Teubner_Augustine on Affectus
Confessions (The Macat Library)
This is a textbook I wrote that I never imagined would see the light of day. I wrote this when I was a poor graduate student and needed money. It’s been unfortunately edited by someone who thought, bizarrely enough, that a potential reader would want to know how the Confessions could inform their argumentative style. Bizarre […]
Prayer after Augustine: A Study in the Development of the Latin Tradition
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 […]
Review: Theology in the Public Square
Over the last decade, public theology has emerged as a distinct field of theological inquiry, negotiating the tension between the privatization of religion and the desire to engage in dialogue with those outside Christian communities. Sebastian Kim’s Theology in the Public Sphere demonstrates both the promise and the challenge of this exciting new area of […]
The Making of the Western Tradition: An Imperfect Draft
The period between 430 and 1000 evinces a bewildering diversity of controversies, genres, themes, and personalities. In this period, the canon of Scripture, the emergent class of authors called ‘Church Fathers’, and the classical Liberal Arts (as they were refashioned by Christian authors) slowly became the established sources of theological reflection. How they merge into […]
God and Money: Some Augustinian Reflections
Almsgiving as a Christian practice seems to evoke a certain amount of embarrassment. For some, the specter of indulgences still haunt, an artifact of a previous age’s works righteousness polemic. For others, a more pragmatic, worldly spirit emerges. Isn’t the question rather one of care for the poor, and are we not better served not […]
Belonging to Europe: Some Historical Reflections on Europe
Shortly after I arrived in Cambridge, England to start graduate studies in late 2010, the recently elected Conservative-led coalition government decided that it was high time to take care of its ‘immigration problem’. One of the first acts of the Conservatives was to revise the citizenship exam. More British history and tradition, less advice on […]
Review: Harnack’s Introduction to the New Testament
This welcome edition of Carl Richard Schenkel’s 1899/1900 notes from Adolf Harnack’s introductory lectures to the New Testament makes publicly accessible for the first time a transcript of Harnack’s university lectures. The present edition includes a full transcription of Schenkel’s notes, brief afterword and indices. The lecture course itself is divided into two parts: the […]
Review: Contemplation and Christianity
John Peter Kenney’s latest book is an account of how the interpretation of scripture became a quotidian practice of contemplation for Augustine. While he styles Contemplation and Classical Christianity as a prequel to his The Mysticism of Saint Augustine: Rereading the Confessions (2005), ‘prequel’ undersells the novelty of Kenney’s ‘study inAugustine’. Some of the contours […]
Review: The One Christ: St Augustine’s Theology of Deification
David Meconi of Saint Louis University has written what he claims is the ‘first book-length study of Augustine’s theology of deification’ (p. xvi). Since the publication of Gerald Bonner’s seminal article on this theme (‘Augustine’s Concept of Deification’, Journal of Theological Studies 37 [1986], pp. 369–86) deification has been a topic of discussion within Augustine […]