Reddit reviews Confessions (Oxford World's Classics)
We found 10 Reddit comments about Confessions (Oxford World's Classics). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Confessions
Reddit reviews Confessions (Oxford World's Classics)We found 10 Reddit comments about Confessions (Oxford World's Classics). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
>You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today ...
I'm sure you've read this but a big part of early spiritual development is working on that cycle of repentance and return.
As you get older and are able to do more, you will also have the chance to grow. Don't worry about not being able to stick to a schedule now - perhaps simplify it at first?
If you've not read Augustine's Confessions I highly recommend it. This is a good guide to it. If you can't buy them/find them at your library, let me know and I'll see what I can do.
As you are still at home, perhaps the single largest thing you can do in your situation is love your parents and obey them dutifully. Study them, recognize their faults, and ask yourself, "What can I do to help them with their failings? What can I do to make their lives easier?" This doesn't mean lecturing them, but helping. For example, if your mom is always complaining that your dad forgets to take out the trash, do it for him.
These things sound so small, but they are the small steps on the path to holiness. We don't all start by hugging lepers.
I recommend reading The Confessions of St. Augustine. It's a classic, and even beyond the faith aspects, it's an extremely interesting historical document -- the first memoir ever written, from 4th century Rome.
That and "Mere Christianity" by CS Lewis.
You'll be able to find both at most well-stocked libraries or cheap online.
Any of these:
Or:
Generally histories:
Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years
Chadwick - The Early Church
Retrieving Nicaea
Specific Important Authors
Apostolic Fathers
Origen Note: Not everything he said is orthodox, but he was an extremely important figure.
Desert Fathers
Athanasius - On the Incarnation
Basil - On the Holy Spirit
Gregory of Nazianzus
John Chrysostom
Augustine - Confessions
Rule of St. Benedict
Gregory the Great
Maximus the Confessor
John Damascus
As C.S. Lewis said:
>It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.
So, I'd suggest picking up a classic like Confessions by Augustine. It's one of the best Christian books of all time. People are still reading it 1600 years after it was written.
Can I suggest reading something of the lives of the saints? Augustine's "Confessions" is pretty inocuous from a Protestant point of view. I really enjoyed Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux when I read it after my conversion.
Another good one to read, which I read before I re-converted (identified as a Christian again), was The Way of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues His Way.
Finally, I'm almost done with this book but it's awsome!!! If you can swing the price of the paperback it's probably better than the Kindle edition, but the Kindle edition is really affordable.
It's, Everyday Saints and Other Stories.
The Saints are the Gospel personified. They are they who the Church recognizes as having embodied Christ--lived the Gospel.
I also really got a lot out of this book: Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta
Hope some of this might help.
As Christians we have such a rich heritage.
This is a good list. Quick suggestions...
As others are saying, Athanasius' On the Incarnation is a must-read if you're looking at the great theological works of the tradition. I have the edition from the Popular Patristics series sitting on my shelf. It's a good translation. You can also find it here online.
For Augustine, read his Confessions. It's the first autobiography in the West. That's pretty wild. I read the Oxford edition; that's what I usually see people point to. His City of God is also very important.
For Aquinas, his great work is the Summa. It's massive. And in order to really understand Aquinas, you should understand Aristotle first. Your reading list is getting quite long now—but there are abridgments and reading guides to Aquinas out there if you're interested. Peter Kreeft's Summa of the Summa has often been recommended to me.
John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion should be added. It's hard to overstate the significance of this work. Many would call this the greatest theological work that came out of the Reformation. The Battles edition of the Institutes is more expensive but far more readable than the older Beveridge edition.
Jonathan Edwards is one of the greatest minds in American history. He's certainly not as important as Calvin, but his End for which God Created the World and his Religious Affections are both very good works by, like I said, one of America's greatest minds.
God bless you if you can make it through 14 volumes of Barth's Church Dogmatics. They say Barth's exceedingly important, and I believe them—but frankly I'd put him at a much lower priority than anyone else here. Because Barth stands in the Reformed tradition, I doubt one is able to fully appreciate him without first reading Calvin anyway.
When someone asks about the greatest theological works, some will always recommend works by contemporary writers. Some very good stuff has been written by folks who are still alive; N. T. Wright comes to mind, though I think he's too verbose for his own good. But I'm of the opinion that we don't yet have the historical distance to discern whether works by contemporary authors ought to be placed among the undisputed greats of the tradition.
I cannot comment on translation quality as my Latin is virtually non-existent, but I like this one.
That version has footnotes that explain references and fill in biographical detail, is part of the Oxford World Classics series, and costs $5.
Rediscovering the Church Fathers: Who They Were and How They Shaped the Church by Michael Haykin
The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God by Robert Louis Wilken
The Early Church (The Penguin History of the Church) by Henry Chadwick
Early Christian Doctrines by J.N.D. Kelly
And of course, works such as On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius, and The Confessions by St. Augustine
My first try didn't seem to go through, so here's a second.
Amazon reviews are an okay place to start. A lot of people offer helpful comments. But, as you said, getting into thinkers that appeal to other audiences outside of just philosophers gets a bit sticky. I wouldn't be so quick to denounce or dismiss the religious aspect. Keep in mind if you want to read Augustine you'll be reading a religious thinker, so he has to be translated as such. For example, you could get a more technical translation of the Confessions, or you could find one operating more in the poetic spirit of Augustine, but regardless you're going to be reading a deeply religious text. Both are good translations, and both capture something of Augustine that the other probably misses. In the end, you have to ask yourself what you want more and what fits your purposes more. Also with regard to religious thinkers, it's important to try to read them on their own terms without having made up your mind before getting into the book. Allow yourself to agree with the thinker as much as you can--get inside their heads, travel with them, dwell with them. At the end, you can make a judgement, but give them a fair trial. This is also where translations can help. Some are simply more engaging, even if they're not "word-for-word" translations. A great example of this is Coleman Barks' "translations" of the poems of Muslim mystic Rumi. He actually completely fails (intentionally so) to translate Rumi word-for-word. Instead, he tries to write a poem in English that captures the language, feeling, and ideas of Rumi himself. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but it's a lot nicer than just reading a book of translated poems full of footnotes and technicalities. If I'm going to write a deeply researched paper on Rumi, perhaps I should find another translation, but if I want to really learn Rumi and try to gain from his knowledge, I might want to begin with Barks.
As for other reviews, you can often find them simply by Googling. For example, here's a review on Hannay's translation of a book by Kierkegaard that is done in a professional, scholarly way. I found it on the first page of Google searching "alastair hannay translation review."
It sounds like hard work, and it is, but it's worth it.
Also, if it makes you feel any better we used Penguin editions for many of my undergraduate classes as text books.