Book contents
- Augustine’s ‘Confessions’
- Augustine’s ‘Confessions’
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Theological Predecessors to the Confessions of Augustine
- Chapter 2 Trinitarian Metaphysics in the Confessions
- Chapter 3 Augustine’s Therapy of Emotions
- Chapter 4 Augustine’s Confessions and Earlier Exegesis
- Chapter 5 Reading Augustine Reading Scripture in the Confessions
- Chapter 6 Augustine on the Tasks of Reading Scripture
- Chapter 7 The Sacramental Structure and Imagination of Augustine’s Confessions
- Chapter 8 How Great a Debtor
- Chapter 9 Augustine’s Second-Personal Account of the Virtues
- Chapter 10 The Nobility of Sight in the Confessions
- Chapter 11 First Words
- Chapter 12 Augustine on Time, Eternity, and Temporal Experience
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 4 - Augustine’s Confessions and Earlier Exegesis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 December 2025
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Book contents
- Augustine’s ‘Confessions’
- Augustine’s ‘Confessions’
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Theological Predecessors to the Confessions of Augustine
- Chapter 2 Trinitarian Metaphysics in the Confessions
- Chapter 3 Augustine’s Therapy of Emotions
- Chapter 4 Augustine’s Confessions and Earlier Exegesis
- Chapter 5 Reading Augustine Reading Scripture in the Confessions
- Chapter 6 Augustine on the Tasks of Reading Scripture
- Chapter 7 The Sacramental Structure and Imagination of Augustine’s Confessions
- Chapter 8 How Great a Debtor
- Chapter 9 Augustine’s Second-Personal Account of the Virtues
- Chapter 10 The Nobility of Sight in the Confessions
- Chapter 11 First Words
- Chapter 12 Augustine on Time, Eternity, and Temporal Experience
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter examines Augustine’s relationship to earlier biblical exegesis. It emphasizes three distinctive preoccupations of Augustine’s exegesis: “the constraints of language, the limits of the human mind’s capacity to know God or the author’s intention, and the habits of the flesh to follow the desires of its senses.” After elucidating Augustine’s approach to these issues – which in itself sets him somewhat apart from his predecessors and contemporaries – the chapter presents two informative case studies. The first concerns Genesis, the topic of Confessions 11–13. Augustine’s exegesis of Genesis is informed from the beginning by his determination to reject the Manichaean dismissal of that book as silly and anthropomorphic, but his engagement with Genesis matures over time: his earliest discussions are far more indebted to Ambrose than his later, more distinctive, exegesis. The second case study concerns the Song of Songs. Here Augustine insists upon the goodness, beauty, and order of the material world, redeeming the five senses as intimations of the divine.
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- Augustine's ‘Confessions'A Critical Guide, pp. 65 - 81Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2026
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