_A fresh, new translation of Augustine’s inaugural work as a Christian convert_ The first four works written by St. Augustine of Hippo after his conversion to Christianity have influenced prominent thinkers from Boethius to Bernard Lonergan. Usually called the Cassiciacum dialogues, these four works are a “literary triumph,” combining Ciceronian and neo-Platonic philosophy, Roman comedy and Vergilian poetry, and early Christian theology. They are also, arguably, Augustine’s most charming works, exhibiting his whimsical levity and ironic wryness. (...) In this first dialogue, Augustine and his interlocutors have retreated to a quiet country villa north of Milan to explore the history and teachings of Academic Skepticism. Augustine is both sympathetic to and critical of the Skeptics, eventually hypothesizing that they could not possibly have believed everything they taught. The dialogue serves as a fitting launch point for a knowledge of God and the soul, the overall subject of the Cassiciacum tetralogy. Michael Foley’s clear, precise and playful translations are accompanied by his brief, illuminating commentaries. (shrink)

_A fresh, new translation of Augustine’s third work as a Christian convert__ "The 'Cassiciacum dialogues'... are of a high literary and intellectual quality, combining Ciceronian and neo-Platonic philosophy, Roman comedy and Vergilian poetry, and early Christian theology. They are also, arguably, Augustine’s most charming works, exhibiting his whimsical levity and ironic wryness."—_Credo__ The first four works written by St. Augustine of Hippo after his conversion to Christianity are dialogues that have influenced prominent thinkers from Boethius to (...) Bernard Lonergan. Usually called the “Cassiciacum dialogues,” these four works are of a high literary and intellectual quality, combining Ciceronian and neo-Platonic philosophy, Roman comedy and Vergilian poetry, and early Christian theology. They are also, arguably, Augustine’s most charming works, exhibiting his whimsical levity and ironic wryness. _On Order_ is the third work in this tetralogy, and it is Augustine’s only work explicitly devoted to theodicy, the reconciliation of Almighty God’s goodness with evil’s existence. In this dialogue, Augustine argues that a certain kind of self-knowledge is the key to unlocking the answers to theodicy’s vexing questions, and he devotes the latter half of the dialogue to an excursus on the liberal arts as disciplines that will help strengthen the mind to know itself and God. (shrink)

_A fresh, new translation of Augustine’s fourth work as a Christian convert_ The first four works written by St. Augustine of Hippo after his conversion to Christianity are dialogues that have influenced prominent thinkers from Boethius to Bernard Lonergan. Usually called the Cassiciacum dialogues, these four works are of a high literary and intellectual quality, combining Ciceronian and neo-Platonic philosophy, Roman comedy and Vergilian poetry, and early Christian theology. They are also, arguably, Augustine’s most charming works, (...) exhibiting his whimsical levity and ironic wryness. _Soliloquies_ is the fourth work in this tetralogy. Augustine coined the term “soliloquy” to describe this new form of dialogue. _Soliloquies__,_ a conversation between Augustine and his reason, fuses the dialogue genre and Roman theater, opening with a search for intellectual and moral self-knowledge before converging on the nature of truth and the question of the soul’s immortality. Foley’s volume also includes _On the Immortality of the Soul__,_ which consists of notes for the unfinished portion of the work. (shrink)

_A fresh, new translation of Augustine’s inaugural work as a Christian convert_ The first four works written by St. Augustine of Hippo after his conversion to Christianity are dialogues that have influenced prominent thinkers from Boethius to Bernard Lonergan. Usually called the Cassiciacum dialogues, these four works are a “literary triumph,” combining Ciceronian and neo-Platonic philosophy, Roman comedy and Vergilian poetry, and early Christian theology. They are also, arguably, Augustine’s most charming works, exhibiting his whimsical levity (...) and ironic wryness. In this second, brief dialogue, Augustine and his mother, brother, son, and friends celebrate his thirty-second birthday by having a “feast of words” on the nature of happiness that includes a bittersweet metaphorical birthday cake. Using a process of reasoning that is philosophical as well as theological, Augustine and the group conclude that the truly happy life consists of “having God” through faith, hope, and charity. Michael Foley’s clear, precise and playful translations are accompanied by his brief, illuminating commentaries. (shrink)

