Augustine: Conversions to Confessions

Aside from Jesus Christ (obviously) and the Apostle Paul there are very few figures in church history who can claim to have had such a wide impact on church thinking. Augustine is clearly one of those figures with his extensive writings throughout his long career and his debates with the Manichaean and Donatist cults of early church history. And few Christian writings have been as influential as his book Confessions. But his life and writings can be bewildering to modern readers. Thus, book is greatly appreciated and timely. Part biography and part literary critique, Mr. Fox writes about Augustine from his birth through his conversion in Milan in 386 A.D. to the writing of Confessions in 397 A.D. Through it all, Mr. Fox places Augustine in his time and is able to get into his head in a way that should be illuminating for all, both scholars and laymen alike. One of his methods of doing this is by comparing Augustine's life to some of his contemporaries, particularly one Libanius. This is a great move, but it is also a two-edged sword as Mr. Fox parallels their lives so much that you may forget who he is actually writing about, Augustine or Libanius. Plus the inordinate amount of time Mr. Fox does some times take to explain Augustine's thinking may also be a detriment to casual readers. I also found it strange that Mr. Fox would choose to end this biography in 397 A.D. when Augustine will live for another 33 years. While his epilogue does bring us to Augustine's death, I still found it strange that Mr. Fix would only go so far. While this book is dense and may not be for everyone, I highly recommend it people interested in Augustine, his writings and the history of the church in late antiquity.

This book goes through Augustine's life through the writing of the Confessions, comparing each period of life with what is known about that period from history and what Augustine wrote about it in his confessions. It's fascinating and provides helpful context, but occasionally the data seems jumbled together. Sometimes there's too much information poorly synthesized, such as in the Manichaean chapters. I'm not overly impressed with Fox as a writer of prose, but definitely as a scholar and analyst.

This is a beautifully written review of the life of Augustine from birth to the publication of The Confessions. It is bolstered by parallel lives of similarly situated intellectuals from Libya and Turkey; one Christian and one Christian. Perhaps the most valuable part of the book is the discussion of the heresy that consumed nine years of Augustine's life.(My old brain is not coming up with the name at this point).

This book not only allows you to make you feel as if you can walk around the towns where Augustine lived, it also shows in detail how one of the most influential thinkers of all times emerged.

IN A TIME where so many in the US just slip there hand in the air, or walk down an aisle and they are a Christian. It was a fight, warfare for Augustine..... I mean he didn't have the KJV or ESV nicely divided into books, chapters and verse... the ? How did he do it.. Grace, Election -

This an eye opener with wide ranging evidence from Augustine's contemporary society and context - still more to read!

A rewarding read, dense with information on Augustine, the early church, and the entire period.

Scholarly treatment or the subject with unique point of view

This is a staggering work of scholarship. So if the rest of the review carries some criticisms, bear in mind that they should be read in this light.Lane Fox's grasp of evidence from the wider classical world, sensitive reading of the Latin text and, not least, mastery of English prose makes this a deeply readable, incisive and significant account of Augustine' life and thought upto and including 'Confessions'. For one of many examples, I might cite Chapter 8, on Manicheism, which includes all sorts of evidence including primary texts from Asia as well as recent secondary scholarship, all marshalled together to make a coherent sense of the faith which Augustine followed for something like a decade of its life, but which we usually only hear about from its opponents (or Augustine himself attacking his former life).Overall, this is also perhaps an eccentric book.First, and this may or may not attract you as a reader, Lane Fox is not a Christian. To devote such a vast amount of thought and work to someone whose basic assumptions about life he does not share is curious, though Lane Fox has form with this; check out 'Pagans and Christians' or 'The Unauthorised Version'. And his lack of belief does not stop him, for the most part, from being a deeply empathetic reader of the text. The only time I felt really conscious of the gap was in his chapter on Augustine's encounter with God/ conversion moment in the garden. For many Christians who come into contact with Augustine's description, there is a ringing of the bell of familiarity with something in one's own life; not so for Lane Fox, who really sees Augustine's conversions as one's to do with giving up worldly ambition and sex, but can't really cohere this into a Christian life story.The second eccentricity is that, mammoth as it is, Lane Fox's book stops with Augustine' elevation to episcopacy (which he believes coincides with his writing of 'Confessions') If you want to find out more about Augustine's later life, you'll need to head to another biography (e.g. Peter Brown). I suspect this endpoint lies in the book's origins whereby for deacdes Lane Fox taught a Specialist Subject at Oxford on 'Confessions'; he never troubled to push into Augustine's later life, but he'd accumulated a vast amount of thinking about Augustine upto and including it.The third eccentricity is in some of his conclusions. Lane Fox may be right that 'Confessions' itself was written partly in response to a misunderstood gift of bread given by Augustine, which to some contemporaries had sexual overtones and caused a scandal, but this thesis relies on multiple unevidenced hypotheses. He finds it, I suspect, such an elegant way through the evidence that he finds it irresistible, but I wasn't convinced by it.Fourth, Lane Fox periodically uses two near contemporary intellectuals, Synesius, another Christian and bishop, and Libanius, a pagan based in Syria, as counterpoints to Augustine. These diversions are only a partial success; arguably, they could have been cut and pasted into a separate work of scholarship.BUT, and this should be the take-away, these differences of view/ criticisms should not take away from a breathtaking work of scholarship. Perhaps the modern world needs an unbelieving scholar to take Augustine and show just what a remarkable thinker he was, and still is, even for non-Christians. In which case, Lane Fox has done us all a double service, for Augustine is too great a figure only to be enjoyed by the minority of us who are still Christian.This isn't a book to be trifled with -it's a scholarly work - but equally it's highly readable and often captivating.It's magnificent and Lane Fox is a national treasure.

If like me, you want to understand Augustine and his thinking without drowning in the petty and dreary scolasticism that surrounds him, this is excellent. Thorough without being too lengthy. Did not quite get 5 stars as his comparisons with contemporaries only works sometimes.

Excellent copy

This ambitious book is not an easy read. Indeed, one is best to already be familiar with some of Augustine's writings and especially the Confessions rightly named as an extended prayer (rather than a spiritual autobiography). Not being an Augustinian scholar,I have not been able, yet, to do the book justice. Ironically, for the author to begin with a caveat that he is not "religious" or part of a spiritual community, he demonstrates a respectfully sensitive empathy to Augustine's thought, passions, life story, his challenging era, etc. Fox has a fully helpful index which I have found best to work with; its subtitle is an instructive guide into the whole of the author's intentions. I am glad it part of my small Augustine library

Robin, you have tried your best, but have not yet achieved the perfection of the perfect biographer. Not your fault, considering the fact that the intellectual achievements of Augustine is so vast, that no mind , can capture them in a 800 page biography.