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Author: Carl G. Vaught
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791486532
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 206
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Book Description
This detailed discussion of Augustine's journey toward God, as it is described in the first six books of the Confessions, begins with infancy, moves through childhood and adolescence, and culminates in youthful maturity. In the first stage, Augustine deals with the problems of original innocence and sin; in the second, he addresses a pear-stealing episode that recapitulates the theft of the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden and confronts the problem of sexuality with which he wrestles until his conversion; and in the third, he turns toward philosophy, only to be captivated successively by dualism, skepticism, and Catholicism. Augustine's journey exhibits temporal, spatial, and eternal dimensions and combines his head and his heart in equal proportions. Vaught shows that the Confessions should be interpreted as an attempt to address the person as a whole rather than through our intellectual or volitional dimensions exclusively. The passion with which Augustine describes the end of his journey is reflected best in a sentence found in the opening chapter of the text—"You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." Interpreting this statement, Carl G. Vaught presents a more emphatically Christian Augustine than is usually found in contemporary scholarship. Refusing to view Augustine in an exclusively Neoplatonic framework, Vaught holds that Augustine baptizes Plotinus just as successfully as Aquinas baptizes Aristotle. It cannot be denied that Ancient philosophy influences Augustine decisively. Nevertheless, he holds the experiential and the theoretical dimensions of his journey toward God together as a distinctive expression of the Christian tradition.
Author: Carl G. Vaught
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791486532
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 206
Get Book
Book Description
This detailed discussion of Augustine's journey toward God, as it is described in the first six books of the Confessions, begins with infancy, moves through childhood and adolescence, and culminates in youthful maturity. In the first stage, Augustine deals with the problems of original innocence and sin; in the second, he addresses a pear-stealing episode that recapitulates the theft of the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden and confronts the problem of sexuality with which he wrestles until his conversion; and in the third, he turns toward philosophy, only to be captivated successively by dualism, skepticism, and Catholicism. Augustine's journey exhibits temporal, spatial, and eternal dimensions and combines his head and his heart in equal proportions. Vaught shows that the Confessions should be interpreted as an attempt to address the person as a whole rather than through our intellectual or volitional dimensions exclusively. The passion with which Augustine describes the end of his journey is reflected best in a sentence found in the opening chapter of the text—"You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." Interpreting this statement, Carl G. Vaught presents a more emphatically Christian Augustine than is usually found in contemporary scholarship. Refusing to view Augustine in an exclusively Neoplatonic framework, Vaught holds that Augustine baptizes Plotinus just as successfully as Aquinas baptizes Aristotle. It cannot be denied that Ancient philosophy influences Augustine decisively. Nevertheless, he holds the experiential and the theoretical dimensions of his journey toward God together as a distinctive expression of the Christian tradition.
Author: Carl G. Vaught
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791483525
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 294
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Book Description
This is the final volume in Carl G. Vaught's groundbreaking trilogy reappraising Augustine's Confessions, a cornerstone of Western philosophy and one of the most influential works in the Christian tradition. Vaught offers a new interpretation of the philosopher as less Neoplatonic and more distinctively Christian than most interpreters have thought. In this book, he focuses on the most philosophical section of the Confessions and on how it relates to the previous, more autobiographical sections. A companion to the previous two volumes, which dealt with Books I–IX, this book can be read either in sequence with or independently of the others. Books X–XIII of the Confessions begin after Augustine has become Bishop of Hippo and they are separated by more than ten years from the episodes recorded in the previous nine books of the text. This establishes the narrative in the present and speaks to the "believing sons of men." Augustine explores how memory, time, and creation make the journey toward God and the encounter with God possible. Vaught analyzes these conditions in order to unlock Augustine's solutions to familiar philosophical and theological problems. He also tackles the frequently discussed problem of the alleged disconnection between the earlier books and the last four books by showing how Augustine binds experience and reflection together.
Author: Carl G. Vaught
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791484998
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 188
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Book Description
This book continues Carl G. Vaught's thoroughgoing reinterpretation of Augustine's Confessions—one that rejects the view that Augustine is simply a Neoplatonist and argues that he is also a definitively Christian thinker. As a companion volume to the earlier Journey toward God in Augustine's Confessions: Books I–VI, it can be read in sequence with or independently of it. This work covers the middle portion of the Confessions, Books VII–IX. Opening in Augustine's youthful maturity, Books VII–IX focus on the three pivotal experiences that transform his life: the Neoplatonic vision that causes him to abandon materialism; his conversion to Christianity that leads him beyond Neoplatonism to a Christian attitude toward the world and his place in it; and the mystical experience he shares with his mother a few days before her death, which points to the importance of the Christian community. Vaught argues that time, space, and eternity intersect to provide a framework in which these three experiences occur and which give Augustine a three-fold access to God.
Author: Jared Ortiz
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506406874
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 282
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Book Description
Augustine’s Confessions is probably the most commented upon text of early Christianity. Yet, there is a general consensus that this justly famous work is neither well composed nor structurally unified. “You Made Us for Yourself” aims to challenge this common notion by approaching the Confessions in light of what Augustine himself would have considered most fundamental: creation, understood in a broad sense. Creation, for Augustine, is an epiphany, a light that reveals who God is and who human beings are. It is not merely one doctrine or theme among others, but is the foundational context which illumines all doctrines and all themes. Moreover, creation, for Augustine, is dynamically ordered toward the church, toward the deified destiny the body of Christ both is and brings about. Thus, the Confessions itself can be understood as Augustine’s prayer of praise in thanksgiving for the unmerited gift of creation (and re-creation). It is his self-gift back to God—a kind of eucharistic offering intended to take up and bring about the same in his readers. Augustine’s rich understanding of creation, then, can account for the often despaired of meaning, structure, and unity of the Confessions.