The first four works written by St. Augustine of Hippo after his conversion to Christianity are the "Cassiciacum dialogues", which have influenced prominent thinkers from Boethius to Bernard Lonergan. In this second, brief dialogue, expertly translated by Michael Foley, Augustine and his mother, brother, son, and friends celebrate his thirty-second birthday by having a "feast of words" on the nature of happiness. They conclude that the truly happy life consists of "having God" through faith, hope, and charity.

This study shows how St. Augustine of Hippo in his works on grace identifies the concepts of intellect and grace. It recommends this concept of "intellectus gratiae" as a key to Augustine's theology as a whole.

This essay is a chapter in a book about the concepts of will and action in late-antique philosophy. It focuses on Augustine of Hippo's concept of the will. Augustine is notorious for developing the concept of an 'evil will', something considered impossible in classical Aristotelian philosophy. The essay tries to show how Augustine developed this concept from an 'intellectualist' position. It argues that while it is true that later voluntarist philosophies could refer back to Augustine (...) as a starting point, Augustine himself must also be considered within the intellectualist tradition. (shrink)

This essay is a chapter in a book about the concepts of will and action in late-antique philosophy. It focuses on Augustine of Hippo's concept of the will. Augustine is notorious for developing the concept of an 'evil will', something considered impossible in classical Aristotelian philosophy. The essay tries to show how Augustine developed this concept from an 'intellectualist' position. It argues that while it is true that later voluntarist philosophies could refer back to Augustine (...) as a starting point, Augustine himself must also be considered within the intellectualist tradition. (shrink)

Augustine of Hippo was born in 354 in the Roman province of Africa. In the late 390s he became Bishop of Hippo and set up a quasi-monastic community. This title is one of series that provides details of biography in a bite-sized form on subjects ranging from mystics to lay people.

For centuries, Augustine of Hippo's writings have moved and fascinated readers. With the fresh, keen eye of a writer whose own intellectual analysis has won him a Pulitzer Prize, Garry Wills examines this famed fourth-century bishop and seminal thinker whose grounding in classical philosophy informed his influential interpretation of the Christian doctrines of mind and body, wisdom and God.Saint Augustine explores both the great ruminator on the human condition and the everyday man who set pen to parchment. (...) It challenges many misconceptions - among them those regarding his early sexual excesses. Here, for students, Christians, and voyagers into the new millennium, is a lively and incisive portrait of one who helped to shape our thought. (shrink)

Augustine of Hippo is a giant in the history of Christian thought, commended by St Jerome for having virtually 're-founded the old faith'.

The properly metaphysical dimension of Augustine's thought has received little special attention among scholars - even "Scholastics. " The Thomist metaphysicians - especially we "Anglo-Saxon" ones - receive first honors for being the most neglectful of all. Why? I t is a puzzling phenomenon particularly in the light of the fact (recognized by almost every Thomist) that the very existence of Thomas the theologian is inconceivable apart from his pre-eminent Christian mentor in the intellectual life, the Bishop of (...) class='Hi'>Hippo. It is a puzzling phenomenon because, although the Christian metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas is not the Christian metaphysics of Augustine, these metaphysics could not be simply opposed to one another, else the theologies wherein they exercise the indispensable function of vital rational organs would themselves be discordant. But what respectable "Scholas tic" would deny that, in their essential teaching about God and the things of God, the thought of these two masters is remarkably congruent? May I suggest that one of the major reasons for this paradoxical neglect of Augustinian metaphysics on the part of Thomists (above all, in the English-speaking world) is their simplistic assumption that whereas Aquinas was an Aristotelian in phi losophy, Augustine was a Platonist, despite the fact that in theology they were substantially at one - as if there could be theological agreement, formally speaking, even where there is metaphysical disagreement, formally speaking. (shrink)

This volume examines some of the most contentious social justice issues present in the corpus of Augustine's writings. Whether one is concerned with human trafficking and the contemporary slave trade, the global economy, or endless wars, these essays further the conversation on social justice as informed by the writings of Augustine of Hippo.

