Nature in Augustine’s Confessions

Ralston College presents a talk by Christopher Snook, Lecturer in the Department of Classics at Dalhousie University, on St. Augustine’s great autobiographical text The Confessions. This talk offers a detailed walk through of Books VII and VIII of Augustine’s text in light of Augustine’s “abiding preoccupation with the nature of the created order.” 

Snook explores how Augustine absorbed the  insights of Platonist philosophers like Plotinus and Porphyry but also moved beyond them as he sought a more embodied account of the nature of the human person. Augustine’s own conversion stresses the importance of encountering models for life and reveals the centrality of the incarnate Logos to the Christian understandings of self-realization.

This lecture was delivered on January 9th, 2025 at Ralston College’s Savannah campus during the third term of the MA in the Humanities program. Support Ralston College’s mission to revive the conditions of a free and flourishing culture.

Authors and Works Mentioned in this Episode:

• Dante, The Divine Comedy

• Cicero, Hortensius

• T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

• St. Ambrose

• Plotinus

• Porphyry

• Gaius Marius Victorinus

• Plato, The Republic

• Virgil, The Aeneid 

• Iamblichus

• Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

• St. Anthony the Great

• John Scotus Eriugena

• Anselm of Canterbury

• Martin Luther

• Rene Decartes