St. Augustine Confessions (Oxford World's Classics) | Saint Augustine

St. Augustine Confessions (Oxford World's Classics) | Saint Augustine | An amazing look at the life of a spiritual giant

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St. Augustine Conf...

	St. Augustine Confessions (Oxford World's Classics) Saint Augustine Oxford University Press, USA, 1998 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 47 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

In his own day the dominant personality of the Western Church, Augustine of Hippo today stands as perhaps the greatest thinker of Christian antiquity, and his Confessions is one of the great works of Western literature. In this intensely personal narrative, Augustine relates his rare ascent from a humble Algerian farm to the edge of the corridors of power at the imperial court in Milan, his struggle against the domination of his sexual nature, his renunciation of secular ambition and marriage, and the recovery of the faith his mother Monica had taught him during his childhood.
Now, Henry Chadwick, an eminent scholar of early Christianity, has given us the first new English translation in thirty years of this classic spiritual journey. Chadwick renders the details of Augustine's conversion in clear, modern English. We witness the future saint's fascination with astrology and with the Manichees, and then follow him through scepticism and disillusion with pagan myths until he finally reaches Christian faith. There are brilliant philosophical musings about Platonism and the nature of God, and touching portraits of Augustine's beloved mother, of St. Ambrose of Milan, and of other early Christians like Victorinus, who gave up a distinguished career as a rhetorician to adopt the orthodox faith. Augustine's concerns are often strikingly contemporary, yet his work contains many references and allusions that are easily understood only with background information about the ancient social and intellectual setting. To make The Confessions accessible to contemporary readers, Chadwick provides the most complete and informative notes of any recent translation, and includes an introduction to establish the context.
The religious and philosophical value of The Confessions is unquestionable--now modern readers will have easier access to St. Augustine's deeply personal meditations. Chadwick's lucid translation and helpful introduction clear the way for a new experience of this classic.

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Tolle, lege

I've long since lost the religious fervor that led me to read Augustine's Confessions for the first time some 40 years ago. But I've never tired of re-reading it, which I do every five years or so. For in addition to being an exquisitely written prayer, it's also a penetrating analysis of the human psyche. In reading the Confessions, one is invited to reflect on what it means to be a human being who longs for transcendence in a world that too often seems exclusively mundane. Reading the Confessions, one recognizes that a human life is fraught with moments of great meaning and joy but also ones of intense forlornness and self-loathing. Reading the Confessions, one gains insight into the psychology of religious conversion, mystical experience, parental-child relations, and guilt. Finally, Augustine's reflections on memory in Book X (and to a certain extent in XI) are some of the most insightful comments on the phenomenology of consciousness to be written until the twentieth century. Truly, this is a book to "tolle, lege."

Henry Chadwick's translation is, in my judgment, the best English one going. Moreover, his Introduction nicely situates Augustine's Confessions against the backdrops of the neo-Platonism and Manicheanism that claimed him as a youth. The explanatory footnotes with which he sprinkles Augustine's texts are also very helpful. I would recommend his translation before all others for a first-time reader of the Confessions.

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An amazing look at the life of a spiritual giant

This book is a very powerful, memorable spiritual autobiography and Augustine tells his story like none other. He is transparent and honest at every turn, holding nothing back. He tells of his faith struggles, his sins and his temptations very candidly. The story of his conversion is truly beautiful and will stay with you. He has written in such a way that you truly see the hand of God at work in his life. A phenomenal read that will touch you. Highly recommended.

A sinner's guide to Christianity

The first major and most important work of a person's story on coming face to face with Christ. This is a timeless classic that every Christian and non-Christian alike can relate to, though it's a dangerous read, since it might influence the non-Christian to delve deeper. Augustine hits the nail on the head for everyone's struggles with becoming a better person and Christian when he writes, "Give me chastity and give me continence, but do not give it yet."

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