepared to dive deep into Roman history (about 150 years after the recent book SPQR leaves off), Neoplatonist philosophy, Manichaeism, the Donatist heresy (and several other heresies), and lots of other areas of interest. Have Google nearby to check on names, dates, and old places in antiquity. It would not hurt to have some familiarity with traditional church doctrine.

The author is very smart, very learned, and a wonderful writer. He also is skillful in making this book work as a biography. For example, Fox combines a recounting of Augustine's life with the lives of two of his contemporaries, to suggest the ways in which Augustine's life was similar or different to those of other elite orators and officials in the later empire. These additional biographies - of Libanius and Synesius are both fascinating and the comparison is carried on throughout this long book.

A downside of this book is that throughout they may arise a temptation to read some of Augustine's works that are mentioned in passing. Readers who have to read any Augustine should be prepared for some thick sledding, but at least it is not that expensive, since many works are available in free editions on Kindle.

I could go on, but lack the time. This was a really fine book about a fascinating man and written by a scholar who knows how to makes a life of late antiquity seem very accessible and even relevant to the problems of living today. That is not bad for one book - albeit a long one.

[Stan Murai · Rating 4 out of 5]

Augustine of Hippo is still very much part
of the creative imagination of artists, poets,
scholars, and theologians today. The popular
songwriter Bob Dylan recorded a song about him in
1967: "I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine, to bow his
head and pray." Many hundreds of books have been
written about him. The Oxford historian and
classisist scholar Robin Lane Fox has written
another one, covering his life from his birth
in 353 to the writing of his major work
Confessions, probably written in his
early 40's, Augustine's compelling account of
his past sins and conversion to Christianity,
an intriguing story even now after some
sixteen centuries.

Professor Robin Lane Fox provides some context for
understanding Augustine's life and work. He includes
the life stories of two of his near-contemporaries:
Synesius, a bishop, who was found of philosophy and
Libanius, a pagan Greek teacher of rhetoric. However,
as interesting as these two individuals may be, they
do not seem to have been personal acquaintances of
Augustine and are maybe not necessary or not very
relevant to knowing about Augustine.

In the fourth century, Catholicism was just one of
many religious or secular philosophers competing
for followers: Manichaeism, traditional Paganism,
splinter Christian groups like Donatism, all had
their appeal. And becoming an orthodox Christian
would not have necessarily been seen as an
entirely normal thing for a person to do, and
it could have even hindered the kind of successful
public career that the ambitious Augustine pursued
for much of his life.

Augustine was born in 354 CE and lived his early
life in Roman North Africa (now eastern Algeria).
Apparently he spoke Latin at home and in school;
he is said to have never acquired a full command
of Greek in spite of its requirement for education
and scholarship. He seems to have relied on poor
Latin translation of the Bible since the Vulgate
translation of Jerome, a contemporary and acquaintance
was not completely available yet as a standard.

Augustine's parents were neither poor nor wealthy.
His father Patrick was a landowner and remained a
pagan until baptized on his deathbed. Confessions
recalls a scene at a public bath when his father
notices his son's maturing sexuality at the age of 16.
But there is little mention of his father in his
autobiographical work; his mother Monica loomed
much larger in his life, largely because she was
a lifelong Christian who had harbored hopes that
her son would also become a baptized believer.

Augustine's teenage years are recounted in the
Confessions as decadent and worthless.
He seems to regret schooling during which he would
have studied Latin literature with some Greek,
rhetoric, which Augustine would later teach, and
dialectics (the art of logical argumentation). During
this time, he acquired a concubine at the age of 17,
a decision which was not in keeping with Catholic
teaching and the social path for future public
success. He would faithfully stay with her for
some fifteen years; she bore him a son, Adeodatus.
But her own name seems to be lost to us. Even so,
he was later persuaded to give her up in order to marry
a young girl selected for him, ten years old at the
time. Yet by the time she was twelve, the legal age
for marriage, he had given up sex for the life of a
celibate priest.

