When Augustine tells us in Books 7 and 9 of the “Confessions” that he saw “that which is,” he is not claiming to have seen God as a whole or one of the divine persons, each of whom is equally God, but that he understood an eternal standard that God is also eternally understanding, thereby achieving a union with God in the knowing of one divine idea. This is a union that provides momentary intellectual possession or “embrace” of an intelligible beauty, because the Forms are intelligible beauties in Platonism.

Augustine directs his readers’ attention to the soul as an inner world, an interior space of the self that is not literally a place, but rather a dimension of being in which truths may be found, including God as the eternal truth that has always been present both within and above the soul as its creator. Yet, the self comes late to God within itself, because as sinners we keep turning our attention outward, trying to find happiness in external things.

This chapter focuses on the metaphilosophy of the “Confessions.” All the places of this work in which Augustine speaks explicitly of philosophy, of the philosophers, and of their writings are taken into consideration. An analysis of these places reveals the way in which Augustine, at the time he wrote his “Confessions,” recalled and judged the role played by philosophy until his baptism at the age of thirty-two.

Whether Augustine is eager to increase knowledge of God in his “Confessions,” to refute heterodox ideas – even ideas that he himself once espoused – about God the creator of matter, space, and time, or whether his aim is to heighten a particular awareness of God, he always tries to convince his readers that God is present in creation and in themselves (cf. Books 1–10), and is close to humankind (cf. Books 11–13). But as a person who is incomprehensible to human beings, God is always as much hidden as he is near.

In Augustine’s “Confessions,” the central point of pride – the root of sin – is excessive and arrogant complacency. Humility as self-knowledge, in contrast, includes four principles: creatureliness, sinfulness, confession, and grace.

This chapter presents an overview of the earliest transmission of “Confessions” and discusses the different hypotheses that have been proposed with regard to the stemmatical relations between the work’s oldest manuscript witnesses. It also offers a systematic overview of the existing critical editions and English translations.

Just as his narration in the “Confessions” has no other source than the bottomless and treacherous memory, Augustine has no other way of dealing with time than human speech. Both memory and speech attempt to concentrate time into a kind of unity, which is enabled by the extentionless unity of the eternity where the temporal processes are included in an atemporal way.

This chapter presents reading scenes in the “Confessions” as models for an individual’s reading as a social or intersubjective act, and places Augustine’s work in the cognitive ecology of the late Roman Empire.

This chapter analyzes the various avenues of the reception of the “Confessions” in the Middle Ages, based on extant manuscripts, medieval florilegia, and handbooks such as Peter Lombard’s Sentences. While the “Confessions” was one of Augustine’s best-known works, surprisingly there is very little evidence of direct reception, and Petrarch, who was an avid reader of the “Confessions,” rejected its basic premise of conversion in and devoting oneself completely to God, although the work did serve as a major source for medieval biographies of Augustine. The reception of the “Confessions” in the Middle Ages mirrored that of Augustine himself, whereby what we find upon close analysis is an ambiguous reception that is far less than the influence Augustine had in general.

The complexity of its themes and concerns suggests that Augustine anticipated multiple audiences for the “Confessions,” including his critics within the Catholic and Donatist churches of North Africa and his former compatriots among the Manichaean community. For the former, it served as an apology, demonstrating the authenticity of his spiritual development away from his Manichaean past. For the latter, it served both as a polemic, cleverly criticizing Manichaeism in the guise of self-condemnation, and as a protreptic, offering himself as an exemplar of a path to conversion commensurable with those spiritual values he could appreciate in the Manichaeans, despite their heresy.

To introduce an introduction, first a few words about the subject of this Companion, about Augustine’s Confessions.

In the “Confessions,” Augustine presents himself to the reader as the object of God’s grace. His life is not interesting as such but is the place where God’s grace operates. God’s grace in Augustine’s life is not limited to information and help, rather it is a deep and direct influence of God on the most internal part of one’s soul.