Summer Study at St. John’s Episcopal Church: St. Augustine’s Confessions
A reminder to those of you who live in the Dallas area–I will be teaching a course on St. Augustine’s Confessions (books I-IX) during the month of June at St. John’s Episcopal Church. The class will meet in the Parish Hall on Tuesdays from 6:30-8pm beginning next Tuesday, June 3. For more information, you may email me at crn@pobox.com. For those who desire to read the book while taking the course, I highly recommend (but do not require) Maria Boulding’s translation of the Confessions, which is the translation that I will be using for the course.
To whet your appetite, here are some of the themes/topics that I plan to discuss: the literary genre of the Confessions, the dialectic of faith and reason or philosophy and revelation as it plays out in the Confessions, Augustine’s view of education pre/post conversion, the various ways that pseudo-friendships and genuine friendships impacted Augustine’s life, the significance of the pear-tree incident and purposed biblical allusions (Gen 3), Augustine’s encounter with St. Ambrose and his acquisition of a ”new hermeneutic”, Augustine’s encounter with the Platonists (book VII), Augustine’s famous Garden-scene conversion (book VIII) where he encounters St. Paul and ultimately Jesus Christ, and Augustine’s baptism and his response to Monica’s death as it relates to the general interplay of death and resurrection (book IX).
One Response so far
5:10 am
I’m re-reading Confessions right now. Wish I could take the class; it’d be great to have a guide.
St. John’s Episcopal Church has a nice ring to it :)
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