While a student at Carthage, Augustine became
familiar with the now lost work of Cicero Hortensius,
which inspired to to take a serious interest in philosophy.
He was thereafter motivated to seek wisdom and the
truth, wherever this path took him. After completing his
studies at Carthage, Augustine returned briefly to his
hometown of Thagaste to set up a school and became
a teacher. He later left once again for Carthage after a
close friend died, making his hometown unbearable, and
continued to teach there. It was at this time that Augustine
became a Manichee 'Hearer,' a class of believer less
exalted and demanding than the orthodox Manichee 'Elect',
who formed the nucleus of Manichaean cells, and were
committed to a missionary life of poverty and celibacy.
They were strict vegetarians, drank no wine, and were
forbidden even to harvest or prepare food, because
according to their teachings it was a kind of murder
to damage plants by harvesting them. The sect survived
because the Hearers incurred sin by preparing food, but
were released from sin by the prayers of the Elect who
ate it. It was taught that fragments of the divine which
were trapped in plants could be released when ingested
by the pure body of the Elect. The Hearers were also
allowed a wife or concubine, but were taught to avoid
procreation because it entraps more divine spirits
in matter.

Mani, a self-proclaimed third century Mesopotamian
prophet had developed a cosmology designed primarily
to address the paradox of the presence of evil in a
world created by God who is supposed to be good. Mani
claimed that God was not omnipotent, and that He was
involved in a constant struggle with an opposite force,
evil. This explained how evil could exist without God
willing it. Evil was held to be matter, encompassing
all sensory pleasures (especially sex).

Manichaeism was a syncretic religion, which took
elements of religious traditions and philosophies
from many disparate sources: Mani himself is believed
to be of Jewish-Christian origin, but seemed to adopt
teachings from Jesus, Zoroaster, and the Buddha. At its
height it was practiced in areas of the Roman, Persian,
and Chinese empires, and seemed to take on the beliefs
of local faiths wherever it was practiced. Some say Mani
was even crucified for claiming to be the Paraclete
[the Holy Spirit as an advocate], who was supposed to
restore of the true teaching of Christ. Manichaeism
taught an odd blend of materialism and dualism in which
the world was dominated by two co-eternal and opposed
principles, one benevolent (Ormuzd: “light”), and one
the other malevolent (Ahriman: “darkness”). Yet the
Manichees seemed to believe that Christ was solely
spiritual, but within a material body, and did not
actually die on the cross. The Manichees were strongly
opposed to catholic Christianity, though they themselves
were sometimes regarded as a heretical Christian sect.

As a faithful Manichee, Augustine had several issues
with Christianity. First, his own materialism prevented
him from conceiving of God as an immaterial, transcendent
reality, imperceptible to the senses. Second, Augustine
had questions about the problem of evil, especially its
relationship to God. He asked: “Where is evil? What is
its origin? Where then does evil come from, if God made
all things and, because he is good, how did he create
evil? In his mind, Manicheans provided a better explanation
to the problem of evil through its dualism. And finally,
Augustine believed that while Christianity is based on faith,
Manichaeism was based on reason and, thus provided the
truth. Finding the truth was, after all, Augustine’s
main philosophical objective. The Manichee view
regarding a cosmic force of evil and strife in the
world (a type of fatalism and predestination) allowed
Augustine to justify his own sinful tendencies
(especially sexual) as actions beyond his personal
control.

Augustine was not unique among the large number of
cultivated, well-educated people attracted to
Manicaheism at that time. He regarded their texts
were as 'good Latin' and they were presented in
handsome volumes. Manichaeism was an impressive,
colorful faith with forceful, rhetorically convincing
arguments against Christianity and also an elaborate
cosmology. For some nine years, Augustine preferred the
well-worded Manichee explanations to the simple parables
of the Bible, which he thought simplistic and uneducated
(it did not help that the Latin Bible at that time was
a poorly translated unliterary work). Eventually however,
as he moved from Carthage to Rome to escape the rowdiness
of his students and later then on to Milan to escape those
who were cheating, he became increasingly suspicious of the
fantastic cosmology and esoteric laws of the Manichees.
Of particular concern were its conflicts with the new
science of astronomy, which was already able to predict
eclipses. His Confessions shows he highly disapproved
of astrology, so popular at the time and promoted by some
Manichees. After meeting Faustus, a Manichee wise man,
Augustine was convinced to explore more truthful forms
of belief. Though charming and articulate, Faustus could
not answer Augustine’s metaphysical and epistemological
objections to Manichaeism. Augustine came to view this
religious system as having deep philosophical flaws and,
therefore, unworthy of his commitment.