Augustine in Iconography: History and Legend has a threefold design: exploration of literary sources; reviews of pertinent archeology; and accounts of individual and cyclical illustrations. One hundred and thirty-two topics in the iconography of the bishop of ancient Hippo, both historical and legendary, are ascertained and analyzed; the historical and archeological background of Augustine's career, cult, and monastic influence are surveyed; four Augustinian cycles are examined; and various individual portraits of Augustine are studied.

Augustine of Hippo strongly influenced western theology, but he has often been accused of over-emphasizing the unity of God to the detriment of the Trinity. In Augustine and the Trinity, Lewis Ayres offers a new treatment of this important figure, demonstrating how Augustine's writings offer one of the most sophisticated early theologies of the Trinity developed after the Council of Nicaea. Building on recent research, Ayres argues that Augustine was influenced by a wide variety of (...) earlier Latin Christian traditions which stressed the irreducibility of Father, Son and Spirit. Augustine combines these traditions with material from non-Christian Neoplatonists in a very personal synthesis. Ayres also argues that Augustine shaped a powerful account of Christian ascent toward understanding of, as well as participation in the divine life, one that begins in faith and models itself on Christ's humility. (shrink)

* With a Latin text and a facing-page translation of the Rule, Regulations for a Monastery, and Letter 211 The Rule of Augustine, very likely the oldest monastic rule with western origins, provides daily inspiration for more than 150 Christian communities. In giving an account of Augustine's distinctive contributions to the monastic spirituality of the late Roman world, and in particular of his achievement as a monastic legislator, Augustine of Hippo and his Monastic Rule fills a (...) long-standing gap in Augustinian studies. (shrink)

Augustine of Hippo was a fourth- and fifth-century monk-bishop who left a great imprint on the spiritual leaders of his day by overseeing the monastery at Hippo Regius and also authoring a significant corpus of letters that were pastoral in nature. What is often overlooked in the study of his pastoral ministry and, thus, the focus of this article, is Augustine’s theological correspondence with 15 different women. Through surveying the themes and issues in these letters, I (...) have endeavoured to show that, though a monk, Augustine did care for women in his pastoral ministry and his letters show that he discussed with women many of the issues of his day that he also discussed with his male correspondents. In short, Augustine believed that these women were much like his mother Monica – capable of grasping biblical and theological issues – and he valued them as an important part of the church. I conclude the article by summarising Augustine’s approaches to and values for ministering to women. (shrink)

"This book offers a valuable contribution to the growing scholarship on Catholic universities and on Augustine of Hippo, engaging in "Augustinian inquiry" and pointing to possibilities for renewal in liberal education in the twenty-first century."--BOOK JACKET.

It is hard to overestimate the importance of the work of Augustine of Hippo, both in his own period and in the subsequent history of Western philosophy. Until the thirteenth century, when he may have had a competitor in Thomas Aquinas, he was the most important philosopher of the medieval period. Many of his views, including his theory of the just war, his account of time and eternity, his understanding of the will, his attempted resolution of the problem (...) of evil, and his approach to the relation of faith and reason, have continued to be influential up to the present time. In this 2001 volume of specially-commissioned essays, sixteen scholars provide a wide-ranging and stimulating contribution to our understanding of Augustine, covering all the major areas of his philosophy and theology. (shrink)

