Uploaded June 2025 | Updated September 2026, 5 days ago
Ralston College presents a talk by Christopher Snook, Lecturer in the Department of Classics at Dalhousie University, on St Augustine’s great autobiographical text The Confessions. This talk offers a detailed walk through of Books VII and VIII of that text in light of Augustine’s “abiding preoccupation with the nature of the created order.” Snook explores how Augustine absorbed the insights of Platonist philosophers such as Plotinus and Porphyry but also moved beyond them, as he sought a more embodied account of the nature of the human person. Augustine’s own conversion stresses the importance of encountering models for life and reveals the centrality of the incarnate Logos to the Christian understandings of self-realization. This lecture was delivered on January 9th, 2025, at Ralston College’s Savannah campus during the third term of the MA in the Humanities program.
Support Ralston College’s mission to revive the conditions of a free and flourishing culture at www.Ralston.ac/support.
Authors and Works Mentioned in this Episode:
Dante, The Divine Comedy
Cicero, Hortensius
T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
St Ambrose
Plotinus
Porphyry
Gaius Marius Victorinus
Plato, The Republic
Virgil, The Aeneid
Iamblichus
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
St Anthony the Great
John Scotus Eriugena
Anselm of Canterbury
Martin Luther
Rene Decartes
– Chapters —
00:00:00 - Ralston College Podcast Intro
00:02:32 - Christopher Snook’s Introductory Remarks
00:14:30 - Augustine: Infancy, Childhood, Youth
00:25:16 - The Will to Know
00:47:22 - The Will to Love
01:08:45 - Conclusion
Ralston College presents a talk by Christopher Snook, Lecturer in the Department of Classics at Dalhousie University, on St Augustine’s great autobiographical text The Confessions. This talk offers a detailed walk through of Books VII and VIII of that text in light of Augustine’s “abiding preoccupation with the nature of the created order.” Snook explores how Augustine absorbed the insights of Platonist philosophers such as Plotinus and Porphyry but also moved beyond them, as he sought a more embodied account of the nature of the human person. Augustine’s own conversion stresses the importance of encountering models for life and reveals the centrality of the incarnate Logos to the Christian understandings of self-realization. This lecture was delivered on January 9th, 2025, at Ralston College’s Savannah campus during the third term of the MA in the Humanities program.
Support Ralston College’s mission to revive the conditions of a free and flourishing culture at www.Ralston.ac/support.
Authors and Works Mentioned in this Episode:
Dante, The Divine Comedy
Cicero, Hortensius
T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
St Ambrose
Plotinus
Porphyry
Gaius Marius Victorinus
Plato, The Republic
Virgil, The Aeneid
Iamblichus
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
St Anthony the Great
John Scotus Eriugena
Anselm of Canterbury
Martin Luther
Rene Decartes
– Chapters —
00:00:00 - Ralston College Podcast Intro
00:02:32 - Christopher Snook’s Introductory Remarks
00:14:30 - Augustine: Infancy, Childhood, Youth
00:25:16 - The Will to Know
00:47:22 - The Will to Love
01:08:45 - Conclusion
