A Companion to Augustine (Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World), edited by Mark Vessey (Wiley, 2015), 595 pages.
Augustine is arguably the most important Christian theologian outside of the biblical authors. Many different theological camps claim Augustine for their theological positions. The Confessions makes him a very personal historical figure. Because of the massive weight of Augustine’s historical character it is essential that we understand Augustine in his historical context as well as his social context. That is the purpose for which this companion has been written.
This companion was first published in 2012 and has now been republished in paperback. Its scope and breadth is as impressive as its list of contributors. It is divided into seven parts. Part 1 lays out the historical, social, and religious context in which Augustine lived. Part 2 revisits The Confessions. Part 3 is entitled “media” and surveys communication strategies deployed by Augustine and his contemporaries. Part 4 examines Augustine’s subjective experience with texts from his time period, while Part 5 looks at Augustine in his various capacities. Part 6 examines Augustine’s theological and philosophical positions, and finally, Part 7 looks at Augustine’s historical reception.
A major emphasis in this work is Augustine’s share in late antiquity rather than his share in the early church fathers. The effect is that the authors focus much more on Augustine’s historical context within the Roman Empire and on his interaction with contemporary philosophers and teachers. As the editor states, there has not been “any compendious work, in English but representing more than Anglophone scholarship, that introduces the subject of Augustine as it has begun to reappear after the invention of late antiquity. The commission for this Companion was to set forth that subject” (4).
The chapters of this companion are quite introductory and for the most part do not make any incredibly controversial theses. For example the chapter on Augustine and Scripture covers familiar topics of the character of Scripture, divine rhetorical strategy, the idea of love in Augustine’s hermeneutic, and the necessity of divine illumination for proper interpretation of Scripture. Similarly the chapter on the Donatists gives a brief history of the sect, a survey of Augustine’s writing against the Donatists, and relates the events to the worldwide church and to the sacraments.
But this is not to discourage the quality of these chapters. The citations show that the authors are steeped in the secondary literature and the information is concise and informative. The average chapter is about 12 to 15 pages and each chapter contains a list of further readings at the end.
If there is one complaint to be made about this volume it is the lack of sustained attention to Augustine’s treatment Scripture and his hermeneutic. The more historical focus on Augustine causes the section on “positions” to be dominated by much historical analysis. Many other chapters should have been included, such as Augustine’s treatment of the Old Testament, Augustine’s hermeneutic, Augustine and Christology, and more.
I reckon the reason chapters such as these were omitted is that the analysis of Augustine is more historical and belongs more to the domain of universal history rather than to the domain of the church. There is nothing necessarily wrong with this approach, but it does leave a large gap in a companion on Augustine.
Overall, this volume is an essential tool for any theologian’s or philosopher’s library and it will make a nice complementary volume to the Cambridge Companion to Augustine, the second volume of which was just published last year. The reader may want to take note of the prices of the two different volumes with the Cambridge volume falling in the $30 range while this Blackwell volume falls in the $50 range. Thankfully this paperback volume is much cheaper than the $200 hardback volume published in 2012. I definitely recommend purchasing both books to have in your library as solid reference works on the most important theologian the church has ever known.
Find it here on Amazon.
