The First Christian Centuries: Augustine of Hippo

For centuries, Augustine'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, Gary 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 thoughts.

Draws on the writings of Augustine to offer insight into his life as a bishop, preacher, philosopher, and politician.

This study provides an outline of his career and discusses three major fields of his controversial writings: against the Manichees,who denied the essential goodness of the material creation;the Donatists,who conceived of the Church only as an assembly of saints,and denied that God would operate through a sinful minister;and against the British theologian Pelagius and his supporters,whose concern for personal holiness and individual responsability for conduct led them to deny the Fall and to maintain a theology of divine Grace which saw infant baptism as desirable but not essential for salvation.Augustine's attacks on Pelagianism initiated a debate which lasted for many centuries,and still remains controversial to this day;but whatever view is taken with regard to his doctrine,his influence has been profound,and no serious Christian theologian can afford to ignore the issues which he raised.

This book presents an overview of the best of contemporary scholarship on the fourth and fifth century bishop, Augustine of Hippo. His life, his sermons and letters, doctrinal writings and pastoral work, as well as his own faith and spirituality are reviewed in light of new research. This Father of the Church emerges as a dynamic thinker struggling to integrate his Christian faith with the demands of reason, and to discern Christian meaning amidst the political and social controversies that plagued the late Roman world. The circumstances of his life and the dynamism of his faith are more relevant to the contemporary Christian than one might suspect. The early- and mid-twentieth century saw new scholarly interest in and understanding of Augustine. His persistent influence on Christian theology, especially in the West, was evident, mid-century, at the Second Vatican Council; his thought is cited liberally in Council documents. Since the Council there has been an explosion in Augustine studies, marked largely by the shift from doctrinal to historical approaches and methodologies. New appreciations of Augustine s pastoral role have arisen from careful study of his sermons and letters, several of which have been rediscovered in the past several decades. Controversy about Augustine s teachings on original sin, human sexuality, and the relationship of church and state continue. However, contemporary Augustinian scholarship invites a reconsideration of long-standing presumptions about Augustine, among both those who defend him as well as those who revile him.

Augustine wrote "On Christian Teaching (De Doctrina Christiana) at the same time as "Confessions",to enable Christian students to be their own interpreters of the Bible and to help them communicate clearly to others.In so doing he provides an outline of Christian theology,a detailed discussion to sign theory.He also makes a systematic attempt to determine what elements of traditional,'pagan' education are permissible for a Christian, and in the last book suggests ways in which Ciceronian rhetorical principles may help in communicating the faith.

Saint Augustine is often regardarded as the most influential Christian thinker after Saint Paul, and City of God is his materpiece, a cast synthesis of religious and secular knowledge. It began as a reply to the charge that Christian otherworldiness was causing the decline of the Roman Empire. Augustine produced a wealth of evidence to prove that paganism bore within itself the seeds of its own destruction. Then he proceeded to his larger theme, a cosmic interpretation of in terms of the struggle between good and evilL the City of God in conflict with the Earthly City or the City of the Devil. This, the first serious attempt at a philosophy of history, was to have incalculable influence in forming the Western mind on the relations of church and state, and on the Christianʹs place in the temporal order.

When the great Saint Augustine was called from his country home to become Bishop of Hippo in the fourth century, his new responsibilities took him away from the solitude of his writing and into the glare of the public eye. The author of two of the greatest works of religious literature, Confessions and City of God, Augustine became a shepherd to the people, inspiring and enlightening them with his sermons. His skills as a speaker were as great–if not greater–than his skills as a writer. According to his friend Possidius, “Those who read what Augustine wrote on the divine topics do get something out of them. But those who saw and heard him in person–they were the ones who got heaven and Earth.” Sermons to the People collects the homilies on the liturgical seasons of the Church Saint Augustine delivered over the course of his lifetime. This Image edition includes the first sermons in that vast collection: from Advent, Christmas, New Year’s, and the Epiphany. Newly translated by William Griffin, they address timeless concerns, including the problems of materialism and the intellectual difficulties of faith. Griffin renders the sermons with such immediacy, it is as though he had been present when Augustine spoke to his flock.

The "Confessions" are not Augustine's autobiography.They are,instead,a deliberate effort,in the permissive atmosphere of God's felt presence,to recall those crucial episodes and events in which he can now see and celebrate the mysterious actions of God's prevenient and provident grace.
The Enchiridion is a briefer treatise on the grace of God and represents Augustine's fully matured theological perspective-after the magnificient achievements of the "De Trinitate" and the greater part of the De civitate Dei,and after the tremendous turmoil of the Pelagian controversy in which the doctrine of grace was the exact epicenter.

An introduction to the life and thought of fourth-century theologian Augustine of Hippo, discussing his book "Confessions," and looking at his key teaching in the context of the times in which he lived.