Customer Reviews

The Confessions of Saint Augustine

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"The Confessions" is undoubtedly one of the great books of western civilization, and the paradigm of the autobiography genre. But Henry Chadwick's modern translation available through Oxford University Press is a more vibrant and exacting translation. Pusey's translation is too Victorian, which casts too much of the Patristic writer in a Victorian mode of being. Augustine was a preeminent rhetorician, which comes out more brilliantly in Chadwick's translation. Moreover, the philosophical arguments advanced by Augustine are more clearly stated in the Chadwick translation. The hardcover or paperback version from Oxford isn't any more expensive, but significantly better translated.

Obviously, the Confessions of St. Augustine themselves need no review. However, potential buyers need to know that the reader for this particular recording is absolutely fantastic. I took the time to listen to other recordings before I decided which to buy, and this one is absolutely the best one. It is a pleasure to listen to!

I enjoyed this unabridge audio book. It's one thing to read the book, its another experience to listen to it!

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This book is one that should be on every educated person's bookshelf. For a book written by a Christian in the fourth century, I was surprised at some of the details. For example, Augustine accepts autopsies as a matter of medical necessity. More well-known is his opposition to astrology.

Augustine also had surprisingly enlightened views about dress and appearance. Any race or ethnicity can enter the City of God (an argument made in "The City of God").

Augustine says that as a teenager, he and his friends stole some pears and threw them away. Have things really changed? Teenagers up to mischief!

In the "City of God," Augustine also marveled at the human mind.

"In general, the completeness of scientific knowledge is beyond all words and becomes all the more astonishing when one pursues any single aspect of this immense corpus of information. Last, but not least, is the brilliance of talent displayed by both pagan philosophers and Christian heretics in the defense of error and falsehood. In saying this, of course, I am thinking only of the nature of the human mind as a glory of this mortal life, not of faith and the way of truth that leads to eternal life."

Here are some more great lines. A philosopher was abroad a ship captained by a bad man, and after a violent storm, the fearless captain jeered the philosopher for his terror. Said the philosopher, quoting from a similar incident that occurred to the pagan Aristippus, `A rogue need not worry about losing his worthless life, but Aristippus has a duty to care for a life like his."

Finally, St. Augustine spoke to the modern world and to the "Creationists."

"It very often happens there is some question as to the earth or sky, or other elements of this world...respecting which, one who is not a Christian has knowledge...and it is very disgraceful and mischievous and of all things to be carefully avoided, that a Christian speaking of such matters as being according to the Christian Scriptures, should be heard by an unbeliever talking such nonsense that the unbeliever perceiving him to be as wide from the mark as east from west, can hardly restrain himself from laughing."

The audio book was very well done. The reader is Simon Vance, whose reading sounds like what you would expect of an English speaking Augustine. He sounds very humble, yet intellectual. The translation is OK, but I would like to explore other more modern translations.

The book itself is divided into two major parts. The first part is Augustine's autobiography, up until the time of his conversion to Christianity and his mother's death.

`Confessions' is a very descriptive title for this work. He literally confesses everything, even things many of us would find too trifling to even remember. He is a man that had a delicate conscience. We learn of how he was raised in Christianity, converted to Manichaeism, lost faith in that and studied philosophy, and finally became a convert to Christianity after having some spiritual experiences and resolving some philosophical issues with it in his mind. The style is not way different from modern autobiographies (other than the constant acknowledgement of his faults). From a doctrinal point of view, he was very Catholic in his view that Baptism was a requirement for remission of sins and therefore salvation.

The second part is his musings on Christians doctrines, mainly related to the creation and the majesty of God. Here, Augustine gives us an idea of God's relationship to man and the world. He firmly believes that God created everything out of nothing (creation ex nihilo); though he wasn't as extreme as I had though from reading other people's views of Augustine's beliefs. He did admit that the Bible says that God created things out of existing material, but made it clear that God created the existing material out of nothing. This is kind of a two-step creation process.

He also dabbles in determinism, but once again was not as extreme as I thought. It is not the extreme of Calvin, but you can see where Calvin was influenced by him.

All in all, this is a great book to read if you want to understand Augustine and early Christianity (and the later Christianity that was influenced by him). The audio book was a good way to get through the book.

