J. Bourke, ed., The Essential Augustine (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1974).
xiv Introduction use the categories of systematic theology ("God," "the soul," "faith," "grace," "sacraments," etc.) as a way to organize Augustine's thought.10 Such an outline is misleading. It leaves the false impression that Augustine was a systematic theologian. It also wrenches texts out of their context, or rather their many varied contexts: literary, social, historical, and religious. His words were addressed not to us nor to all eternity, but to specific audiences at specific moments for specific reasons. I have chosen, therefore, to stay close to the obvious divisions within Augustine's literary corpus. I devote one chapter to each of his best-known masterpieces (Confessions, On the Trinity, City of God) and one chapter to each of his best-known controversies (against Manichees, Donatists, and Pelagians). I also explore overlooked sides of his life, namely, his routine work as a bishop, as a preacher, and as an interpreter of the Bible. Each of these three topics also gets its own chapter. I've ordered all this to follow the course of his career, its historical unfolding. His thought, I believe, is best seen as a moving target, not a brilliant fixity.
Let me spell out this outline more fully. Chronology shapes the basic flow. Chapter 1 focuses on his Confessions. It gathers the best-known passages and surveys his early career as a student, a teacher, and an orator up through his famous conversion in Milan in August 386 and his baptism at the Easter vigil in April 387. Chapter 2 explores his earliest writings, works composed between 386 and 391, dialogues such as Against the Skeptics (Contra Academicos) and treatises such as On True Religion (De vera religione). Some were begun in Milan, while he was still a professional orator and still a catechumen; others date from his days as a baptized "servant of God," retired and living on his family property in Thagaste. These early texts hover around issues that we today would call philosophical.
Chapter 3 focuses on Augustine the bishop. For this, I draw especially on two sources: Possidius's early biography and Augustine's own letters. These let us glimpse his day-to-day life—its routine rhythms, its weighty responsibilities, its newsworthy crises. His work as a pastor was the linchpin and the catalyst for his voluminous writings. Remaining chapters explore individual threads and specific battles that defined his episcopal career. As a bishop, he preached, of course. He did so often and at length. Chapter 4, therefore, surveys Augustine the preacher. We will look at a few complete sermons and a sprinkling of excerpts. These I intertwine with his theoretical reflections on the art of preaching, drawing especially on Book 4 of his On Christian Teaching (De doctrina christiana). Augustine's preaching focused, of course, on the Bi-
10. For example, Erich Przywara, ed., An Augustinian Synthesis (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1945); Vernon J. Bourke, ed., The Essential Augustine (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1974).