Saint Augustine’s “Confessions”: An Introduction

[Michie]

Augustine is accessible and applicable because he is one of us. He suffers from the same temptations and succumbs to those temptations. He falls and does not always get up again, preferring to wallow in the gutter with his lusts and his illicit appetites. And yet, like us, he is restless until he rests in the truth, which can only be found in Christ.

If any single book can claim to be the quintessential Christian classic it must be St. Augustine’s Confessions. There are other claimants to the accolade, to be sure. One thinks perhaps of Augustine’s other masterpiece, The City of God, or the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, or possibly, if one is seeking lighter fare, The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis or St. Francis de Sales’ Introduction to the Devout Life. And if we are to include works of literature, as well as works of non-fiction, we might suggest The Divine Comedy, The Pilgrim’s Progress or even, at a heterodox stretch, Paradise Lost. And what of modern Christian classics, such as Chesterton’s Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man, or C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters? All of these books can claim to be Christian classics (though Milton’s non-Trinitarian theology stretches the definition of “Christianity” to breaking point), and they are all eminently worth taking the time to read. And yet if we could only read one of these books, or if we were allowed to take just one of them with us to the proverbial desert island, could we really bear to part with The Confessions? Could we contemplate being apart from it? Could we really see ourselves departing to the place of solitude without it?

Continued below.

Saint Augustine's "Confessions": An Introduction

Augustine is accessible and applicable because he is one of us. He suffers from the same temptations and succumbs to those temptations. He falls and does not always get up again, preferring to wallow in the gutter with his lusts and his illicit appetites. And yet, like us, he is restless until...

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