This book is an excellent book that I refer to the Christian and/or the spiritual philosopher. Though Augustine engages many questions we take for granted in today's culture (as we think we know these things of God or our self without ever having analyzed them honestly and humbly), he approaches them like a spiritually "corrected" Socrates. Some might think I have a mental disorder, as I buy this book whenever I see it for cheap at a used book store. It's one of those books that I feel- if I believed in reincarnation- I would've myself written in a past life. Augustine is so honest and repentant of things I believe anyone can relate to, and I therefore purchase these books with others in mind, in hopes someone else can be touched by his honest inquiries of the faith and his spiritual status with God. The book is itself a complete 5-star book, deserving universal admiration and respect among the writing of humans who ponder God via scriptural influence.
Concerning this specific audio, however, I have never been able to finish listening to it. I recommend it as a five-star product to anyone from the UK, as you would not be hindered by a distracting English accent, naturally), or anyone elsewhere who find English accents profoundly reverent or intelligent. But to an American, especially any American who already gets uneasy with English accents representing ALL foreign dialects in Hollywood movies, I would recommend reading it quietly to yourself or finding an American narrator who may exist but I have not personally searched out (and likely never will as I never buy audio twice. Especially since librivox and other sites have free audio anymore).
So, the 3-star rating I gave is exclusively due to my hardship with the English accent. I am nearly a racist against my fellow caucasians, brothers even (as I am english in descent), as I hate how they are credited with intellect for no other reason than their foreign accent. (Here in America, it seems we esteem all who are "different" as better than American).
I confess, I simply cannot look past it. Call me small minded if you will, but I have explained myself clearly. Take it or leave it.

Written in a way making understanding difficult. This could have been translated in a more interesting and reader friendly manner. Very disappointing.

I have never read the Confessions of St. Agustine. In fact, I found it very difficult to follow both in English and in Spanish the two times I did actually try to read the book.

Since Agustin can easily be considered one of the greatest thinkers in all of Christianity and foundational for Western civilization, I think it to be important to have some understanding of this man.

This CD version of the book made this man come alive to me. It wasn't just hearing how God dealt with an individual bringing them from darkness to the light of the Gospel that impressed me, but that did impress me greatly. The details of everyday life from that time period I also found to be fascinating.


So, if you have wanted to read Agustin's spiritual autobiography, but have had trouble understanding it, I highly recommend this audio version. It is beautifully read.

Augustine relates the tale of his life as an unbeliever and his conversion. It is a remarkable picture of a mother's faithful prayers for her son and the power and mercy of God, by which he eventually became an important figure in the early church.

St. Monica, Augustine's mother, stood out as a remarkable woman of God. Her husband did not wish their son to be baptized, so she respected custom and obeyed his wishes. She prayed many years for the redemption of her son, and without her patience and faithfulness we may have been deprived of her son's beautiful, inspiring books.

The translation offered by the MacMillan Publishing Company is comparatively easy for the modern reader to understand, and much less likely to induce sleep than many other available translations. I first picked it up as a child, having found it on my father's shelves, and found it understandable even then.

Whether or not you are of Christian beliefs, this is a beautiful, deeply spiritual book and I highly recommend it.

St. Augustine is obsessed with sin (and Jesus). No wonder as he is the proponent of the concept of original sin. He goes through some lengths not only to prove God's existence, which religious people are constantly prone to do as one who were to have to constantly refute the fact that he is indeed Napoleon Bonapate- Augustine also performs philosophical acrobats to avoid toppling this house of cards called belief. What a feat indeed.
Somehow, God lies outside of everything, even the rules which we know everything.
The "Saint" verbally flogs himself at every turn; even to acts done as a child when he stole fruit for stealing sake or to when he took up with a woman in Milan?
There seems to me a misfiring (as Richard Dawkins calls it) in our brains that needs authority, a craving for a personification of gravity and other laws into one surrogate father.
He talks of God as if he literally KNEW the man, being, spirit, deity, etc. When the only evidence he has of this "knowing" is what was written in a book. If one knew of God based on his own experience, that is if one were to have identical experiences of a god who had NOT read this book and was unable to reap the fodder of scripture to the malleable faults of human imagination, then and only then would I give the 'word" some credence of truth. But this is not the case. Religion is simply a collaboration of sticky, albeit harmful, ideas.

He also expressed his disdain for astrology, ack!