Author: Robin Lane Fox
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465061575
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 688
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Book Description
"This narrative of the first half of Augustine's life conjures the intellectual and social milieu of the late Roman Empire with a Proustian relish for detail." --New York Times In Augustine, celebrated historian Robin Lane Fox follows Augustine of Hippo on his journey to the writing of his Confessions. Unbaptized, Augustine indulged in a life of lust before finally confessing and converting. Lane Fox recounts Augustine's sexual sins, his time in an outlawed heretical sect, and his gradual return to spirituality. Magisterial and beautifully written, Augustine is the authoritative portrait of this colossal figure at his most thoughtful, vulnerable, and profound.
Author: Carl G. Vaught
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438422792
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 238
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Book Description
"This book has been written for the artist, for the theologian, and for the philosopher, each of whom must be concerned with the question, "What does it mean to be human?" But at a deeper level, it is written for any reader who knows what it means to be fragmented, and who is willing to undertake a quest for wholeness in experiential and reflective terms." — from the Preface The Quest for Wholeness is a philosophic odyssey into humankind's feelings of fragmentation, and the search for unity born of those feelings. It blends the concreteness of art and religion with the discipline of philosophy to illuminate those places in experience and reflection where fragmentation is encountered and the meaning of wholeness is first discovered. Carl Vaught discusses the problems of fragmentation and unity, beginning with the aesthetic concreteness represented by the quest in Herman Melville's Moby Dick; moving through the religious dimension represented by the biblical stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses; passing on to the reflective discourse in Plato's Euthyphro; and ending in a confrontation with Hegel that unites the concrete particularity of religious and communal life with the dialectic of Socrates' normative reasoning. This book is written with the conviction that the professional philosopher should not address a merely professional audience, but the larger world as well, and that in the end he must come to terms with himself and with the most pressing questions that confront the human spirit.
Author: Tarmo Toom
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108491863
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 357
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Book Description
Presents the best scholarship on Augustine's Confessions which will facilitate a better understanding of this masterpiece.
Author: Augustine of Hippo
Publisher: New City Press
ISBN: 1565483871
Category : Christian saints
Languages : en
Pages : 455
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Book Description
Presents an English translation of Saint Augustine's "Confessions" in which the fourth-century bishop reflects on his faith and reveals his sins
Author: Saint Augustine (of Hippo)
Publisher: New City Press
ISBN: 1565481402
Category : Bible
Languages : en
Pages : 462
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Book Description
"As the psalms are a microcosm of the Old Testament, so the Expositions of the Psalms can be seen as a microcosm of Augustinian thought. In the Book of Psalms are to be found the history of the people of Israel, the theology and spirituality of the Old Covenant, and a treasury of human experience expressed in prayer and poetry. So too does the work of expounding the psalms recapitulate and focus the experiences of Augustine's personal life, his theological reflections and his pastoral concerns as Bishop of Hippo."--Publisher's website.
Author: Saint Augustine
Publisher: Aegitas
ISBN: 0369411358
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 235
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Book Description
The Confessions of Saint Augustine is an autobiographical work that chronicles the spiritual journey of one of the most influential figures in the history of Christianity. Written in the early 5th century by Saint Augustine, a Bishop of Hippo in North Africa, this book is considered a classic of Christian literature and a cornerstone of Western philosophy. The book is divided into 13 books, each representing a different phase in Augustine's life and spiritual development. It is written in the form of a prayer, with Augustine addressing his confessions to God, seeking forgiveness and understanding. Through his honest and introspective writing, Augustine reveals his inner struggles, doubts, and triumphs, providing readers with a rare glimpse into the mind of a saint. The first nine books focus on Augustine's early life, starting with his childhood in North Africa and his education in rhetoric and philosophy. He describes his search for truth and meaning in life, which leads him down a path of worldly desires, including a long-term relationship with a woman and his involvement in the Manichean religion. These experiences ultimately leave him feeling unfulfilled and questioning the purpose of life. In the tenth book, Augustine recounts his conversion to Christianity, which marks a turning point in his life and the beginning of his spiritual journey. He describes his encounter with God through a vision of a child, which inspires him to abandon his previous lifestyle and embrace a life of devotion to God. The remaining books focus on Augustine's struggles to overcome his human desires and achieve spiritual enlightenment, including his struggles with the concept of time, his understanding of the nature of God, and his interpretation of the Bible. Throughout the text, Augustine reflects on the philosophical and theological questions that have troubled him, such as the origin of evil and the relationship between faith and reason. He also shares his profound insights into human nature, morality, and the human desire for God. His writing is marked by a deep sense of humility, as he openly admits his flaws and sins and seeks forgiveness from God. The Confessions of Saint Augustine is not only a spiritual autobiography but also a profound theological and philosophical work. It is a testament to the power of divine grace and the transformative nature of faith. By sharing his personal journey, Augustine invites readers to reflect on their own lives and their relationship with God. This book continues to resonate with readers of all backgrounds and beliefs, making it a timeless masterpiece of literature.
