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Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2008, XVIII+308 p.
ISBN: 978-1-55635-216-4, US-$ 36.00
Augustine of Hippo is arguably the most influential author in the history of Christian thought and institutions. Yet he has been revered by some reviewers and vilified by others. Contemporary critical approaches to historical authors can illuminate features of Augustine's thought and activities that are not noticed when reviewers' attention is either exclusively sympathetic or intransigently critical. Anyone who seeks to present an Augustine who has relevance for the twenty-first century must somehow hold together delight in the beauty of his prose and the profundity of his thought with dismay over some of the intentions and effects of his teachings. The essays in this book endeavor to read Augustine simultaneously critically and appreciatively. Miles places his thought in the context of his classical heritage and notices how pervasive in later Christian authors are the themes that informed Augustine's thought. Understanding his writings as a passionate effort to describe a metaphysical universe that accounts for the endlessly fascinating mystery of embodied life makes many of Augustine's proposals accessible, useful, and delightful in the context of contemporary quandaries and issues. His conclusions are less important than his method: In Augustine, knowledge and life mutually illuminate, energize, and critique each other, exemplifying the practice of a fully human life. Exploring some of his most persistent themes, these essays seek to show how Augustine's theology works.
» See presentation on publisher's homepage
Jason Byassee
© wipfandstock.com
Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2006, VIII+94p.
ISBN: 978-1-59752-529-9, US-$ 14.00
The 'Confessions' of St. Augustine is one of the few Christian classics that is still widely read in the secular academy. Yet, oddly enough, it is not often read in the manner Augustine appears to have intended and in which the church read it for centuries: as a model of conversion, devotion, friendship, and the love of God. This book is a companion for any reader of the Confessions — whether in an academic, ecclesial, or devotional context — informed by the latest scholarship yet always directed toward pushing the reader, with Augustine, toward God.
"Jason Byassee's learned, intimate, and engaging guide to Augustine's 'Confessions' is a delight to read and a wonderful resource for everyone who wishes to become the faithful and discerning reader Augustine so fervently desired." (Carol Zaleski, Smith College)
» See presentation on publisher's homepage
Craig J.N. de Paulo
Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2006, 331 p.
ISBN: 978-0-7734-5689-1, US-$ 119,95
This book on Augustine and Heidegger represents the single most important contribution to the study surrounding the historical and philosophical influence of St. Augustine of Hippo on Martin Heidegger’s early thought and on his magnus opus, Being and Time. This work sets the record straight about the profound influence of Augustine on Heidegger’s work, Being and Time, which promises a renaissance in phenomenology, the emergence of a new field within this discipline, and the restoration of religion to phenomenological speculation.
"This monumental collection of Augustine's influence on Martin Heidegger's early thought, and Being and Time in particular, deserves the attention of Augustinian scholars and historians of philosophy since it firmly establishes Augustine's place as a father of phenomenology." (Professor Jaroslav Pelikan, Yale University)
» See presentation on publisher's homepage
Barry Bernard Hayes
© Little Red Apple
Haymarket, N.S.W.: Little Red Apple Publishing, 2008, 53 p.
ISBN: 9781875329786, AUD 30.00
This play by Barry Hayes is based on the life and works of Saint Augustine of Hippo and was composed in tune with the celebration of the 150 years of the Augustinian Order in Australia. In a succession of scenes, we see the spiritual growth of the intelligent and charming young Augustine, living with his mistress, despite the disapproval of Monica, the mother he so greatly admired and respected. Step by step his intensely spiritual nature brings him to a recognition of his vocation, first as a student and something of a recluse, but later as a bishop of a flock.
A Stage Review on the occasion of the first performance that took place in 1988, reads as follows: "…this play maturely emphasized the real crux of Augustine’s life, which was his fidelity to a quest for wisdom that could not be denied. In fact, Barry Hayes’ own extraordinary fidelity in researching Augustine was clearly evidenced in the play he produced, and deserves high commendation" (Sr. Dawn Carey, RSJ).
