The Confessions - Augustine

From Philosophy Archive

Introduction by Albert C. Outler

LIKE A COLOSSUS BESTRIDING TWO WORLDS, Augustine stands as the last patristic and the first medieval father of Western Christianity. He gathered together and conserved all the main motifs of Latin Christianity from Tertullian to Ambrose; he appropriated the heritage of Nicene orthodoxy; he was a Chalcedonian before Chalcedon -- and he drew all this into an unsystematic synthesis which is still our best mirror of the heart and mind of the Christian community in the Roman Empire. More than this, he freely received and deliberately reconsecrated the religious philosophy of the Greco-Roman world to a new apologetic use in maintaining the intelligibility of the Christian proclamation. Yet, even in his role as summator of tradition, he was no mere eclectic. The center of his "system" is in the Holy Scriptures, as they ordered and moved his heart and mind. It was in Scripture that, first and last, Augustine found the focus of his religious authority. At the same time, it was this essentially conservative genius who recast the patristic tradition into the new pattern by which European Christianity would be largely shaped and who, with relatively little interest in historical detail, wrought out the first comprehensive "philosophy of history."

Contents

• The Confessions - Augustine
  • Confessions and Enchiridion Introduction - Augustine
  • The Confessions of St Augustine Book 1 - Augustine
  • The Confessions of St Augustine Book 2 - Augustine
  • The Confessions of St Augustine Book 3 - Augustine
  • The Confessions of St Augustine Book 4 - Augustine
  • The Confessions of St Augustine Book 5 - Augustine
  • The Confessions of St Augustine Book 6 - Augustine
  • The Confessions of St Augustine Book 7 - Augustine
  • The Confessions of St Augustine Book 8 - Augustine
  • The Confessions of St Augustine Book 9 - Augustine
  • The Confessions of St Augustine Book 10 - Augustine
  • The Confessions of St Augustine Book 11 - Augustine
  • The Confessions of St Augustine Book 12 - Augustine
  • The Confessions of St Augustine Book 13 - Augustine
  • The Confessions of St Augustine Book Notes - Augustine