Before Augustine became one of Christianity’s most influential theologians, he was a partying philosophy student who kept a mistress for fifteen years, fathered an illegitimate son, and famously prayed, “Grant me chastity and continence — but not yet.” His Confessions, written after his conversion, was the first true autobiography in Western literature and the first systematic attempt to map the interior landscape of the human mind.

This episode traces Augustine from his hedonistic youth in North Africa through his intellectual wanderings among the Manicheans and Neoplatonists, the famous garden conversion in Milan, and the theological works that shaped Western Christianity for sixteen centuries.

• Augustine’s wild youth in Carthage and the famous prayer for delayed chastity
• His intellectual journey through Manicheanism, skepticism, and Neoplatonism
• The garden conversion in Milan and the Confessions that invented autobiography
• The City of God, original sin, and Augustine’s lasting impact on Western theology and psychology