» Review from P. Michael Wernicke OSA
Louise Bourdua / Anne Dunlop (Ed.)
© ashgate.com
(Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West)
Burlington et al.: Ashgate, 2007, 231 p.
ISBN: 978-0-7546-5655-5 | GBP 55,00
The rise of the mendicant orders in the later Middle Ages coincided with rapid and dramatic shifts in the visual arts. The mendicants were prolific patrons, relying on artworks to instruct and impress their diverse lay congregations. Churches and chapels were built, and new images and iconographies developed to propagate mendicant cults. But how should the two phenomena be related? How much were these orders actively responsible for artistic change, and how much did they simply benefit from it?
To explore these questions, Art and the Augustinian Order in Early Renaissance Italy looks at art in the formative period of the Augustinian Hermits, an order with a particularly difficult relation to art. As a first detailed study of visual culture in the Augustinian order, this book will be a basic resource, making available previously inaccessible material, discussing both well-known and more neglected artworks, and engaging with fundamental methodological questions for pre-modern art and church history, from the creation of religious iconographies to the role of gender in art.
» See presentation on publisher's homepage
Jason Byassee
© eerdmans.com
(Radical Traditions)
Grand Rapids, Michigan; Cambridge, U.K.: Eerdmans, 2007, 290 p.
ISBN: 978-0-8028-4012-7, US-$ 32.00
» Contents
Praise Seeking Understanding sits at the intersection of three important fields in theology: theological exegesis, Augustinian studies, and contemporary church practice. Jason Byassee deftly brings the three together, revealing an important symbiotic relationship between them — a relationship hitherto largely ignored.
Though current exegetical methods have swung away from a Christological reading of the Old Testament — rejecting in particular Augustine's treatment of the text — Byassee believes that is a mistake we must remedy. Using a recent translation of Augustine's Enarrationes in Psalmos, Byassee describes in depth Augustine's psalm hermeneutic and his approach to scripture generally, offering a defense of these views in conversation with recent work in theological exegesis.
» See presentation on publisher's homepage
David C. Alexander
© peterlang.com
(Patristic Studies 9)
New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, Oxford, Wien: Peter Lang, 2008, XX, 451 pp.
ISBN 978-1-4331-0103-8, EUR[D] 75,60
The nature and development of Augustine's understanding of the church between his conversion (386) and his forced entry into the clergy (391) provides an essential lens to understanding this seminal period of transition and the foundations of his future ecclesial contributions. Even so, most studies of Augustine's ecclesiology bypass this period, starting with the clerical Augustine (post 391). In fact, research on the 'young' Augustine and the Confessions too often stalls over debates between his neo-Platonic or Christian orientation, focusing on dichotomies in Augustine or an individualistic Augustine too rigidly labeled. This book helps fill these gaps and provides a case study supporting arguments for continuity between the 'young' and the clerical Augustine. A careful chronological textual approach to Augustine's early Christian years demonstrates how his ecclesiological thought began during this period and comprised a core component of his first theological synthesis. The emergence of his ecclesiological ideas was intimately intertwined with his overall personal, religious, philosophic, and theological development. As such it is crucial to our biographical and theological understanding of the great North African and will be of interest to specialists and students alike of Augustine's development, Confessions, mature ecclesiology, and the late antique world.
» See presentation on publisher's homepage
Tarsicius van Bavel; Bernard Bruning (Ed.)
Brussels: Fonds Mercator, Heverlee: Augustinian Historical Institute, Augustinian Press, 2007, 319 p.
