Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Confessions (OXFORD WORLD'S CLASSICS) by Saint Augustine, Henry Chadwick ISBN: 0-19-283372-3 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: June, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.39 (79 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Truly One of the Greatest Autobiographies Ever Written
Comment: This book holds a special place among the greatest books ever written. While it is autobiographical, so say that and only that misses the point of the book entirely. Augustine's work is great philosophy, great theology, great lessons about life, struggles, weaknesses that cause failure, strengths that provide great success, wisdom, knowledge, and even history (for both the Church and secular world).
Augustine discusses issues such as original sin, the Word of God, free will and the problem of evil, universal good, the Trinity, prayer, thought and memory, mathematics, truth, happiness, the good, Plato, the influence that Cicero had on him, his education, his relationship with his mother, the attributes of God, and all these barely scratch the surface.
The book is heartwarming, makes you think, causes humility in the reader, and 1500 years after it was written, it is still being read by countless people. This text is used in colleges, in seminaries, and in history classrooms. It is a timeless work as applicable today as it was when Augustine first wrote it.
If you enjoy history (secular as well as Church history), theology, philosophy, sociology, and classical studies, then you will not want to be without this text. I highly recommend it!
Rating: 5
Summary: Very deep and laborious reading, but well worth it
Comment: St. Augustine was the first, and is arguably the most influential, of the major Christian apologists. In a time when Christianity was gaining momentum in the Roman Empire but was still mostly confined to the poor and uneducated, Augustine's theological treatises and apology made Christianity more valid, and in many cases more acceptable, to the learned in Rome. This autobiography, detailing Augustine's early life with a special emphasis on what made him convert to Christianity, made a tremendous contribution to the work of the sect.
Augustine deals with several topics in this book. He explores why we sin, how it affects God, and how He tries to win us back. He discusses learning and the effect of worldly wisdom and human interpretation of divine will, and attempts to reconcile earthly learning to spiritual growth. In the last three books he discusses time and creation with God. This is definitely heavy reading, but while Augustine's argument is very detailed and is sometimes difficult to comprehend, it is not poorly organized. For the most part the narrative is smooth, though the last three books do lag a little bit compared with the rest of the work.
Augustine's work has endured for more than a millennium and a half. Christianity has evolved, and has branched into many different and often opposing factions, but Augustine's work and his message still carry the great weight that they did over 1500 years ago.
Rating: 4
Summary: A sui generis autobiography.
Comment: Saint Augustine of Hippo was born in 354 A.D. in the city of Thagaste, in the Roman North African province of Numidia, near nowadays Algiers. He died in 430, witnessing both the Fall of the glorious Roman Empire to the invasion of the Vandals in North África, and the immediate following of his ideas by maverick African Catholicism, ideas for which he fought all his life in the most passionate way. He was a giant in its own right, being the prodigal son of the feverishly Catholic Saint Monica and of Patricius, a nondescript and abusing father who was to be thrown out by Augustine to the corners in his many works, the same fate destined to his prematurely dead son Adeodatus (Latin for "Given to God"), his elder brother and his concubine, the woman he lived with for many years, according with the local tradition of the times, and whom he sloughed of in the most unabashed way. It is only in the Confessions that he seems to scourge himself on this issue, wryly acknowledging the evil done.
He was one of the most prolific writers of all times, and the mature man who wrote Confessions in his mid-life is a sharp counterpoint to the points-of-views adopted by him in his early life, when he avidly followed Manichaeism against the will of his devoted mother. He had traveled intensively trough the foremost cities of the Roman Empire and had many patronizing influent men, and ended up, one thinks, against his will, as priest and later bishop of the city of Hippo, near Thagaste, where he had the responsibility of counterbalance the powerfull influence the Donatist (after Donatus) sect exerted upon his flock, who argued that human perfection was possible and attainable in this very life and the chaff elements of the Church having to be erased in the most cruel and quick ways by bands of brigands that descended from the mountains to attack whomever opposed their doctrine. But, that was not the last time he had to combat ideas different from his, and we see Augustine again holding the sword with fierceness against resurgent Paganism and in his final days, against Pelagianism and Julian Eclanus. It is strange that such a combative man died a natural dead, escaping the atrocities inflicted by the Vandals of Genseric upon his many friends and followers.
In Augustine's view, to earn the eternal salvation, one had to confess all his past sins in the most unabashed and vocal way, and that is precisely the purpose of Confessions, to lay down all his many past sins, in order to be among the few who would be chosen by God Almight to enter upon the Eternal Kingdom. The book, originally written in Latin by a man who had little familiarity with the infuential Greek language, introduces a new style into the Literature of the time and is judged as one of the most influential autobiographies ever written . Along with his magnificent City of God, it erected the scaffolds of early Catholicism, and must be listed among one of the 100 most literary works of all times.
 |
Title: City of God (Penguin Classics) by St. Augustine, David Knowles, Henry Bettenson ISBN: 0140444262 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 June, 1984 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
 |
Title: Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, Revised Edition with a New Epilogue by Peter Robert Lamont Brown, Peter Brown ISBN: 0520227573 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 07 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
 |
Title: The Imitation of Christ in Four Books: A Translation from the Latin (Vintage Spiritual Classics) by Thomas A. Kempis, Joseph N. Tylenda, Random Housepaper Vintage Bks, Thomas ISBN: 0375700188 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 May, 1998 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
 |
Title: Aquinas's Shorter Summa: Saint Thomas's Own Concise Version of His Summa Theologica by St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Thomas Aquinas ISBN: 1928832431 Publisher: Sophia Institute Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 2001 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
 |
Title: The Republic (Dover Thrift Editions) by Plato, Benjamin Jowett ISBN: 0486411214 Publisher: Dover Publications Pub. Date: 01 May, 2000 List Price(USD): $2.50 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
