Gathers selections from St. Augustine's autobiographical Confessions, sermons on Christian life and the Psalms, and his discussion of the secular and Christian views of happiness.
Written in 397 A.D., St. Augustine's classic, Confessions, reveals the innermost thoughts and struggles of a soul converting from selfishness and pleasure-seeking to a life of love for God. Augustine of Hippo (345-430 A.D.) was born in North Africa to a devoutly Christian mother and pagan father. Of Latin stock, Augustine was given Christian instruction but waited until later in life to be baptized. Augustine took a mistress who bore him a son before he was eighteen. Augustine's sexual appetite drove him to seek pleasure where he could find it, but it also plagued his consience. His hunger for religious things led him through many of the belief systems of the day, including Manichaeism and Neoplatonism. Augustine finally turned to God in 386 A.D. when he heard a child say, "take, read" a copy of Paul's letter to the Romans. Upon his conversion to Christianity, Augustine became a prodigious writer, with his writings standing second only to the apostle Paul in their impact on the church. He died as Bishop of Hippo in North Africa. Confessions is the autobiography of Augustine of Hippo, a moving and profound record of a human soul and its struggles. The most widely read of all his works, it not only tells the story of Augustine's struggle in the faith, but also his love for the Master. Confessions speaks to the heart of humanity about human weakness, human frailty, human depravity, and the human need for a holy God. This classic is an exercise in self-knowledge and true humility in the atmosphere of grace and reconciliation. Book jacket.
A fresh, new translation of Augustine's inaugural work as a Christian convert The first four works written by St. Augustine of Hippo after his conversion to Christianity are the "Cassiciacum dialogues," which have influenced prominent thinkers from Boethius to Bernard Lonergan. In this second, brief dialogue, expertly translated by Michael Foley, Augustine and his mother, brother, son, and friends celebrate his thirty-second birthday by having a "feast of words" on the nature of happiness. They conclude that the truly happy life consists of "having God" through faith, hope, and charity.
Henry Chadwick, an eminent scholar of early Christianity, has given us the first new English translation in thirty years of Augustine's The Confessions. 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. 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 result is a full and wide-ranging narrative account of St. Augustine's thinking on the human condition, justice, the State, slavery, private property and war. This comprehensive sourcebook will be of value to students of St. Augustine at all levels."--Jacket.
Augustine's Confessions" has never been as accessible--or relevant--to young adult readers than it is now. This modern-day translation includes an Introduction and over 70 annotations to aid young adults in approaching this spiritual classic for the first time.
The work outlines Augustine's sinful youth and his conversion to Christianity. It is widely seen as the first Western autobiography ever written, and was an influential model for Christian writers throughout the following 1,000 years of the Middle Ages. It is not a complete autobiography, as it was written in his early 40s, and he lived long afterwards, producing another important work (City of God). It does, nonetheless, provide an unbroken record of his development of thought and is the most complete record of any single person from the 4th and 5th centuries. It is a significant theological work, featuring spiritual meditations and insights. Keywords: religion, christianity, christ, church, classic
The oldest monastic Rule in the West A giant of the faith, St. Augustine is well known as "the restless searcher for truth." His life and the Rule he formulated have had enduring influence on the Christian ideal of the religious life. This is a new, modern English translation of the Rule from the original critical Latin text. An extensive Commentary elucidates its meaning and its relevance to those who follow or study it today. Augustine's concise spiritual directions, based heavily on the Scriptures, cover such subjects as prayer, love and community, mutual responsibility, service, authority and obedience. He outlines the basics for exercising genuine love, the goal of all things -- indeed life itself. This brief but classic guide is as inspiring and applicable to the twentieth century as it was to Augustine's early followers. It clearly reflects his own vision and spiritual depth. As Van Bavel observes in his Introduction: "We could characterize the Rule of Augustine as a call to the evangelical equality of all people. It voices the Christian demand to bring all men and women into full community." The Rule of St. Augustine is, indeed, a Rule for all Christians -- religious and laity alike.
