St. Augustine Confessions (Oxford World's Classics) (Kindle Edition)

by Saint Augustine (Author), Henry Chadwick (Translator)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"An excellent translation."--John Bowlin, University of Tulsa
"A masterly performance by the dean of English-speaking Patristic scholars. Better English than the Penguin and unlike Sheed this has Books X-XIII. The notes hint at hidden depths."--Oliver Nicholson, University of Minnesota
"Chadwick's translation is superb."--Thomas Renna, Saginaw Valley State University
"A beautifully translated, edited, and printed paperback edition."--Francis W. Nichols, St. Louis University
"I am impressed with this translation. It has the poetry and emotive power of the R.S. Pine-Coffin translation for Penguin Books; and it seems much more lucid. The notes are very helpful for my purposes, showing how Augustine wove together Neo-Platonism and Christianity."--David E. Timmer, Central College
"An extremely readable and accessible translation, superior to those of Edward Pusey and F.J. Sheed that we've used in the past."--Helen Moritz, Santa Clara University
"A very competent piece of work....The fact remains that this new translation is the most readable version in modern English."--Manuscripta
"This handsomely bound and printed volume is finely translated and annotated, thus making the Confessions as exciting to read in English as they deserve to be. The informative introduction provides excellent information on Augustine's life and writings."--Gary M. Godfrey, University of Utah
"Fine translation."--P.M. Hess, University of Santa Clara


Product Description
With complete and authoritative notes by the translator, this intensely personal narrative tells of St. Augustine's rise from a humble Algerian farm to the edge of the corridors of power at the imperial court in Milan. The lucid, modern language of this new translation makes this classic of Western literature accessible to today's audience.

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• Print Length: 352 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (November 30, 1841)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000VI5CPY
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (50 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,572 in Kindle Store (See Bestsellers in Kindle Store)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Translation, August 30, 2000

By	D. S. Heersink "D. Stephen Heersink" (San Francisco) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Confessions (Hardcover)

I won't recount all the excellent reasons for reading this remarkable book. It's not a part of the Western Canon for nothing! It's a seminal work (autobiography) in a seminal field (Patristics)worth reading regardless of religious orientation, including none. What makes THIS particular version so exciting is that it is eminently readable and still quite stylized. Chadwick's eloquent translation caputes not only Augustine's ideas and thoughts, but equally important, his rhetorical skills. This alone justifies the purchase of this work. The philosophical nuances that, ironically, have entered twentieth-century thought again are very clearly articulated in Chadwick's translation. Other translations are likely to obfusicate what Chadwick elucidates. Read this great work by a great translator. I am confident you'll return to it again and again (even if you disagree with the Doctor).

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Peeping into the soul of a man, March 24, 2007

By	Quilmiense (USA/Spain) - See all my reviews

This review is from: St. Augustine Confessions (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)

Translation by Rex Warner (in Signet Classics)

This one is a very good translation, especially for the modern reader. It conveys the immediacy and vividness of a text written more than 1500 years ago. One feels almost as a voyeur peeping into the private confession of a man to his God. The honesty and unembarrassed disclosure of his sins, and fruitless search for worldly wisdom, is something we can personally identify with, even today. It is amazing how vivid the description of life in late 4th century is in this Confessions. What a wonderful way to approach History, places like Carthage, Rome or Milan, thru the eyes of a skilled and intelligent man who pours his heart on these pages for us to benefit from.

St. Augustine's life, however distant in time, is filled with events, desires, and troubles, as common today as in the year 400. We can identify fully with him, and in his longing and weakness we can see our own soul portrayed. He talks about his childhood, his family, his studies and his lifelong pursuit of wisdom and truth, specially since the age of 19. We get immersed in the daily life of people in the 4th Century under the Roman Empire, their daily worries, their intellectual debates, their religious confrontations. We see the social conditions of all classes of people, from the wealthy and idle to the slaves who fight in the Circus. We see people living, talking, traveling, dreaming, and going about their business as if we were present with them. No wonder this book is an authentic classic, one that I should have read long ago.

There are many reasons to read this book. Those interested in History are certainly going to find plenty of information from eye-witness perspective; those who like to read personal memories and autobiographies won't have it easy to find a better one. For those interested in the history of religion and Catholicism, this is a must, a landmark in Christian literature. Whatever you are looking for, this book is certainly one that will satisfy your intellectual curiosity as well as fill you spiritually.

One thing to bear in mind is that the Confessions are not addressed to us, readers, that is why certain things about the author's behavior seem inexplicable: certain things that would seem to us to merit more explaining, being only mentioned briefly (his behavior toward the woman he had a child with, for example), while other issues are given a lot more space. Of course the Lord knew his heart well, but still, one is intrigued at this man.

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential classic of world literature, October 20, 2006

By	Greg (Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: St. Augustine Confessions (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)

This is a good translation of St Augustine's 'Confessions', one of the most important works of Christian and also world religious and philosophical thought.

St Augustine's genius needs no advertisment. His brilliant intellect is more or less the founder of Western Christianity as we know it. Between St Paul and Aquinas, he is the most brilliant theological and philosophical mind the medieval period managed to produce. If Western philosphy is a cathedral, then Augustine is one of its capstones.

The Confessions is a personal narrative of Augustine's life, which describes his spiritual and intellectual journey from childhood to adulthood. Augustine is such a brilliant writer he manages to capture countless facets of experience in a book which itself is only about 340 pages long (thirteen books in total) and this work also has immense range and depth, from the strange nature of free will and sin to the inner quest for the indwelling image of the Trinity, to Augustine's mystical experiences, to his dramatic conversion, to his allegorical commentary on Genesis to his ceaseless praise of God's goodness and the beauty of creation.

Augustine is clearly influenced by several sources, especially Neo-Platonic Philosophy. Augustine read the Enneads of Plotinus in translation into Latin (thanks to Marcus Victorius, a Christian convert from Neo-Platonism) and found its concepts of God made more sense to him than that of the sect he was a member of, the Manicheans. The Manicheans, a syncretic sect who blended Buddhism, elements of Christianity, Zorastrianism and Gnosticism, and Platonism captivated Augustine for several years, seeming to provide a satisfying explanation for the baffling problem of evil. Yet Augustine, after reading Plotinus, thought the explanation of evil in terms of non-being made more sense than God making an evil world, or being ruled by an evil principle. In this sense Augustine made a crucial breakthrough in theology, not only by finding God 'within' the depths of his own soul, but also in associating God with the Platonic Good.

Yet Augustine's strongest influence is the Bible. References to the Bible abound far more than references to Plotinus, and for Augustine, pagan thought is mostly useful for articulating truths already main plain by the Word of God. However, Augustine is always too brilliant and original thinker to merely fall into a rigid pattern of dogma he never leaves (in contrast to many more mediocre minds in the Christian tradition) and reworks his theology consistently and constantly in a creative manner.

However the Confessions is too brilliant and profound a work to summarise in one review, and it is best if readers avail themselves to a copy of this work as soon as they can.