ISBN: 978-90-6153-733-5
Augustine of Hippo was a multi-facetted character: intellectual and mystic, scholar and father of the Church, bishop of a prosperous harbour town and monk, philosopher and biblical thinker. Writings like The City of God and Confessions have formed part of world literature for centuries. Augustine was the first to talk extensively about himself, thus placing the human being at the heart of the story. Saint Augustine is also a man with a heart filled with passion. This iconographic tradition constitutes the guiding thread in the book, a detailed and superbly illustrated study devoted to the man and his thinking. Saint Augustine conveyed the ardour of his love not only in his Rules for Life, which was adopted by numerous religious orders, or in the originality of his many writings, which continue to be study minutely; but also through the force of his actions within the Church of North Africa. A universal spirit and conscientious thinker, he was also a remarkable bishop, who truly took care of his people in the original sense of the word episkopos.
Simon Harrison
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, VIII-191 p.
ISBN: 978-0-19-826984-7
Augustine is a pivotal figure in the history of the concept of will, but what is his ‘theory of will’? This book investigates Augustine’s use of ‘will’ in one particular context, his dialogue On Free Choice of the Will, taking seriously its historical and philosophical form. First, it finds that the dialogical nature of On Free Choice of the Will has been missed, as exemplified by the unhistorical and misleading modern attributions of names to the speakers. Secondly, the commonplace that Augustine changed his mind in the course of its composition is shown to be unfounded, and a case is made for its argumentative coherence. Thirdly, it is shown that it is the form and structure of On Free Choice of the Will that give philosophical content to Augustine’s theory of will. The dialogue constitutes a ‘way in to the will’ that itself instantiates a concept of will. At the heart of this structure is a particular argument that depends on an appeal to a first-person perspective, which ties the vocabulary of will to a concept of freedom and responsibility. This appeal is significantly similar to other arguments deployed by Augustine which are significantly similar to Descartes’ ‘cogito ergo sum’, ‘I think therefore I am’. The book goes on to investigate how Augustine’s ‘way in’ relates to these cogito-like arguments as they occur in Augustine’s major and most read works, the Confessions, the City of God, and On the Trinity. The relationship of Augustine’s to Descartes’ ‘cogito’ is also discussed. Augustine elucidates, within a particular Platonic theory of knowledge, a ‘theory of will’ that is grounded in a ‘way in’, which takes the conditions and limits of knowledge seriously.
Catherine Conybeare
(Oxford Early Christian Studies)
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, XVI-223 p.
ISBN: 978-0-19-926208-3
This book explores the earliest works of St. Augustine to discover the anti-dogmatic Augustine, one who gives questioning, uncertainty, and human limitations their due role in his theology. These early works are considered performances, through which multiple questions can be raised and multiple options explored, both in words and through their dramatic framework. It is shown that the very idiosyncrasy of Augustine’s arguments and his manner of pursuing them are of immense significance, which suggests possibilities for interpretation of the more idiosyncratic riches in his later works. The book is divided into three parts. Part I analyzes Augustine’s use of the genre of philosophical dialogue, why he may have chosen the genre, and what he achieves with it. Part II discusses the roles played by Augustine’s mother. Part III focuses on the dialogue, the Soliloquia.
Jangsaeng Kim
(Europäische Hochschulschriften XXIII/835)
Frankfurt am Main u.a.: Peter Lang, 2006, 241 p.
ISBN 978-3-631-55279-7
By pointing out free will Augustine attempts to lay the responsibility of suffering on humanity since free will represents human subjectivity. It is one of the most logical answers that Augustine could infer from Christian doctrines. Augustine could not inquire into a deeper origin of human free will's wrong decision because of the basic doctrine: God is good and almighty. Although Awakening of Faith in Mahayana (AFM) refers to human free will in «finite Enlightenment» AFM focuses more on the origin of free will's wrong choice of attachment. It is basic Nonenlightenment. Free will is already a perverted form of One Mind since it arises from basic Nonenlightenment. Thus AFM cannot but inquire into a deeper origin of free will. However, AFM also describes a dilemma between One Mind and basic-Nonenlightenment. Basic-Nonenlightenment is the origin of suffering, but AFM does not answer the origin of basic-Nonenlightenment.
Dale Lindskog
(Wittgenstein-Studien 14)
Frankfurt am Main u.a: Peter Lang, 2007, XII-216 p.