Neoplatonism, which enjoyed a small, erudite following,
soon came to replace Augustine's Manichee beliefs.
As a Manichee, Augustine held that evil had being as a
substance and that God is made of matter; when he became
a Neoplatonist, he changed his views. As a Neoplatonist,
and later a Christian, Augustine believed that evil is
the privation of good and that God is not material.
Perhaps more importantly, the emphasis on mystical
contemplation as a means to encounter God directly
or the One, found in the writings of Plotinus and
Porphyry, deeply influenced Augustine, who reports
at least two mystical experiences in his Confessions
which clearly follow a Neoplatonic model. According
to his own account of this important discovery of
'the books of the Platonists' in Confessions
Book 7, Augustine owes his conception of both God
and the human soul as incorporeal substance to Neoplatonism.

Augustine was particularly impressed by the Neoplatonic
solution to the problem of evil and by its striking
philosophical similarity to the Bible. The Bishop at Milan,
Ambrose, also had strongly influenced Augustine,
teaching him through sermons how to read allegorically
the apparently simple parables of the Bible. Ambrose was
also said to be a powerful rhetorician and orator, who
convinced him to accept the truth of Christianity.

Through careful study of religious and philosophical texts,
and after a long process of agonizing decisions, Augustine
finally committed himself to the church after a conversion
experience in his garden in Milan in July of 386. He was
baptized by Bishop Ambrose shortly afterward, and his
mother Monica died shortly after that. The burial of Monica
completes the chronological sequence covered by the
autobiographical sections of Confessions. Augustine
would not actually write the Confessions, however,
until some thirteen years later, only after returning once
again to Thagaste, this time to start a semi-monastic
community of believers.

A large body of works by Augustine himself, books,
sermons, and letters is reviewed by Professor Fox to
provide background for the Confessions. Fox's
own work is over five hundred pages long. This material
is useful for those interested in history of the
Roman Empire and early Christianity. And his work has
even won a distinguished Wofson History Prize (2016)
as an outstanding literary achievement in history
writing. He provides many insights into the life and
times of Augustine though some readers might wish for
a warmer, more personal account. Professor Fox is an
non-believer, which will disappoint some readers,
but not unusual for academic researchers. Most
Biblical scholars are also said to be atheists.
He seems prone to mentioning unusual facts whether
or not they are relevant for understanding Augustine:
he reveals that Augustine may have been suffering
from hemorrhoids while writing (actually dictating)
Confessions. Often lengthy works of any kind
were dictated to scribes who took everything down
in shorthand to be written out later. Many
interesting asides like this are in Fox's book.

[Phillip Hadden · Rating 2 out of 5]

The two stars are given because there is some great information in the book. I would start by saying if you want to read this book, one must at least have read Augustine's Confessions to be able to follow along with some of what Fox is asserting. After one reads Confessions and picks up this title, they will certainly see that much of Confessions is rehashed in this book. Of course, one could suspect this with the subtitle "Conversions to Confessions."

One of redeeming qualities of this book is its great explanation of Manichaeism and their belief system. It gives great insight to some of what Augustine is struggling with in Confessions particularly in Books 7-9 dealing with God's goodness and the problem with evil.

However, as the author admits being a non-Christian, the author is at times very subtle about his rejection of Christianity and at times more bold about it. For example, when Augustine decides to shed his Manichaeism belief, Fox mentions that it's odd that Augustine isn't skeptical of Christ. He also makes negative assertions to the dating/authorship of books in the Bible in accordance to historical criticisms of the modern age.

Although Fox mentions that Manichaeism seeks to push its way from Judaism, he doesn't seem to make a connection where this makes it influenced far more from Paganism. Fox fails to make this connection because the entire time his voice indicates one that thinks all religions are silly and therefore the same. In explaining the Manichaeism creation story with two opposing forces and light being scattered throughout the earth, Fox fails to see a connection from pagan creation stories like that of Mardurk the God of Light whose body is split into two and that all humans have dragons blood-- instead of light in Manichaeism. In fact, the Genesis creation story is a refutation from such stories of duality and explanation of evil.

