# A reading notebook on Augustine’s Confessions — thirteen books read slowly, with the people, places and passages you want to keep Recipe No. 22, Faith and study. From The know.sh Cookbook: https://know.sh/cookbook/confessions-notebook - For: a reader taking on a classic of Christian thought for the first time, alone or with a winter reading group - You bring: a copy of the *Confessions* (Pusey’s public-domain translation is free online; a modern translation reads more easily), a winter of evenings, and the assistant you already use - You get: four documents following the thirteen books, a document of people and places, a finding for every passage you want to keep with your own reflection under it, an index of names, and quizzes on who is who - Time: an evening to set up, then twenty minutes after each reading session - Keep it: private; never on a public link Augustine's *Confessions* is one of the few books read with respect across the Christian traditions, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant, and by many readers of no faith at all. It is also hard going. It is written as a prayer, it is woven through with the Psalms, it assumes you know who Alypius and Nebridius are, and after the garden in Milan it turns to memory, time and the first chapter of Genesis, where many readers stop. This recipe keeps a reading notebook beside the book. Your assistant, whether Claude, ChatGPT or a local model, does the scaffolding at scale: an outline of each book, a document of people and places, a timeline of Augustine's life with sources. You keep the passages that stop you, each as a finding with your own reflection under it, and the index gathers the people and places as you go. The notebook reads Augustine; it does not rule on him. Some of his later ideas are argued over between traditions, and this is not the place to settle them. ## What you will use - **Shelf**: A shelf called *Reading Augustine*, with a line on which translation you are reading and when you started. - **Research document**: Four documents following the books (I–IV, V–IX, X, XI–XIII), and a fifth, *People and places*. - **Finding**: A finding per passage you keep, filed as an *Observation*; the ones you return to marked **Key**; puzzles filed as a *Question*. - **Your AI assistant**: Your assistant builds the outlines, the people and places and a sourced timeline, and writes quizzes, but never writes your reflections. - **The editor**: Where you check every outline against the book, paste the passages from your translation and write what they mean to you. - **The A–Z index**: The index of people and places (*Monnica*, *Ambrose*, *Alypius*, *Milan*, *Ostia*) learned from your finding titles and first lines. - **Highlights**: Highlight the line in each passage that stopped you; those findings show in bold in the index. - **Quiz**: A quiz on *People and places* when the names start to blur, taken in know.sh or the iOS app. ## Method ### 1. Choose a translation and a pace The translation by E. B. Pusey, published in 1838, is in the public domain and free to read online; its English is old ("Thou madest us for Thyself") but faithful. Modern translations read more easily and are in copyright, so read them freely and quote them only briefly, in your own notes. Pick one to read and note it on the shelf. Thirteen books is a winter at two a fortnight. Plan four documents that follow the book's own turns: *Books I–IV* (childhood, Carthage and the Manichees), *Books V–IX* (Rome, Milan, the garden and Ostia), *Book X* (memory) and *Books XI–XIII* (time, creation and Genesis). ### 2. Let your assistant build the scaffolding Connect the assistant you already use to know.sh; the support page has the steps. Then ask it to build the notebook: the shelf, the four documents, each with an overview outlining its books chapter by chapter, and a fifth document, *People and places*, with a finding for each person and city (Monnica, Patricius, Ambrose, Alypius, Nebridius, Adeodatus; Thagaste, Carthage, Rome, Milan, Ostia) saying which books they appear in. If your assistant can search the web, ask it for a finding on the timeline of Augustine's life, each date with its source: born in Thagaste in 354, baptised by Ambrose in Milan at Easter 387, Monnica's death at Ostia later that year, the *Confessions* written in the late 390s. Claude and ChatGPT can do this; many local set-ups cannot search the web. ### 3. Check the scaffolding in the editor An outline is only useful if it matches the book. Before you read each book, open its outline with **Edit** and check it against the text as you go: fix a misplaced event, cut a summary that says more than Augustine does, and drag findings into the order you meet them. Open every source on the timeline and read what it says before you keep the date. Where the scholars differ, as they do on exactly when the *Confessions* was finished, say so in the finding. Everything the assistant filed is marked in Revisions as an assistant's change, so you can always see what you have checked and what you have not. ### 4. Keep the passages that stop you After each reading session, add a finding for each passage worth keeping. Title it with the book and a phrase, *Book I — restless until it rests*, and paste the passage from your translation, labelled with book and chapter. Keep it short; a sentence