I argue that St. Augustine of Hippo was the first in the history of Christian spirituality who expressed a key tendency of Christian mysticism, which implies a gradual intellectual ascent of the human soul to God, consisting of the three main stages: external, internal, and supernal. In this ascent a Christian mystic proceeds from the knowledge of external beings to self-knowledge, and from his inner self to direct mystical contemplation of God. Similar doctrines may be found in the (...) writings of the Greek Fathers. Although there are many similarities in the overall doctrine and in particular details between them, it does not imply the direct impact of Augustine’s theological thought on the Greek Fathers but rather the influence of the Neoplatonic philosophy on both Western and Eastern Christianity, in particular, of Plotinus’ theory of intellectual cognition. (shrink)

Carol Harrison counters the assumption that Augustine of Hippo's theology underwent a revolutionary transformation around the time he was consecrated Bishop in 396. Instead, she argues that there is a fundamental continuity in his thought and practice from the moment of his conversion in 386. The book thereby challenges the general scholarly trend to begin reading Augustine with his Confessions, which were begun ten years after his conversion, and refocuses attention on his earlier works, which undergird his (...) whole theological system. (shrink)

In De civitate Dei V,1-11 revaluating Stoic fate, Augustine develops a new understanding of fate which is changed from Stoic rational order to a voluntary order attributed to the will of God and eternally spoken by God. In these chapters, apart from the presentation of philosophical views on this topic, the bishop of Hippo pays particular attention to the refutation of astrological practices which, at his time, were very common in the Roman Empire not only among the Roman (...) elite but it permeated various strata of society as well. Ordinary people sought the advice of astrologers for personal matters such as marriage, business ventures, and health. Moreover, astrology and other forms of divination often intersected with religious beliefs and practices. The Romans were deeply superstitious, and astrology provided a means of understanding and influencing fate. Although at his younger age, Augustine had been strongly influenced by astrology, as becomes clear particularly in his Confessions, later as a bishop he was fighting against these practices not only in his theoretical works but also in his sermons and exegetical homilies. The aim of this article is therefore to see how Augustine's views of astrology and fate presented especially in his homilies on Johns's Gospel (In Iohannis Evangelium tractatus 1-16) fit into his discussion on God's foreknowledge, human free will and responsibility summarised in the opening chapters in Book V of his De civitate Dei. (shrink)

This volume examines some of the most contentious social justice issues present in the corpus of Augustine's writings. Whether one is concerned with human trafficking and the contemporary slave trade, the global economy, or endless wars, these essays further the conversation on social justice as informed by the writings of Augustine of Hippo.

Philosophical work on testimony has flourished in recent years. Testimony roughly involves a source affirming or stating something in an attempt to transfer information to one or more persons. It is often said that the topic of testimony has been neglected throughout most of the history of philosophy, aside from contributions by David Hume (1711–1776) and Thomas Reid (1710–1796).1 True as this may be, Hume and Reid aren’t the only ones who deserve a tip of the hat for recognizing the (...) importance of testimony: St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430) affirms the place of testimony in human cognition, at least in his later writings. (shrink)

This collection examines the topic of time in Augustine of Hippo. By placing Augustine into conversation with theologians and philosophers from the Islamic, Christian, and Buddhist traditions, the goal is to demonstrate the ongoing relevance of Augustine’s account of temporality across historical, cultural, and religious boundaries.

This paper explores the apologetic nature of Augustine’s Confessions. It first takes a brief look at Augustine’s intricate view of the relationship between faith and reason, in order to provide a background to his employment of apologetic elements throughout Confessions. Both positive and negative apologetic elements are examined throughout the paper. Some positive apologetic elements include Augustine’s presentation of the implied ontological argument, the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, the argument from the experience of beauty, and the (...) demonstration of the coherence of the Christian conception of God (including his explorations with time and creation). His negative apologetic elements include dealing with detractors from the Christian faith such as the Manichees and their objections. Although studies in recent years have focused on the autobiographical and religious experiential dimensions of Confessions, this paper seeks to demonstrate that the apologetic dimension is also foundational to Augustine’s text. It is important to realize that the apologetic nature of Confessions does not detract from its other natures (autobiographical and religious-experiential) since objects, ideas and persons can have more than one nature – as is true with the case of Christ and a number line. It is my hope to revive a forgotten aspect of Confessions that is quite pertinent to the Church today. (shrink)