Overall, the book reads more or less as a polemic against Judaic Christianity with the subject matter being Augustine.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aside from Jesus Christ (obviously) and the Apostle Paul there are very few figures in church history who can claim to have had such a wide impact on church thinking. Augustine is clearly one of those figures with his extensive writings throughout his long career and his debates with the Manichaean and Donatist cults of early church history. And few Christian writings have been as influential as his book Confessions. But his life and writings can be bewildering to modern readers. Thus, book is greatly appreciated and timely. Part biography and part literary critique, Mr. Fox writes about Augustine from his birth through his conversion in Milan in 386 A.D. to the writing of Confessions in 397 A.D. Through it all, Mr. Fox places Augustine in his time and is able to get into his head in a way that should be illuminating for all, both scholars and laymen alike. One of his methods of doing this is by comparing Augustine's life to some of his contemporaries, particularly one Libanius. This is a great move, but it is also a two-edged sword as Mr. Fox parallels their lives so much that you may forget who he is actually writing about, Augustine or Libanius. Plus the inordinate amount of time Mr. Fox does some times take to explain Augustine's thinking may also be a detriment to casual readers. I also found it strange that Mr. Fox would choose to end this biography in 397 A.D. when Augustine will live for another 33 years. While his epilogue does bring us to Augustine's death, I still found it strange that Mr. Fix would only go so far. While this book is dense and may not be for everyone, I highly recommend it people interested in Augustine, his writings and the history of the church in late antiquity.

[Justin Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was rather misled on this one: it's not so much a biography as a close reading of the Confessions, combined with some very nicely done, extremely fine-grained history. It isn't, though, all that much fun; the narrative bogs down in the detail; the comparisons between Augie and two other late-ancients don't really add all that much to the story; it's far too long; Fox has a dubious handle on theology.

On the upside, if you're a scholar or just really into detail, you will love the hell out of this book. It's easier to read than most academic work, but very careful and well-referenced. If you're studying Augustine, definitely read it. If you're just interested, you probably only need Brown's biography.

But it did make me want to (re-)read Augie's works, which is surely the ultimate purpose of books like this. So, well done.

[David Keith · Rating 1 out of 5]

A genuine expose of St. Augustine's life here in comparison to Synesius & Libanius coeds to the same Polentic philosophy and theological schooling, one a pagan, the other a Christian (Catholic) Bishop. Born in North Africa's Thagaste, St. Augustine has numerous touches of the light of God, and goes on to write his most famous work "The Confessions" Much like eavesdropping into a Christian's prayer to God we find all St. Augustine's faults as well as virtues directed toward heaven in a climax of spiritual ecstasy. This book by far is a survey of Augustine's true to life example of a 4th century thinker, philosopher and rhetorical communicator than most authors would allow. St. Augustine is shown in his true light. A great commentary to the great "Confessions".

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an ambitious book that does not disappoint in its depth of insight into Augustines life and faith journey. Thinking through the time/ eternity cohort is tempting enough but precious insights like the following are gifts throughout the book:

"At the end of Confessions, God explains to Augustine His relation to time and eternity....He knows exactly where his future lies: it awaits him in the future life of bliss, where love alone will persist, as his Soliloquies, ten years before had stated. Through this meditation, Augustine has been impelled by love. Love is the very 'weight' of his soul, drawing it, like other 'weights', to its place in the orderly universe."

I recommend

[Aagave · Rating 3 out of 5]

An impressively thorough biography is undermined by a flawed narrative structure, and some non sequitur assertions with confidence by the author on his answers to of some historical questions.
The book is strongest in its early exploration of Augustine's intellectual journey, including an excellent explanation of just what Manicheanism was. It is weakest in its prose in these sections - often slow, turgid, and verbose - and in the latter sections when it explores how Augustine built his Christian sect after his intellectual journey.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Augustine is one of the intellectual founders of the Catholic Church and Christian thought. This book traces the years of his change from nonbeliever to Bishop, using his confessions as source material and comparing his path to two contemporaries, one a Christian Synesius, and the other a Pagan Libaneus.

I found his path from Manicheanism to Christianity intellectually opaque, but that is my failing as a person of no Christian faith, not Fox's as biographer.

