I Burned for Your Peace

Popular author and philosopher Peter Kreeft delves into one of the most beloved Christian classics of all time–Augustine’s Confessions. He collects key passages and offers incisive commentary, making Confessions accessible to any reader who is both intellectually curious and spiritually hungry.

The Confessions is a dramatic personal narrative of a soul choosing between eternal life and death, an exploration of the timeless questions great minds have been asking for millennia, and a prayer of praise and thanksgiving to God. I Burned for Your Peace is not a scholarly work but an unpacking of the riches found in Augustine’s text. It is existential, personal, and devotional, as well as warm, witty, and thought-provoking. With Kreeft to guide them, readers of the Confessions can overhear and understand the intimate conversation between a towering intellect and the God whose peace he at last humbly accepts.

“A marvelous meditation on the heart, mind, and life of this great saint, who is himself a window on the heart, mind, and life of God.”
— Michael Augros, Ph.D., Author, Who Designed the Designer?

Augustine’s City of God: A Reader’s Guide

Augustine’s City of God: A Reader’s Guide

Gerard O’Daly

The City of God is the most influential of Augustine’s works which played a decisive role in the formation of the Christian West. It’s scope embodies cosmology, psychology, political thought, anti-pagan polemic, Christian apologetic, theory of history, biblical interpretation and apocalyptic themes. This book is the first comprehensive modern guide to City of God in any language.

On Augustine

On Augustine

Rowan Williams

Since his retirement as Archbishop of Canterbury and his return to academic life (Master of Magdalene College Cambridge) Rowan Williams has demonstrated a massive new surge of intellectual energy. In this new book he turns his attention to St Augustine.

St Augustine not only shaped the development of Western theology, he also made a major contribution to political theory (City of God) and through his Confessions to the understanding of human psychology. Rowan Williams has an entirely fresh perspective on these matters and the chapter titles in this new book demonstrate this at a glance – ‘Language Reality and Desire’, ‘Politics and the Soul’, ‘Paradoxes of Self Knowledge’, ‘Insubstantial Evil’. As with his previous titles, Dostoevsky, The Edge of Words and Faith in the Public Square this new study is sure to be a major contribution on a compelling subject.

Augustine: Conversions to Confessions

Augustine: Conversions to Confessions 

Robin Lane Fox

Saint Augustine is one of the most influential figures in all of Christianity, yet his path to sainthood was by no means assured. Born in AD 354 to a pagan father and a Christian mother, Augustine spent the first thirty years of his life struggling to understand the nature of God and his world. He learned about Christianity as a child but was never baptized, choosing instead to immerse himself in the study of rhetoric, Manicheanism, and then Neoplatonism—all the while indulging in a life of lust and greed.

In Augustine, the acclaimed historian Robin Lane Fox re-creates Augustine’s early life with unparalleled insight, showing how Augustine’s quest for knowledge and faith finally brought him to Christianity and a life of celibacy. Augustine’s Confessions, a vivid description of his journey toward conversion and baptism, still serves as a model of spirituality for Christians around the world.

Magisterial and beautifully written, Augustine will be the definitive biography of this colossal figure for decades to come.

On Christian Teaching

On Christian Teaching

St Augustine

The De Doctrina Christiana (“On Christian Teaching”) is one of Augustine’s most important works on the classical tradition. Undertaken at the same time as the Confessions, it sheds light on the development of Augustine’s thought, especially in the areas of ethics, hermeneutics, and sign-theory. This completely new translation gives a close but updated representation of Augustine’s thought and expression, while a succinct introduction and select bibliography present the insights of recent research.

Augustine in his own words

Few thinkers have shaped Western civilization more powerfully than St. Augustine (354-430). This volume offers a comprehensive portrait―or rather, self-portrait, since its words are mostly Augustine’s own―drawn from the breadth of his writings and from the long course of his career. One chapter is devoted to each of his masterpieces (Confessions, On the Trinity, and City of God) and one to each of his best-known controversies (against Manichees, Donatists, and Pelagians). It also explores the often overlooked facets of his career, namely, his everyday work as a bishop, preacher, and interpreter of the Bible.