Saint Augustine of Hippo was one of the most influential Western Christian theologians. Sri Aurobindo Ghose was a political revolutionary and later a spiritual master with a worldwide reputation. Augustine and Aurobindo were very different religiously and politically, but on the issue of justifying warfare, there are remarkable parallels between them. To begin, pragmatic considerations formed the core of most of their arguments. Furthermore, they buttressed their core points with considerations from the religious domain. These included discussing (...) the inward disposition of the warrior, countering ethical reservations about fighting, and mentioning possible, spiritual benefits from warfare. Yet, in spite of the parallels, the two men would have found little to agree on, as their approaches to both governance and religion were very different. Augustine’s approach was statist whereas Aurobindo’s was revolutionary. (shrink)

Augustine of Hippo has expressed a vision of beauty in nature that could, if better known, encourage traditional Christians and secular ecologists to affirm the ground they have in common. For Augustine the ideal would be to see nature as God sees it, feeling deeply both its beauty and its impermanence, loving nature without clinging to it. With such clear seeing would come love and the motivation for sustained and skillful action. This paper discusses Augustine's paradigm (...) and what blocks us from seeing it, and then frames principles for an authentically Augustinian response. (shrink)

In the spirit of Augustine’s own “Reconsiderations,” and inspired by Peter Brown’s act of “reconsidering” in the Epilogue to Augustine of Hippo (new edition), this essay offers a reconsideration of Augustine’s work On Marriage and Concupiscence. Key to the reconsideration of this text is a reconsideration of the role of the “sacrament” of marriage in Augustine’s articulation and defense of the goods of marriage and of human sexuality. For Augustine, Julian’s advocacy of concupiscence as (...) an innocent natural desire amounts to a dangerous sentimentalization of fallen human freedom. Such sentimentalization masks the investments of the fallen will in the will to power or, in Augustinian terms, the preference for power over justice. Because sexual concupiscence, as Augustine famously argued, has no natural object, but, rather, is invested only in its own gratification, it is therefore a function of the preference for power over justice without remainder. It is a mark of the Fall that the procreative increase in human community willed by God is now ineluctably linked to the will to power, as though the will to power were the true source of social solidarity. The sacramental good of marriage enables married couples to “use” concupiscence in such a way that all of the goods associated with human sexuality can be experienced as true goods instead of as realities constitutively defined by the will to power. (shrink)

Theories concerning love in the West tend to be bound by the problematic constraints of patriarchal conceptions of what counts ontologically as “true” or “universal” love. It seems that feminist love studies must choose between shining light on these constraints or bursting through them. In this article I give a feminist analysis of Augustine of Hippo's theory of love through a philosophical, psychological, and theological reading of his complicated relationships with women. I argue that, given the “embodied” nature (...) of his many loves throughout his life, there is room in Augustine's account of love for a gendered reading of love that is unconstrained by patriarchal notions concerning which gender is capable of which kind of love. Augustine's theory of love is one that is not coldly universal but bodied and personal; indeed, although it is founded inside patriarchal historical constructions, it is capable of bursting out of these constraints and suggesting an egalitarian, nongendered view of love. (shrink)

The philosophy for children (P4C) and public philosophy movements seek to extend philosophy to traditionally marginalized groups. Yet public perceptions of philosophy as an elite activity provide an obstacle to this work. Such perceptions rest, in part, on further assumptions about what philosophy is and how it is conducted. To address these concerns, I look to the early philosophical dialogues of Augustine of Hippo (Contra Academicos, De beata vita, De ordine, Soliloquia), which present an experimental philosophical community composed (...) of teenagers, illiterate adults, and Augustine’s own mother. I begin with the question, “who can do philosophy?” and walk through the dialogues’ discussion of race, gender, educational background, age, and class. I then turn to teaching techniques on display in the dialogues’ discussions, which flesh out what philosophical study looks like for nonelite students. I close by using my own experience of teaching nonelite students to reflect on how Augustine’s experimental philosophical community can help reframe thinking about P4C and public philosophy today. (shrink)

