First - I'm glad that I plowed through and actually finished. It did end up being some seriously hard reading through the end, so half of the rewarding feeling I have at finishing just has to do with finishing, and nothing at all to do with the text. It was good practice - I haven't really forced myself to read through difficult text since undergrad. It is a skill that I want to keep, if only because it prepares me to go through legal documents and real estate clauses.
Not that I think reading Augustine was as pointless as reading legal documents (I mean, you're screwed whether you read the fine print anyway, so why damage your eyes and your brain too?). There were moments of sheer brilliance. The later chapters of the book turn towards philosophical questions about the nature of God and of the Universe, though I suppose they are more philosophical methods applied to theological questions. The logical method that Augustine uses explore these basic but all-important questions flawlessly shows off Augustine's intellect - partially because he freely admits that his logic might NOT be flawless. From a content perspective, Augustine's message is close to my heart: there are many interpretations of Truth, but an honest search for Truth is a uniting, not a dividing force, so matter how many different conclusions we may reach. It is good to debate the meaning of scripture, but not to hate a person with a different idea, or even to assert your idea to be more true than others. Humility goes a long way.
Mostly, then, I loved the content. The only exception I had was that chapter that was just Augustine going on and on about what a bad person he was for loving certain pleasures for their own sake. I get the impulse and might even agree with him, but it got old quickly.
Stylistically though - I have to admit...it got seriously boring. It picked up here and there - usually when he was summing up, or relating the rare personal example. So, why was it boring? I think we, as writers, can learn as much from what we didn't like as what we did. He clearly was capable of being more interesting than he often was...so why wasn't he more often? I think the issue has to do with why he was writing and who he was writing to, and who he was as a person. His purpose was not to entertain, of course, but to debate. Except for a few chapters that are straight autobiography, The Confessions really is more about explaining his version of Christianity. Because he was so well trained in Latin Rhetoric, rather than the stories he had loved as a child, he approached theology from a purely logical, argumentative standpoint. Or not purely, since there are those moments of illustration - his childhood love for stories poking out, maybe. I think the style of debate at the time is what leads The Confessions to be so boring. He doesn't just make his points and support them with evidence - he hammers and hammers his point through so that you can't bear to hear it again and just say, "YES I GET IT, I BELIEVE YOU, WHATEVER YOU SAY, JUST SHUT UP PLEASE!"
The points he is making are obscure and I think he is trying to explain what he's trying to say fully - and it doesn't help that he originally was speaking them, rather than writing. I know from experience that what makes a good essay and what makes a good speech aren't always the same. Certain inflections and pauses can soften that hammering so that it doesn't seem quite so redundant. And his audience was likely educated men who were interested in minute questions of theology - few others could even read at the time anyway.
This, I guess, is what I'm trying to say: logic = good. Too much logic = redundant/boring. I love the sweeping paragraphs pondering infinite space and deep truths - but these have to be supported by down-to-earth examples, rather than more philosophy or we'll get lost. I love that he (and Montaigne) seamlessly interweaves their reading - mostly the Psalms in Augustine's case. I think we could and should do more of that than we do. However, partly because there is so much of it, and partly because he interrupts himself to praise God, it can become distracting. For us, there would have to be more of a point.
I'm glad I read it, I feel like a learned a lot from the book. However, though I can acknowledge it's importance as a seminal autobiographical work - it spoke more to me as a Christian than as a writer of essays.