[Ci]

Robin Lane Fox wrote the introduction to St. Augustine's Confession (Everyman's Library). This particular book, judging by its own introduction, seem to serve well to complement the original text in Confession. It is noted by the author that he does not share Augustine's faith, which may cast an interesting shade vis-a-vis authors with explicit and ardent Christian faith. I am currently reading this in conjunction with "The Confession". Notes to follow.

[Gabriela · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe if you have already read 10 books on Augustine this is interesting but I had trouble following the author through lots of 'details,' be them chronological or debates among historians,choke missing information on the basic writings of Augustine. tHe epilogue does finally get to some of these points...

[bibliotekker Holman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A heavy read that I picked up in audio and pushed a quarter of the way through. I may return to in print at some point. The author parallels the life of this most famous early Christian and late Roman with learned, well documented contemporaries from other parts of the Mediterranean world to give a full picture of Augustine and the world he lived in.

[A Ter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although at times this book can feel like it's drowning in detail, there is a handful of really interesting material covering the intellectual climate that shaped modern christianity -- the half-way there influences from manicheaism to zoroastrianism, that held similar beliefs.

[Herald van der Linde · Rating 4 out of 5]

History alive

This book not only allows you to make you feel as if you can walk around the towns where Augustine lived, it also shows in detail how one of the most influential thinkers of all times emerged.

[Teresa]

Inspiration to read: NYTBR Nov 22 2015. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/...

[Columba]

New biography of Augustine; 2015 Notable Book by the Economist and New York Times. Catherine

[Sebastian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fox, Robin Lane, Augustine: Conversions and Confessions (Penguin Books, 2016). Fox ontving voor deze biografie van de grote kerkgeleerde Augustinus (354-430) de Wolfson Prize for History. Een volledige biografie is het niet: het gaat Fox in de eerste plaats om het leven en het denken van Augustinus tot en met de publicatie van zijn imposante Geloofsbelijdenissen. Het is een sympathiek levensverhaal, dat meesterlijk wordt verteld. Bijzonder is ook dat er zo ontzettend veel bekend is over het leven van Augustinus, niet in de laatste plaats dankzij het biografische karakter van zijn vele werken. Augustinus wordt geboren in het Noord-Afrikaanse Thagaste, studeert in Carthago en gaat vervolgens als leraar in retorica aan de slag in Milaan, waar een belangrijk deel van het Romeinse hof verblijft. Hij verdiept zich in die jaren vooral in de werken van Cicero en later Plato en Plotinus. Enige tijd is hij aanhanger van het dualistische manicheïsme, dat hij later te vuur en te zwaard zal bestrijden, en het scepticisme. In zijn jonge jaren lijdt Augustinus een tamelijk losbandig leven, waarover hij later opmerkelijk openhartig schrijft (‘Give me chastity, but not yet’). Hij is in feite verslaafd aan seks met zijn concubine, bij wie hij zijn zoon Adeodatus verwekt, een hoogintelligente jongen die helaas als jonge man sterft. Zijn vrome Christelijke moeder Monnica laat hem echter na zijn vertrek uit Carthago niet met rust. Zij zoekt hem in Milaan op en daar voltrekt zich ook de omwenteling in het leven van Augustinus, mede door de invloed van de grote bisschop Ambrosius. Na hevige interne strijd zweert hij de seks en wereldlijke ambitie af en wijdt zich voortaan aan een leven voor God. Zijn moeder Monnica overlijdt daarna in Ostia, op terugreis naar Afrika. Augustinus begint er een monastieke gemeenschap in zijn geboorteplaats Thagaste, het begin van de Augustijnse orde waarvan hij de regels opstelt. Tegen zijn wil wordt hij na enkele jaren benoemd tot mede-bisschop in het nabije Hippo, onder roerige omstandigheden. Hij blijft er bisschop voor meer dan dertig jaar en ontpopt zich tot de grote denker van het westelijke christendom. Augustinus maakt nog altijd indruk door zijn grote intelligentie, humane en genuanceerde denken, zelfkritiek, nederigheid en strijdbaarheid voor het goede en de zwakken. Cijfer: 8. Gelezen: juli 2017.