Theories concerning love in the West tend to be bound by the problematic constraints of patriarchal conceptions of what counts ontologically as “true” or “universal” love. It seems that feminist love studies must choose between shining light on these constraints or bursting through them. In this article I give a feminist analysis of Augustine of Hippo's theory of love through a philosophical, psychological, and theological reading of his complicated relationships with women. I argue that, given the “embodied” nature (...) of his many loves throughout his life, there is room in Augustine's account of love for a gendered reading of love that is unconstrained by patriarchal notions concerning which gender is capable of which kind of love. Augustine's theory of love is one that is not coldly universal but bodied and personal; indeed, although it is founded inside patriarchal historical constructions, it is capable of bursting out of these constraints and suggesting an egalitarian, nongendered view of love. (shrink)

This essay promotes affective engagement with the texts we read, arguing that we should attend both to recognizing emotion within the texts and to allowing ourselves to feel emotion as we read. The essay thus aligns itself with contemporary theories of non-hermeneutic or surface reading. The argument is illustrated specifically by the relationship of Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE) to the emotion of anger. The transcripts of the Council of Carthage, held in 411, show an eruption of anger (...) on Augustine’s part. The essay then traces his thinking on anger through various texts, notably the City of God, the Augustinian Rule, and the personal letters to Nebridius. Using the reflections on anger of the contemporary philosopher Agnes Callard, I argue that Augustine saw anger as a unique type of moral problem, something that, once experienced, was ineradicable and distorted a sense of justice and order. It is only through an emotionally engaged reading that such a position is perceptible. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Descartes and Augustine by Stephen MennSteven NadlerStephen Menn. Descartes and Augustine. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xvi + 415. Cloth, $74.95.As most readers of this journal well know, scholars in the history of philosophy can, however roughly, be divided into two distinct (and sometimes antagonistic) camps: those who think that work on the great philosophers of the past should focus almost exclusively on an (...) analysis of their theses and arguments, and those who believe that we cannot truly understand any philosopher’s ideas without serious investigation into the historical, philosophical and even more general intellectual context of their thought. Stephen Menn’s book is a profoundly good example of the latter school.While it is undeniable that Descartes was strongly influenced by his Jesuit education and by his later reading of latter-day scholastics like Suarez, and that he was motivated in part by a desire to move philosophy beyond its sterile and unprogressive Aristotelian paradigm, one of the crucial questions in Cartesian scholarship concerns the extent to which Descartes was himself an Augustinian Platonist. In this long, brilliant, learned, at times tedious but generally fascinating study, Menn argues that in terms of both method and substance, with respect to motivation, discipline and goals, there was no thinker more important for Descartes’s intellectual development and philosophical project than St. Augustine. Taking on the great triumvirate of French Cartesian scholarship—Gilson, Gueroult and Gouhier, all of whom argued that, while it is possible to find Augustinian elements in Descartes’s philosophy, nonetheless his thought is radically anti-Augustinian, sharing neither “the Augustinian spirit nor the Augustinian conception of philosophy itself” (8–10)—Menn insists that Augustinian principles inform and sustain in a very deep way Descartes’s metaphysics and epistemology. Moreover, Descartes’s general philosophical project is fundamentally the same as that of the Bishop of Hippo: to show how true wisdom can be born only from scientia. For Descartes, this means showing how the failure of Aristotelian science should lead not to a suspicion of science in general, nor to limiting oneself to a skeptical prudentialist moralizing (such as that of the Renaissance humanists), but to a true wisdom based on certain knowledge of the world. That knowledge of the world will, of course, be a mechanistic one, but it will be grounded in an Augustinian metaphysics. In the end—and here is where Menn most clearly takes issue with Gilson [End Page 625] and Co.—the project is to reconcile Christianity and philosophical knowing, precisely what Augustine set out to do.Understanding Augustine, Menn claims, requires an understanding of Plotinus and the Platonist tradition. And this, he further insists, demands that we know the essential elements of Plato’s metaphysics itself. Menn’s pursuit of depth and attention to detail can sometimes be wearying—do we really need in a book such as this a discussion of the variations in Plato’s explanation of how sensible particulars relate to intelligibles between the middle and late dialogues?—but in the end most of it pays off. We find out what Augustine found of value in his reading of Plotinus and what he needed to leave behind. Of the greatest importance, especially for someone seeking to move beyond the materialism of the Manicheans, was a conception of the human soul as an incorporeal thing and an understanding of God or nous as an immaterial and transcendent source of being and, through illumination, of knowledge. “[Augustine] went to the Platonists to learn a method for understanding God and the soul, and he accepts a great deal of the doctrine that comes from this way of understanding them, but he knew from the beginning what it was he wanted to understand: it was the God and the human souls described in the Christian scriptures” (166).What Descartes wanted was much the same, although he hoped to put it to further use by returning from the heights of metaphysics to the most general science of the natural world (physics) and the particular, practical sciences (wisdom) that follow from it. If he could successfully ground his physics in proper metaphysical first principles, then his philosophical goals would... (shrink)

