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 ...
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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.
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Add this copy of Saint Augustine: a Penguin Life (Penguin Lives) to cart. $0.99, good condition, Sold by More Than Words rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Waltham, MA, UNITED STATES, published 1999 by Viking Books.
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After reading E.L. Doctorow's novel, "City of God". I wanted to learn more about Augustine to think further about the obvious allusion in Doctorow's title, and throughout his book. I had read Augustine before, and was not a total newcomer to his thought. But I need a refresher and something that would expand my limited understanding. Thus, I read this short biography "Saint Augustine" by Garry Wills and reviewed it on Amazon.
I was prompted to revisit my review of Wills, which is given with edits in the paragraph above and in the following paragraphs, by reading a review in the October 26, 2017, "New York Review of Books" by Augustine scholar Peter Brown. Brown gives a highly laudatory review to a new translations of Augustine's "Confessions" by Sarah Ruden published by Modern Library. As I read Brown's review, Ruden's translation attempts to bring the reader closer to the Augustine of his own day rather than to read Augustine in the light of modern liberal theology, as I recall Wills tends to do. I learned from Brown's review and hope to have the opportunity to read Ruden's translation. The remainder of my 2001 review of Wills' book follows.
Wills' book is short, clearly written, and presents in an accessible form something of the nature of this complex person, thinker, and theologian. But the book is no mere introduction. It in many ways takes issue with other accounts of Augustine and presents him in a manner that shows why he is worthy of the attention of the modern reader, as he has been of readers throughout the ages.
Wills spends a lot of time arguing that the title "Confessions" for Augustine's most famous work is inappropriate and retitles it "Testimony". This point has been made many times before, but in the process Wills does teach us something about the book. The process is not merely a pedantic exercise. Wills also argues that Augustine was not a sexual libertine in his youth and, actually more importantly for the modern reader, that he was not anti-sexual in his old age. He presents a Christianity that does not despise the body (making the simple point that in Christianity God came to the earth in a body) and that seeks to use the body for God's purpose in humility and love. In fact, Wills presents Augustine as correcting the anti-physical bias of pagan ascetics of his day.
The texts in Augustine I was interested in were the Confessions("Testimony") and "City of God".
The first text is referred to repeatedly in the first half or so of Wills' biography and forms the basis for Wills' discussion of Augustine's life, conversion, and theology. The second book, Augustine's "City of God" is summarized briefly late in Wills' study, and I found it useful. Again, Wills argues against an other-worldly interpretation of the "City of God" and finds Augustine willing to bring the City to earth in a world believers share with nonbelievers through an early form of toleration, through love, and through common purpose.
There is a good, if necessarily brief, description in the book of the closing days of the Roman Empire. This is in itself worth reading and I had known little about it.
I think somebody coming to Augustine for the first time could benefit from the book and be encouraged to think and learn more. I found it useful. I think Penguin is to be commended for its biographical series, making important lives accessible to modern readers in brief, but not superficial texts.
