Antonio Higgins’s Reviews > Confessions > Status Update

Augustine's take on literary criticism seems incredibly modern!

And we're at the home stretch...

"And yet, when I love him... my soul is bathed in light that is not bound by space; when it listens to sound that never dies away; when it breaths fragrance that is not borne away on the wind...when it clings to an embrace not severed by fulfilment of desire. This is what I love when I love my God." - Book X

"He told me to read the prophet Isaiah... I did not understand the first chapters and, on the assumption that the rest of the book would be equally difficult, I laid it aside to be taken up later, when I should be more used to the style in which God's word is spoken."

(I do wonder what he meant by chapters...)

It's a memoir, he rambles, yes. But he also distills how he came to the truth and those passages that convinced him of the truth. It's not the greatest systematic theology for those looking for that. Nor is it the greatest non-Bible Christian writing. It's a memoir, that's the point. But I don't think it has to be the greatest book ever to have historical value. But I'm reading this solo, what do I know?

I think the lack of clarity I felt at the beginning was due to two things: that it was about childhood, and the insistent rambling that Augustine preoccupied himself with, Now that it focuses on events in his adult life, I can sense a direction, wit, and precision in his language. There are a couple moments where it is off-the-cuff overthinking, but those are becoming few and far-between. Should he have started here?