Theology Today - Vol 21, No. 4 - January 1965 - BOOK REVIEW - Augustine of Hippo: Life and Controversies

533 - St. Augustine of Hippo: Life and Controversies

St. Augustine of Hippo: Life and Controversies
By Gerald Bonner
428 pp. Philadelphia, Westminster Press, 1963. $8.50.

Of the making of books about Augustine, there is no end; nor should there be, for the man is endlessly instructive. Curiously enough, however, the thinnest section in this vast library is the one that we usually label "introduction"-surveys of his life and thought that really place him in the dynamic matrix of his own time and manage also to provoke living encounters between this ancient "modern man" and modern "modern man." At the most, I could list a half dozen titles in this category that I regard as better than barely adequate-and none of them is quite up to the job that needs doing.

One therefore welcomes Bonner's St. Augustine into this sparse company. It is an interesting and useful survey of Augustine's development as the chief architect of Latin Christianity-and of his role as "defender of the faith" at precisely those points where the Christian mind had not before been fully tested. Indeed, Bonner's most significant contribution is his exceptionally thorough exposition of the issues, on both sides, in the three major controversies that dominated Augustine's career. Other books do as well in presenting the Augustinian polemic against the Manichees, or the Donatists, or the Pelagians; but none that I know lays out the case for Augustine's opponents as fairly and as fully, and in context. The reader is thus enabled to get a balanced notion of what the shooting was all about, and, with this, a deeper understanding of the continuing relevance of these fusty quarrels.

After two initial chapters of biography (the least exciting in the book), Professor Bonner gives us a highly competent analysis of the teachings of "the Manichean religion" (Chapter IV). Besides affording the reader a useful summary not easily come by elsewhere, this exposition makes credible the attractions that such a bizarre dualism might have had for the young Augustine, and for others, in a world haunted by the problem of evil (unde malus?). Chapter V presents Augustine's rejection of, and alternative to, the Manichean position-and does it very well.

Similarly, Chapters VI and VII set out, first, the complicated social history of the Donatist controversy, and then the theological issues involved -again with both sides exhibited. One of the most interesting points made here is that both parties in this tragic conflict felt wholly justified in their contradictory appeal to the mutually acknowledged authority of their great African predecessor, St. Cyprian: the Donatists to his sacramental theory and to his practice of re-baptizing the lapsi; the Catholics to his passion for Christian unity and his horror of schism. We also have here a convincing account of when, and why, Augustine changed his views and practices in the matter of "religious liberty," from toleration and persuasion to coercion and repression.

534 - St. Augustine of Hippo: Life and Controversies

In Chapters VIII and IX, the Pelagians are given a fairer hearing than they usually get in books about Augustine, and Augustine's struggle for a stable synthesis of grace and free will in reaction to the Pelagian stress on human responsibility is probed in depth and with real insight. Professor Bonner draws a clear line between the essential rightness of Augustine's position and the dubious excesses of his advocacy of that position in the later stages of the controversy. One of the most interesting sections here is the analysis of the faulty biblical exegesis on which Augustine rested his doctrine of the seminal transmission of human sin and guilt from Adam-and the immense consequences of this misinterpretation in subsequent theology.

There are enough minor flaws in this generally competent book to remind the general reader that even pundits must be double-checked-and expect to be. For example, the reference (p. 15) to the Parthians and the "Sassanians" is misleading as to its chronology. Or, again, not all of Tertullian is written "at white heat" (p. 23). Augustine's mother died in Ostia, not Rome (p. 40). And "the basilica of St. Clement" is not "on the Celian hill" in Rome (p. 341).

There are more serious questions, however, in connection with Bonner's omissions, on the one hand, and with his habit of gratuitous value judgments, on the other. As for omissions, one looks in vain, in the long discussion of Augustine's agony over the problem of evil, for some notice of his own mature summing up, in Chapter IV of the Enchiridion. Again, in the very helpful analysis of the political and ethnic dimensions of Donatism, one still misses the expected references to the relevant ecclesiastical legislation in the Codex Theodosianus. Still again, in the section on Pelagianism, one wishes for a clearer account of the radical differences between Augustine and the Eastern Christian theologians in their understanding of the divine-human relationship (synergism and synelthesis)-which would account for the initial welcome accorded to Pelagius in the Christian East. Finally, there are some unaccountable omissions in the bibliography (e.g., Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture and Battenhouse [ed.] A Companion to the Study of St. Augustine).

As for biases, there can be no objection to Professor Bonner's candid avowal of a "catholic" perspective in his evaluations of Augustine's legacy in the Christian community. But what is one to make of the comment that "any author who numbers Gottschalk, Calvin and Cornelius Jansen among his expositors is much to be pitied" (p. 312)-and the ensuing contention that Calvin was not a kosher Augustinian? On a different level, some readers will flinch a bit at Bonner's intrusive piety in his "epitaph" for Augustine's cast-off mistress (p. 79): "We can only hope that her generous loyalty was rewarded by the gift of a Christian end to her life, with-

535 - St. Augustine of Hippo: Life and Controversies

out pain or blame, and a right answer before the judgement seat of Christ." Or, again, some will find astonishing such things as the footnote added to Bonner's citation of Simone Weil in his discussion of Augustine's notion of the broad outreach of divine grace (p. 391): "It must, however, be added that in the case of Simone Weil, it is hard to understand and still harder to approve her continued refusal of baptism, a refusal which points to an element of pride in her nature." How stuffy can you get?

All of this is to say that St. Augustine of Hippo: Life and Controversies does not qualify as the ideal "introduction" that we need-and that may never be written. Nevertheless, we must thankfully add it to all our bibliographies and urge it upon students and general readers alike. It can really help the layman understand why this ancient African bishop is still widely regarded as the most influential of all the splendid company of Christian doctors. At the same time, it is a book to be reckoned with both by scholars and specialists. This, surely, is a major achievement!

Albert C. Outler
Southern Methodist University
Dallas, Texas