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This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute, an apostolate helping Catholics understand, live, and share their faith.

Welcome back to our second episode on St. Augustine's Confessions. I'm Dr. Liz Klein, a professor

here at the Augustine Institute, and I'm here with my colleague, Dr. John Seahorn. And in this episode,

we're going to dive a little bit deeper into understanding whether or not the Confessions is an

autobiography or how we would characterize it in its

genre. I think actually one of the biggest thing that trips people up when they start reading

this book is that they think of it as an autobiography. So they expect it to start and unfold

in a certain way and their hopes are kind of confused or dashed. And I remember the first time I was assigned the

confessions in an undergraduate class, and I was told, you know, this is Augustine's autobiography. And I opened it up to the first book,

and I'm like, this is babies and sinful babies. And I don't know what's happening. I don't know what's going on.

Well, why am I reading this?

And so I think it's helpful to kind of put that expectation in perspective as you approach the book.

Did you have a comment to me about that? I'm wondering how many viewers know what you mean by sinful babies, but they'll find that if they read book one. Yeah, I'm not going to tell you.

You're going to read book one of the confessions to know what the reference of simple babies is. So I thought one way of getting at

the confessions as autobiography or whether or not it is would we just read the very opening

of book one and how it starts and then maybe think a little bit about how that compares to

what you might expect or how other

autobiography starts. So Dr. Klein, you're using Maria Boldings translation. Yeah, so I'm using Maria Boldings

translation. I will do likewise. So I'm going to read the first couple sentences of the confession. So

book one chapter one section one. Great are you, O Lord, and exceedingly worthy of praise. Your power is immense

and your wisdom beyond reckoning. And so we humans, who are a due part of your creation,

...