What is a human being according to Augustine of Hippo? The question has occupied a group of researchers from Brazil and Europe and has been explored at two workshops during which the contributors to this volume have discussed anthropological themes in Augustine's vast corpus. In this volume, the reader will find articles on a wide spectrum of Augustine's anthropological ideas. Some contributions focus on specific texts, while others focus on specific theological or philosophical aspects of (...) class='Hi'>Augustine's anthropology. The authors of the articles in this volume are convinced that Augustine's anthropology is of major importance for how human beings have been understood in Western civilization for better or for worse. The topic is therefore highly relevant to the present times in which humanity is under pressure from various sides. (shrink)

Augustine converted to Christianity in 386 and described his conversion in his Confessiones a decade later. Much ink has been spilled concerning the question of the specific nature of Augustine’s conversion and the ‘historical accuracy’ of his description thereof 10 years later. The Confessiones seem to describe a volte face: he radically embraced Christianity. But to what kind of Christianity did he convert? We will readdress this question, not by investigating his conversion, but by a close exegesis of (...) Confessiones 9, in which he describes the so-called Ostia-ecstasy. In the first part of our article, we discuss the description of the latter experience in Confessiones 9 and situate it within his conversion narrative, with attention to the symbolical language he used. The second part compares the Ostia-experience with the ascent of the soul as described in Plotinus’ Enneads, and with similar ‘Neoplatonic ascents’ present in the Confessiones and in writings penned by Augustine prior to or simultaneous with the Confessiones in order to elucidate the relationship between Augustine’s ‘Christian’ conversion and ‘Ostia-ecstasy’ with the Neoplatonic anabasis. (shrink)

This article studies Augustine’s Eucharistic Spirituality as it emerges primarily from his preaching, in his catechesis during the Easter Season. It investigates how the bishop of Hippo explains to the neophytes the transformation that makes bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ in order to ignite their awareness about what it is that they receive at the Altar. It further considers what Augustine indicates as the spiritual disposition necessary for the reception of the sacrament (...) and its effects in the life of those who worthily share in it. Finally, the article explores the link Augustine establishes between the Eucharist and the Church to demonstrate the importance of Unity among those who approach the Altar of the Lord and the need to continuously become what we receive even today as we perpetuate the memorial of the Lord in our Eucharistic celebrations. (shrink)

1. In his recent work entitled Augustine and the Mystery of the Church, James K. Lee notes that fragmented approaches to the study of Augustine have unfortunately resulted in unidimensional and red...

A biography of Augustine's thought life, as interpreted by the acclaimed church historian, the late Professor Henry Chadwick. Augustine's intellectual development is recounted with clarity and warmth, providing a characteristically rigorous yet sympathetic narrative of this central figure in the history of Christian thought.