Abstract

Throughout his career Paul Ramsey returned repeatedly to the seminal works of Augustine to clarify both the foundations of Christian moral thought and its application to problems of social ethics. The paper argues that in the course of developing his own thought Ramsey moved from merely using the insights of Augustine to a genuinely Augustinian theological position, balancing the pastoral responsibilities of the theologian to the community with the demand for faithfulness to the integrity of the Christian tradition. In the process Ramsey produces a reading of Augustine both critically compelling in its own right and theologically promising for moral reflection in that tradition.