This volume presents new translations of five of Augustine’s works: The Excellence of Marriage, Holy Virginity, The Excellence of Widowhood, Adulterous Marriages, and Continence.... The volume is to be commended on several points. The translation itself is in eminently readable, clear English that should be accessible to anyone interested in Augustine.... The general introduction does an excellent job of placing these works in the context of Augustine’s career, showing how Augustine reacts to controversies with the Manichees, Jovinian, Jerome, and the Pelagians, while maintaining a commitment to the threefold goods of marriage — procreation, fidelity, and sacrament. This is a wonderful collection that allows readers to see the complexity of Augustine’s thought on a difficult topic.” Kim Paffenroth Journal of Early Christian Studies
The reader who has never met Augustine before ought to go first of all to the Confessions,' reflected the Trappist monk and scholar Thomas Merton. 'Augustine lived the theology that he wrote. . . . He experienced the reality of Christ living in his own soul.' Saint Augustine, the celebrated theologian who served as Bishop of Hippo from A.D. 396 until his death in A.D. 430, is widely regarded as one of the most influential thinkers in the Western world. Written in the form of a long prayer addressed directly to God, Augustine's Confessions, the remarkable chronicle of his conversion to Christianity, endures as the greatest spiritual autobiography of all time. 'Augustine possessed a strong, capacious, argumentative mind,' wrote Edward Gibbon. 'He boldly sounded the dark abyss of grace, predestination, free-will, and original sin.' And the eminent historian Jaroslav Pelikan remarked: 'There has, quite literally, been no century of the sixteen centuries since the conversion of Augustine in which he has not been a major intellectual, spiritual, and cultural force.
Augustine of Hippo, one of the most prolific writers of late antiquity, known primarily for four masterpieces: The Confessions, Teaching Christianity, The City of God, and The Trinity, composed a vast body of work comprised of more than five million words. He composed his earliest works in the form of dialogues shortly before his baptism in 387. The next decade of his life, a relatively unproductive transitional period, was followed by an explosion that averaged, in modern terms, a 300-page book per year. This early trilogy, The Happy Life, The Advantage of Believing, and Faith in the Unseen, demonstrates Augustine's fundamental concern to link Christian faith with the human quest for happiness. These three essential works, which illustrate his dictum that faith is necessary for understanding, constitute a magnificent introduction to Augustinian spirituality. Trilogy on Faith and Happiness reveals Augustine's insight into fundamental existential questions and his conviction that human fulfillment can be found only in the incarnation of Jesus, the Word and Wisdom of God. It will prove especially useful for spiritual reading and for students of Christian spirituality.
Augustine of Hippo (b. A.D. 354) is considered the single most influential theologian in the history of the Church in the West. Among his many contributions, Augustine developed a sexual ethic that became decisive for all later teachings in the Christian West on issues of marriage, reproduction, and sexuality. Some of the most significant and representative passages on marriage and sexuality from his works are presented here. They recount Augustine's own struggle with sexuality, and stress the important role it played in his conversion to Christianity as well as its influence on his theological principles later in life. The passages in this collection are divided into four chapters which document the chronological development of Augustine's sexual ethic. The first chapter includes passages that pertain to Augustine's own life and illustrate some of his positive and negative models of marital relation. The second chapter recounts Augustine's responses to the Manichean teachings on the body, reproduction, and marriage, mostly from his early years as a Christian. The third chapter contains passages marking Augustine's reaction to the ascetic debates within late fourth-century Latin Christianity. And, finally, the fourth chapter illustrates Augustine's mature sexual and marital ethic, which he elaborated in the midst of--and in reaction to--arguments with Pelagian writers. In a separate introduction, Elizabeth Clark sets the development of Augustine's thought within the context of his own intellectual biography and views it against the background of related issues and movements in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, such as Manichaeism, Jovinianism, and Pelagianism. The selections she presents here offer a comprehensive and uncommonly well-balanced picture of Augustine and his work. St. Augustine on Marriage and Sexuality is the first in a projected series of volumes on various themes found in the writings of the church fathers. ABOUT THE EDITOR: Elizabeth Clark is John Carlisle Kilgo Professor of Religion at Duke University. She is a past president of the American Academy of Religion and the North American Patristic Society, and a member of the editoral board of the Fathers of the Church series.
The Essential Augustine contains selected passages from about forty key works by St. Augustine of Hippo, nearly half of which were specifically translated for this collection. The table of contents provides precise references to the source treatises. A bibliography and glossary of key terms are included, along with appendixes containing a list of all Augustine's known writings, alphabetized by standard English titles.
Here, in one volume, are two of the most influential works of Christian spirituality and philosophy: "The Confessions of St. Augustine" and "The Imitation of Christ." (Christian)
Along with his Confessions, The City of God is undoubtedly St. Augustine’s most influential work. In the context of what begins as a lengthy critique of classic Roman religion and a defense of Christianity, Augustine touches upon numerous topics, including the role of grace, the original state of humanity, the possibility of waging a just war, the ideal form of government, and the nature of heaven and hell. But his major concern is the difference between the City of God and the City of Man – one built on love of God, the other on love of self. One cannot but be moved and impressed by the author’s breadth of interest and penetrating intelligence. For all those who are interested in the greatest classics of Christian antiquity, The City of God is indispensible. This long-awaited translation by William Babcock is published in two volumes, with an introduction and annotation that make Augustine’s monumental work approachable. Books 11-22 offer Augustine’s Christian view of history, including the Christian view of human destiny. The INDEX for Books 1-22 (both volumes of The City of God) is contained in this edition.
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