Tuesday, September 3, 2013
First Impressions on Confessions
My first impression of Augustine's Confessions, is I am thinking (Naturally:). In the first book of Confessions Augustine discusses deep questions and paradoxes about the relationship between omniscient God and sinful man. However, the audience is not merely reading Augustine's thoughts on these intense questions, instead the audience is engaged with Augustine in his thinking. The audience takes part in Augustine's questions. Augustine has the unique ability to grab his reader by the hand and bring him back 1600 years into the past. As I read Confessions, I find a myself looking out the window to a Northern African landscape; suddenly I am sitting with Bishop Augustine debating at which age one should be baptized.
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A nice creative response, Ben, You are absolutely right to highlight the ways in which the audience is invoked in the Confessions. There is something remarkable about the fact that we can enter into the mind of an ancient thinker and find ourselves asking similar questions.
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