Augustine's Confessions

Augustine's Confessions

Author: BBC Radio 4 March 15, 2018 Duration: 47:55

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Augustine of Hippo's account of his conversion to Christianity and his life up to that point. Written c397AD, it has many elements of autobiography with his scrutiny of his earlier life, his long relationship with a concubine, his theft of pears as a child, his work as an orator and his embrace of other philosophies and Manichaeism. Significantly for the development of Christianity, he explores the idea of original sin in the context of his own experience. The work is often seen as an argument for his Roman Catholicism, a less powerful force where he was living in North Africa where another form of Christianity was dominant, Donatism. While Augustine retells many episodes from his own life, the greater strength of his Confessions has come to be seen as his examination of his own emotional development, and the growth of his soul.

With

Kate Cooper Professor of History at the University of London and Head of History at Royal Holloway

Morwenna Ludlow Professor of Christian History and Theology at the University of Exeter

and

Martin Palmer Visiting Professor in Religion, History and Nature at the University of Winchester

Producer: Simon Tillotson.


Melvyn Bragg and a panel of academic experts gather each week to explore the vast and intricate landscape of religious history in In Our Time: Religion. This BBC Radio 4 podcast, a dedicated series within the broader "In Our Time" programme, delves deep into the beliefs, schisms, and social forces that have shaped the world's faiths across centuries. Rather than offering sermons or spiritual guidance, these conversations are rigorous historical inquiries. Listeners will find themselves immersed in detailed discussions about the origins of movements like the Cathars or the Quakers, the philosophical underpinnings of concepts such as the Trinity or Nirvana, and the complex legacies of figures from Maimonides to Martin Luther. Each episode unpacks a single topic with clarity and depth, making profound ideas accessible without sacrificing intellectual rigor. The tone is conversational yet authoritative, driven by curiosity and a genuine desire to understand how these religious ideas emerged, evolved, and fundamentally altered human societies. For anyone fascinated by the powerful role of faith in history, this podcast provides a consistently enlightening and thoughtful exploration, one thoughtful conversation at a time.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

In Our Time: Religion
Podcast Episodes
Prophecy [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:06
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the meaning and significance of prophecy in the Abrahamic religions. Prophets, those with the ability to convey divinely-inspired revelation, are significant figures in the Hebrew Bibl…
Gnosticism [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:06
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Gnosticism, a sect associated with early Christianity. The Gnostics divided the universe into two domains: the visible world and the spiritual one. They believed that a special sort of…
The Cult of Mithras [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:12
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the cult of Mithras, a mystery religion that existed in the Roman Empire from the 1st to the 4th centuries AD. Also known as the Mysteries of Mithras, its origins are uncertain. Academ…
The Upanishads [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:00
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Upanishads, the ancient sacred texts of Hinduism. Dating from about 700 BC, the Upanishads were passed down through an oral tradition in priestly castes and were not written down u…
The Ontological Argument [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:11
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Ontological Argument. In the eleventh century St Anselm of Canterbury proposed that it was possible to prove the existence of God using reason alone. His argument was ridiculed by…
King Solomon [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:09
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the biblical king Solomon, celebrated for his wisdom and as the architect of the First Temple in Jerusalem. According to the Old Testament account of his life, Solomon was chosen as hi…
George Fox and the Quakers [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 41:53
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the origins of Quakerism. In the mid-seventeenth century an itinerant preacher, George Fox, became the central figure of a group known as the Religious Society of Friends, whose member…
Erasmus [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 41:58
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the Dutch humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus. In his lifetime Erasmus was almost universally recognised as the greatest classical scholar of his age, the translat…
The Safavid Dynasty [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:08
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Safavid Dynasty, rulers of the Persian empire between the 16th and 18th centuries.In 1501 Shah Ismail, a boy of fifteen, declared himself ruler of Azerbaijan. Within a year he had…
The Concordat of Worms [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 41:52
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Concordat of Worms. This treaty between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire, signed in 1122, put an end, at least for a time, to years of power struggle and bloodshed. The wrangli…