or two is enough to find your place again. Under the passage write three things: **Where it sits** (what has just happened), **What I think**, and **What I still do not understand**. Name the people in the first line, after a word or two: "Here Augustine remembers Monnica at Ostia." The index learns names from finding titles and first lines, so that is how *Monnica* comes to lead to every passage about her. ### 5. Write the reflections yourself The reflection is the point of the notebook, and it is the part no assistant should write. Your assistant can help around it: ask it to link a passage to the earlier one it echoes, or to leave a proposed note, with **Accept** and **Dismiss**, naming the psalm Augustine is quoting. Check every reference it gives against the Bible you read. Where you meet one of the ideas that traditions still argue over, such as grace or original sin, write down what Augustine says and what you make of it, and take your questions to a pastor, priest or teacher of your own tradition. The notebook is a record of your reading, not a ruling. ### 6. Get through Books X to XIII The last four books lose many readers. Before you start each one, ask your assistant for a plain outline of it, chapter by chapter, as a finding titled *Draft outline — by assistant*, so you never mistake it for Augustine. Read the outline, then read Augustine, then correct the outline in the editor where it flattened him. Book XI is where the famous question lives: "What then is time? If no one asks me, I know" (Pusey, XI, 14). It rewards being read twice. Mark the passages you return to as **Key**. ### 7. Quiz yourself on who is who By Book VI the names start to blur. Ask your assistant for a quiz on *People and places*: it writes five to ten questions with know.sh's quiz tools, each citing the finding it came from, and you take it in know.sh or in the iOS app, which is in TestFlight beta. A score under 60 per cent brings the quiz back under *Revisit* in three days; 80 per cent or more, in three weeks. When you finish the book, open the index and read it through: every person and place, with the passages you kept. Themes such as memory or time are ordinary words the index leaves out; press ⌘K and **Look up** finds every passage that uses them. ## Prompts to try Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model): > Using know.sh, set up a reading notebook for Augustine’s Confessions on a shelf called “Reading Augustine”: four documents for Books I–IV, V–IX, X and XI–XIII, each with a chapter-by-chapter outline in its overview, and a document “People and places” with a finding for each person and city, saying which books they appear in. Outlines in your own words; do not quote the text. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model): > Search the web and add a finding to “People and places” on my Reading Augustine shelf called “Timeline of Augustine’s life”, with each date and event on its own line and the source for each. Where scholars disagree about a date, say so rather than choosing. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model): > Using know.sh, write a quiz on “People and places” on my Reading Augustine shelf: eight questions on who each person was and where each event happened, each citing the finding it came from. ## Variations - Reading with a group over a winter? Keep your notebook private, and make a separate document for the group with the reading plan and a question per book, shared as a read-only link. - Reading a chapter of the Bible with the same group? The [small-group Bible study](/cookbook/bible-study) keeps one chapter the same way, an evening per finding. - Once the *Confessions* is done, carry the habit on in a [commonplace book](/cookbook/commonplace-book), a lifetime of passages from every book you read, filed by theme. ## Where it falls short - know.sh does not hold the text of the book. You paste the passages you keep, from a translation you are allowed to quote. - Outlines and timelines from an assistant are first drafts. They can misplace an event or smooth over a hard passage, which is why each one is checked against the book. - Web research needs an assistant that can search the web; Claude and ChatGPT can, many local set-ups cannot. Smaller local models also call tools less reliably, so check what they filed in Revisions. - The index gathers names, not ideas. Memory, time, grace and restlessness are found with Look up, which searches every word. ## A note on reading theology This is a tool for organising your own reading. For questions of interpretation and practice, turn to the teachers of your tradition. Assistants can make mistakes and are not a source of doctrine; check what they file against the book and against sources you trust. Augustine is read differently in different churches, and some of his ideas have been argued over for centuries. A reading notebook records what he wrote and what you think of it; it does not need to settle those arguments, and neither does your assistant. The quotations here are from E. B. Pusey's translation of 1838, which is in the public domain. Modern translations are in copyright: quote them briefly, with the translator's name, and keep longer passages in your own private notes. Indexed under: Augustine, Confessions, Reading notebooks, Theology, Church fathers, Pusey translation.