Augustine the African

 As a present for a recent birthday, I received a copy of Augustine the African by Catherine Conybeare. It is a short book, quickly read. Much of the matter will be familiar to anyone who has read Peter Brown's Augustine of Hippo. Conybeare gives greater emphasis to the African context of Augustine's life and work.

 On a number of points I wondered about her approach. She has an eye for the dramatic, and she exercises it in recounting the struggles with the Donatists. The question of the objective validity of the sacraments--in this case, baptism--gets a paragraph. The struggle with the Pelagians also gives one more of the drama of personal conflict than of doctrinal concerns. Yet Jaroslav Pelikan in a couple of places quotes Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield to the effect that the Reformation was the triumph of Augustine's theology of grace over Augustine's theology of the church. Given the importance of the Donatist controversy to the development of his doctrine of the church, and of the Pelagian controversy in refining his doctrine of Grace, the author might have given more space to the doctrinal concerns, and less to the ambiguous place of North Africa, or one North African, in the Roman system.

 The diction is also of our time. One finds "dog-whistle" where in one case "proof text" would be better, and in another perhaps "catch words". A chapter on the disorientation felt by Romans (broadly understood) after the Sack of Rome is "Roman Fragility". Of course I understand these, but will the readers of 2050 or 2100?

I am glad to have read the book, and will read it again. I may want to have more of St. Augustine's work handy for reference when I do.