ISBN: 978-3-631-55732-7
The main theme of this book is Wittgenstein's later diagnosis of the confusion underlying the picture theory of the proposition. This leads to a re-interpretation of Wittgenstein's method of philosophy in Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein's method is diagnostic to an extent that has not been realized, and thus not clarified. Wittgenstein's practice of dissolving a philosophical problem, by showing how that problem arises, is much more predominant than most realize.
Peter Iver Kaufman
Notre Dame: The University of Notre Dame Press, 2007, VII-279 p.
ISBN: 978-0-268-03314-4
Augustine in the fourth and fifth centuries and Thomas More in the sixteenth were familiar with the deceits and illusions that enabled even the most vile rulers to shore up their dignity and that gave repressive regimes an inviolability of sorts. Both men knew the politics of their times, both were involved in politics, and both were at one time politically ambitious.
Augustine needed and made good use of government's powers of coercion and damage control in his struggle against the Donatists. The clear advantages of political protection and correction preoccupied More in his battle against Martin Luther. Both later changed their minds and believed, finally, the political imagination, based as it is on a desire for power, always and inevitably leads to devastation and suffering.
Peter Iver Kaufman explains how and why we have failed to appreciate Augustine's and More's profound political pessimism, reintroducing readers to two of the Christian tradition's most enigmatic yet influential figures. Each had been disturbed by the reach of his own political ambitions—as by those of contemporaries. Each knew that government was useful—yet always deceitful. And each wrote a classic—widely read to this day, Augustine's City of God and More's Utopia, as to explain why government on earth might be used, though never meaningfully improved.
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Lanham, Maryland, Lexington Books, 2005, XIV + 377 p.
ISBN: 0-7391-0556-6 (Cloth), 0-7391-1009-8 (Paper)
Contributors: T. Breyfogle, P. Cary, R. Dodaro O.S.A., J. Doody, L.I. Hamilton, M. Hanby, K.L. Hughes, R.P. Kennedy, T.F. Martin O.S.A., E. McCarraher, K. Paffenroth, D.C. Schindler, T.W. Smith, P.R. Wright
Carl G. Vaught
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Albany, State University of New York Press, 2005, XI + 280 p.
ISBN 0-7914-6409-1
This is the final volume in Carl G. Vaught's groundbreaking trilogy reappraising Augustine's Confessions, a cornerstone of Western philosophy and one of the most influential works in the Christian tradition. Vaught offers a new interpretation of the philosopher as less Neoplatonic and more distinctively Christian than most interpreters have thought. In this book, he focuses on the most philosophical section of the Confessions and on how it relates to the previous, more autobiographical sections. A companion to the previous two volumes, which dealt with Books I-IX, this book can be read either in sequence with or independently of the others.
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Albany, State University of New York Press, 2004, XII + 175 p.
ISBN 0-7914-6107-6
This book continues Carl G. Vaught's thoroughgoing reinterpretation of Augustine's Confessions - one that rejects the view that Augustine is simply a Neoplatonist and argues that he is also a definitively Christian thinker. As a companion volume to the earlier Journey toward God in Augustine's Confessions: Books I-VI, it can be read in sequence with or independently of it. This work covers the middle portion of the Confessions; Books VII-IX. Opening in Augustine's youthful maturity, Books VII-IX focus on the three pivotal experiences that transform his life: the Neoplatonic vision that causes him to abandon materialism; his conversion to Christianity that leads him beyond Neoplatonism to a Christian attitude toward the world and his place in it; and the mystical experience he shares with his mother a few days before her death, which points to the importance of the Christian community. Vaught argues that time, space, and eternity intersect to provide a framework in which these three experiences occur and which give Augustine a three-fold access to God.
Karla Pollmann & Mark Vessey (Ed.)
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Oxford, University Press, 2005, XI + 258 p.
