Hello and welcome to Literature and History, Episode 99, the boy who stole pairs.

In this program, we will read the first seven books of St. Augustine's Confessions,

an autobiographical work produced between 397 and 400 CE.

Augustine of Hippo, perhaps the most famous writer of all of late antiquity, lived from

354 to 430, and I'd like to introduce this sequence of four episodes on the famous

Theologian with a quote from Scholar Timothy Beale.

It is difficult to imagine what Christianity would have looked like without Augustine,

even if many would like to try.

Doctrines, such as original sin, creation out of nothing, salvation by grace alone, and

predestination, not to mention the church's deep distrust of human sexuality, all owe their

early formulations to him.

Having written more than five million words, that is how many have come down to us, his

theological corpus is arguably more central to Christian doctrine than any other non-biblical

writings.

Close quote.

St. Augustine produced a colossal body of work.

Today we're going to read the most famous section of his most famous book.

The Confessions, even during Augustine's own lifetime, was better known than anything

else the Theologian produced.

At the end of Augustine's life, as another scholar puts it, Augustine quote, was well

aware that the Confessions was his most famous work.

And while the Confessions became popular, for many reasons, the roots of the book's

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