Books 3 and 4 of the Confessions follow Augustine into Carthage: theater that feeds tears without mercy, Cicero that awakens a hunger for wisdom, and a friendship whose death exposes how hollow his loves still are. False lights still look like truth.

This Mythic Mind episode is the fellowship book-club conversation on those middle books. Dr. Andrew Snyder (professor of philosophy and theology) hosts the free Confessions study as the circle tracks ambition, Manichaean shadows, and the slow education of desire before Milan and Ambrose arrive.

Topics include grief that reveals disordered love, philosophy as more than rhetorical polish, and why Augustine keeps treating entertainment, friendship, and career as spiritual diagnostics.