ISBN 0-19-927485-1
As a Doctor of Latin Church, Augustine of Hippo (354-430) has usually been viewed as one of the founders of medieval and later traditions of biblical interpretation, and hence too of Western hermeneutics in a more general sense. At various times, if less confidently in recent years, he has also been assigned a leading part in the transmission of the disciplinary system of the 'liberal arts'. Yet there is a tension between these two roles. Augustine himself abandoned the liberal disciplines, as a system, on the way to formulating his theory of biblical interpretation. Though championing their use by Christians in the philosophical dialogues that he composed or projected soon after his 'conversion' in 386, he had radically revised his position by the time he came to draft his hermeneutical treatise On Christian Learning and Confessions a decade later. What prompted the change? How did it work itself out? What were its wider contexts? After a period in which such questions of intellectual history have been relatively neglected in Anglophone scholarship on Augustine and his milieux, this collection of essays seeks to restore them to the centre of interest, without repeating old arguments ...
Contributors: P. Burton, C.M. Chin, C. Conybeare, S. Hessbrüggen-Walter, W.E. Klingshirn, N. McLynn, K. Pollmann, D.R. Shanzer, M. Vessey.
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Patrologia. Beiträge zum Studium der Kirchenväter 14
Frankfurt am Main u.a., Peter Lang, 2004, 493 p.
ISBN 3-631-53015-3
This study examines how St. Augustine uses the motif Christus Sacerdos to synthesize the entire mystery of Christ, to define Christian identity, and to oppose counter-identities and doctrines, especially those symbolized by pagan priesthoods. The bishop of Hippo continually joins these three elements - Christology, Christian identity, and polemic - so that the doctrine of Christ is always related to its implications for life "on the ground", Augustine shows how the doctrine of Christ entails an identity and an ideal for Christians, defining who they are and what they are to become. He reinforces the teaching about Christ and the Christian with polemic against opposing doctrines, demonstrating the truth of the Christian religion in opposition to pagan cult, and portraying Christian identity in contrast to pagan counter-identity. The study is notable for its attention to how Augustine's Christology functions in his broader thought, especially his pastoral care.
Robert Dodaro
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Cambridge, University Press, 2004, VIII + 253 p.
Christ and the Just Society ... is a fresh study of Augustine's political thought and ethics in relation to his theology. The book examines fundamental issues in Augustine's theological and political ethics in relation to the question, 'how did Augustine conceive the just society?' At the heart of the book's approach is the relationship that Augustine outlines in his City of God and other writings between Christ and those believers who acknowledge him to be the only source of the soul's virtue. The book demonstrates how Augustine sees Christ's grace and the scriptures contributing to the soul's growth in virtue, especially as these issues are framed by the Pelagian controversy. Finally, the implications which Augustine sees for Christ's mediation of virtue are examined in relation to his revision of the ancient concepts of heroism and the statesman.
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New York: Harper Collins, 2005, XIV + 396 p.
No one knows Augustine's Confessions as well as James J. O'Donnell, who created the definitive three-volume edition of it. So no one is better equipped to see through the chinks and scrims of that artful book (and Augustine's other writings as well) to the man in his late-antique context. This book will be the starting point for an entire rethinking of Augustine's career and body of writings. What Pierre Courcelle did for Augustinian studies half a century ago, O'Donnell has done for our time.
Gary Wills
Annemaré Kotzé
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Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 71
Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2004, X + 279 p.
ISBN 90 04 13926 5
This book is about the communicative purpose and the audience of the Confessions. It illuminates the degree to which the communicative purpose of the work is to convert its readers, i.e. a protreptic purpose, and the degree to which the target audience may be identified as Augustine's potential Manichaean readers. ... The book provides a new perspective on the meaning and structure of Augustine's often misunderstood masterpiece.
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Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003, VI + 282 p.
ISBN 0-664-22619-1
The reader who approaches Augustine's Confessions with this useful Companion will have the gift of the keen insight and deep learning of a baker's dozen of our best scholars. This book's magic unfolds itself anew under their guidance.
J.J. O'Donnell, Georgetown University
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