Customer Reviews

Confessions (Oxford World's Classics)

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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.

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.

A joy to read! It is personal and readable, near Poetical.

Augustine was on a path to learn truth, find God, and experienced twists and turns of self-doubt and a divided will that, I think, anyone pursuing knowledge might find of interests, or someone a bit delusioned and cynical about life may find solace in. Augustine's message is a passionate one, this passion is the shining attribute of his confession -- his giving himself over to a life of honest endeavor to do God's will. He defines what the spirit of an honest pursuit looks like, and could be somewhat applied to all pursuits of truth. It is a bit cathartic to read about this often divided and quite human of a man, who I can't see how anyone could apply the terms orthodox or evangelical too (an Effort/Endeavor seems more on terms with a Christian's experience), and how he came to terms with the mysteries that are in our world. His description why it is impossible to know truth ultimately, but his conlusions behind the message of the meaning of mysteries is powerful stuff in themselves.

Some interesting themes I found, that Augustine expounded on were:
The mysteries of time and memory and what their being mysteries means.
How the soul and music are akin.
Some differences in exegesis are just quibbles that one should agree to disagree on among sincere souls.
Physical delight needs to be checked by reason (Augustine was coming to terms with lust, apparently, even at the time of this writing).
Don't be overly dependant on the praise of man.
Even contempt of the vain can be a vanity of its own sort.
His descriptions of the third temptations.
His admiration of his mother and his descriptions of the sort of person she was.
The true search is the inner search.
There are things the church does to get people interested that are lower than the true spiritual Christian search
Confession is sacrifice...

Almost every page was interesting.

Augustine was always surrounded by friends and was never in serious wanting of food or such, that I understood anyway. It is just the account of a highly intelligent, but splinterd man in search of God, until he comes to terms with the Christian mysteries of good.

I could hear Shakespeare, Waugh, and Wilde echoing in some of his words. Mr. Chadwich also makes it clear that Augustine barrowed a lot from Neo-Platonist authors, especially Plotinus. The book also provides interesting insights into life in North Africa and Italy at that time, and their cultural differences. Augustine, like Aquinas, was North African.

The book was relatively light reading, and highly accessible -- but deep -- especially taken in its entirety. Chadwick's translation, although I cannot attest to the authenticity of it, as I know no Latin, was near poetical and his notes kept my interest by aiding my understanding, clarifying themes and points, without obfuscating the passion of Augustine's message.
Highly catharctic, enjoyable reading.

This book is much much more than just an autobiography of Augustine and his road to the Christian faith. It is filled with exhortations and insight about the character of God and the nature of people. It is a book about struggling with sin and with realizing that God deserves to be Lord of every aspect of your life--and trying to live that out. It's also a story of the power of prayer, and an encouragement (through his comments about his mother) to persevere in prayer and supplication. Plus, it's just a reminder of the many wonderful aspects of who God is--because every time Augustine says something about God, he affirms something about His character. He will say something like, "God, in whom there is no darkness, has illuminated the eyes of my heart." It is both a telling of Augustine's own story, and also a story of God. This book is very dense, and packed with thoughts and ideas that must be slowly digested to really take root in our own minds. It's not a book that can or should be read quickly, it should be savored and pondered and given time for much reflection and evaluation. It's a tough book, but I do not think that you need a commentary to fully appreciate it (though an understanding of the time it was written sure wouldn't hurt). Get ready to be exhorted.

'Confessions' is exactly what the title implies - the frank, open and heart-rending confessions of a troubled soul. The 'Confessions' rightly occupies a central place in Western Literature because of the breadth and depth of Augustine's thinking, his incredible theological, philosophical and psychological insight (he was admired by Wittgenstein, Husserl, Schopenhauer, and other great thinkers), his amazingly beautiful and elegant style of expression, and his remarkable power to move you to the very soul with every word, sentence and chapter. This book is a theological treatise, autobiography, series of love letters, polemics, philosophical work, and hymn to God in one. Augustine's profound and searching intellect examines his own life, from its very first memories, to his agonies and sins as a student to his tears as he hears the song of children in the street which seem to urge him to read the Bible.

Like all true 'Great Books', this work is never exhausted and without new meaning, whether you have read it once or a dozen times. Like Conrad, Plato, Shakespeare, Dickens, Melville, Woolf and other great writers Augustine is able to capture the most profound and uplifting along with the most horrible and denigrating of this mystery we call life, from the profound heights of God to the melancholy depths of selfishness and sin. Whether you are an atheist seeking to understand what makes religious believers tick, or a Philosopher trying to understand memory and the nature of experience, or a Christian struggling with your faith, or even just a literary 'dabbler', 'The Confessions' is well worth buying and keeping very close to your bed, your coffee table, your pulpit and your bookshelf. This is a book whose beauty will not fade, and unlike a trashy pop novel whose meaning is exhausted with one reading and soon forgotten, 'Confessions' is a book that will keep giving you new strength, hope and insight with each new day that comes.

This is a great example of Amazon's growing tendency to speedily add more books to their Kindle library without actually doing their readers (and authors) the service of proper editing. This is a good book, but Amazon.com should be ashamed at the crummy editing. All the capital H's in this work are actually two capital I's with a dash in the middle (I presume this is a 'smart' scanner error). Sometimes this means that an H is actually split onto two separate lines. Punctuation is missing in scripture references, some words are misspelled, and some of the footnotes are incorrectly ordered. This is the kind of garbage that will cause Kindle to fall into disrepute over those who actually want clean and correct editions of a text. A massive failure, Amazon. I didn't buy a Kindle so I could get short changed on crappy editions of books. If I wanted discounted books with errors, I'd shop at an outlet store. Very disappointing.

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.

Reading Augustine's Confessions is like coming face to face with the experience of my own salvation all over again. As a person who, to quote the brilliant C.S. Lewis, "was dragged kicking and screaming into the kingdom of God," this book echoed my own spiritual journey and personal experience. Though I am one of those people whom the Lord kept from many mistakes, rather than rescuing me out of them, I deeply understand Augustine's painful and arduous attempts to run from the grace of God. One is moved to tears at his brokenness over his sin before a holy God and, in a parallel manner, one rejoices gloriously along with him when he finally surrenders his soul to the love of Jesus Christ. I love this book. Its truths have no boundaries in time - not because Augustine was especially brilliant (though he undoubtedly was), but because of the great and almighty Savior he so faithfully served.

It is said that St. Augustine invented the autobiographical genre and that is significant. But more significant seems to be his great insight into the problem of temptation and evil. With deep conviction and personal examination, he studies the motivations toward sin and sees the paradox that we choose evil not for evil sake but because it seems good. Of all the actions in Augustine's life he could have examined as sinful acts, he chose the most simple on which to concentrate - a boyhood prank of stealing fruit captures the microscope of his self-examining eye. Bit by bit he takes apart the incident conveying how it relates to other incidents in his life and what it tells us about the human condition in general. It is the genius of Augustine to use an apparently innocuous event to convey some of the most profound thinking on human nature and the problem of evil. A groundbreaking work of its kind and content.

No other words for me to try to describe it, but moving, gorgeous, and utterly real. The most exquisite piece of literature or philosophy I've ever encountered as an avid reader of the humanities. Read it!