Prayer after Augustine

Prayer after Augustine: A Study in the Development of the Latin Tradition was based on my dissertation at the University of Cambridge. Published by Oxford University Press in 2018, Prayer after Augustine received the Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise in 2019. 

It has been positively reviewed in Journal of Early Christian Studies, Modern Theology, Scottish Journal of Theology, and Reading Religion. In 2019, it was the subject of a panel discussion at the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting in the Augustine and Augustinianism Group, and in 2020 it will be the subject of Syndicate symposium (watch out for it!).

Summary:

The influence of the theology and philosophy of Augustine of Hippo on subsequent Western thought and culture is undisputed. Prayer after Augustine: A Study in the Development of the Latin Tradition argues that the notion of the ‘Augustinian tradition’ needs to be re-thought; and that already in the generation after Augustine in the West such a re-thinking is already and richly manifest in more than one influential form. In this work, Jonathan D. Teubner encourages philosophical, moral, and historical theologians to think about what it might mean that the Augustinian tradition formed in a distinctively Augustinian fashion, and considers how this affects how they use, discuss, and evaluate Augustine in their work. This is exemplified by Augustine’s reflections on prayer and how they were taken up, modified, and handed on by Boethius and Benedict, two critically influential figures for the development of Latin medieval philosophical and theological cultures. Teubner analyses and exemplifies the particular theme of prayer and the other topics it constellates in Augustine and to show how it already forms a distinctively ‘Augustinian’ concept of tradition that was to prove to have fascinatingly diverse manifestations. Part I traces the development of Augustine’s understanding of prayer. Patience and hope as articulated in prayer sit at the centre of Augustine’s understanding of Christian existence. In Part II, Teubner turns to suggest how this is picked up by Boethius and Benedict.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

Part I: A Theological Prelude
1: Learning to Pray
2: Prayer as Acceptance of Time
3: Prayer as Reception of the Other
4: Prayer as Hope of Wisdom

Part II: A Historiographical Interlude
5: The Augustinianism 1 of the Opuscula Sacra
6: The Augustinianism 2 of The Consolation of Philosophy
7: The Augustinianism 1 of the Rule of St Benedict
8: The Augustinianism 2 of the Rule of St Benedict

An Ethical Postlude

Bibliography