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

Oxford University Press, USA, 1998 - 352 pages

average customer review:based on 44 reviews
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   highly recommended  highly recommended






A spiritual journey

This is simply one of the greatest Christian books of all time! You do not have to be Catholic to appreciate St. Augustine's journey to the Christian faith.


poetic, inspiring words while keeping true to the latin

Chadwick is both able to keep the meaning of the orginial latin and able to keep the rhythm of Augustine's poetic words. The book itself is inspiring even to those who do not practice the christian faith. A real charmer for anyone who both enjoys poetic language and philosophy!









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Thoughtful and Powerful

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.


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Written for Forever

There are three classes of support for Christian belief: the metaphysical, the historical, and the experiential. The metaphysical argues from logic and the existence and nature of reality, the historical from the past - both human and pre-human, and the experiential from personal, and private, experience.

While I don't want to diminish the metaphysical or historical components of Christian belief and apologetics, I think that the most important source of living belief is the experiential, but it is also by far the hardest to communicate, since it is by nature, private and personal. While my experiences may convince me of the truth of the Christian faith, how can they convince you? They are part of my experience, not yours. It might seem to be an impossibility, yet this is the challenge that Augustine took on in "Confessions", and it is by the degree of difficulty that the extent of his success and the greatness of the work can be measured.

"Confessions" is a work of great beauty. Written in the form of a confessional prayer, Augustine bares himself utterly, and in so doing, makes the reader want to lower his defenses as well, making it possible to experience another's life more deeply than he might have thought possible, and in so doing, to translate his experience of Christianity across the divide that separates us from each other.

Because of the nature of "Confessions", I think that analysis of it is to be avoided. Analysis is distancing - it encourages the reader not to dive it in, but to stand back. You cannot experience "Confessions" and critique it at the same time, and all of the value is in the experience.


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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, page 7, 8, 9



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