Book Review - St. Augustine by Garry Wills

 St. Augustine by Garry Wills

London: Phoenix, 2000 (first published 1999)          ISBN 0753810727

A great little book. Written by Garry Wills (Pulitzer Prize winning author of Lincoln at Gettysburg), this short book is a brief and pithy description of the life of St. Augustine, and an explication of his theology and philosophy.

Wills explains the progression of Augustine's intellectual and religious life, from Neoplatonism, through Manicheanism to being truly Augustinian. He explains how much of the writing about Augustine and his works focusses too much on the "earthly" in what he wrote, without understanding the religious points that Augustine was trying to make. 

Augustine was a humanist in the sense that he felt keenly the deficiencies that each person has when confronted with God: that we should emphasise forgiveness and mercy rather than exclusion of those who fall from the narrow way. That we should emphasise the love God has for humanity, rather than instilling fear into the hearts of mankind. "Act as you desire, so long as you act with love. If you are silent, be silent from love. If you accuse, accuse from love. If you correct, correct from love. If you spare, spare from love. Let love be rooted deep in you, and only good can grow from it."

Augustine, great thinker and rhetorician that he was, was deeply involved in battling heresy in the early church, particularly Pelagianism and Donatism. Regarding the latter, he was a key member of the council that helped quash the heresy, but acted with compassion to the Donatists in his Diocese, allowing the Donatist bishop to continue worshipping, and not exercising the death penalty against Donatists who killed a priest (Wills explains that as Bishop of Hippo, Augustine was responsible for civil order as well as religious - something he was always uncomfortable with).

Wills has given a good flavour of the type of person Augustine was - as prepared to admit his own flaws as to forgive those in others, a firm friend and an inspired leader. This book is a great introduction to one of the great thinkers of early Christendom.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell