Description

This book continues Carl G. Vaught's thoroughgoing reinterpretation of Augustine's Confessions--one that rejects the view that Augustine is simply a Neoplatonist and argues that he is also a definitively Christian thinker. As a companion volume to the earlier Journey toward God in Augustine's Confessions: Books I-VI, it can be read in sequence with or independently of it. This work covers the middle portion of the Confessions, Books VII-IX. Opening in Augustine's youthful maturity, Books VII-IX focus on the three pivotal experiences that transform his life: the Neoplatonic vision that causes him to abandon materialism; his conversion to Christianity that leads him beyond Neoplatonism to a Christian attitude toward the world and his place in it; and the mystical experience he shares with his mother a few days before her death, which points to the importance of the Christian community. Vaught argues that time, space, and eternity intersect to provide a framework in which these three experiences occur and which give Augustine a three-fold access to God.