Augustine was an extraordinarily prolific writer, and his eloquent long-windedness can prove overwhelming not only to newcomers, but even to experts. Few know what to read first or how best to read him in context, given the complex and dauntingly remote world of Late Antiquity. This collection is designed to help readers not only to sort through his vast corpus of writings but also to tune their ears to the melodies of his speech and the swirl of his mind. What catches our ear today, as it caught the ear of Augustine’s first hearers, is the heart beneath the voice, his uncanny ability to speak across the centuries, heart to heart, his heart to ours. His was an agitated eloquence, and he used it to ponder and wrestle aloud with life’s mysteries, both those glimpsed in the epic of human history and those astir in the depths of the human heart. But Augustine’s center and passion was another far greater mystery, the God he met in the Bible and in his heart.

This book is an introduction, intended for first-time readers. It brings together state-of-the-art scholarship, lucid translations, and a judicious selection of readings, including excerpts from newly discovered letters and sermons as well as from hard-to-find translations of his often formidable opponents.

Augustine of Hippo: A Biography

Augustine of Hippo: A Biography

Peter Brown

This classic biography was first published forty-five years ago and has since established itself as the standard account of Saint Augustine’s life and teaching.

The remarkable discovery of a considerable number of letters and sermons by Augustine cast fresh light on the first and last decades of his experience as a bishop. These circumstantial texts have led Peter Brown to reconsider some of his judgments on Augustine, both as the author of the Confessions and as the elderly bishop preaching and writing in the last years of Roman rule in north Africa. Brown’s reflections on the significance of these exciting new documents are contained in two chapters of a substantial Epilogue to his biography (the text of which is unaltered). He also reviews the changes in scholarship about Augustine since the 1960s. A personal as well as a scholarly fascination infuse the book-length epilogue and notes that Brown has added to his acclaimed portrait of the bishop of Hippo.

Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia

Allan D. Fitzgerald (Editor)

Expert and accessible, Fitzgerald’s work is the first encyclopedic treatment of the life and thought of Augustine of Hippo. More than 140 leading international scholars have contributed over 400 articles (many of which have never been published in English) on nearly every aspect of Augustine’s life.

Augustinian Reflections on the Christian Life

 

Gilbert Meilaender, The Way that Leads There: Augustinian Reflections on the Christian Life, Wm B. Eardmans, Grand Rapids/mi, 2007

Santu Wistin ifformula dak il-ħsieb ta’ xewqa li “l-qalb tagħna ma ssibx kwiet jekk ma tistrihx fik, O Alla”.  Gilbert Meilaender isostni li din il-frażi hija fiċ-ċentru tal-eżistenza tagħna.  Ma huwiex ktieb fuq Santu Wistin jew it-tagħlim tiegħu fuq il-ħajja nisranija. Lill-qarrej jofri għadd ta’ riflessjonijiet fuq l-għexien nisrani li huma uniċi għal Meilaender.

Fil-ktieb tiegħu “The Way that leads there: Augustinian Reflections on the Christian Life”, huwa jieħu lil Wistin bħala “conversation partner”, dik il-figura li magħha qed jitħaddet. Permezz ta’ din il-konversazzjoni, l-awtur jespolora suġġetti li l-bnedmin ippruvaw jesploraw u jaraw tul is-sekli – ix-xewqa u l-obligu, l-politika, s-sess, meta jmutlek xi ħadd. Permezz ta’ dan ir-raġunament ta’ Meilaender, jsalva lil Wistin minn ħafna perċezzjonijiet li hemm fuq Wistin. Fl-istess ħin jidħol fi djalogu ma’ C. S. Lewis, fost oħrajn, u wkoll mat-teologija morali, fejn tkun mqajjma diskussjoni interessanti fuq diversi temi. L-istampa tal-ħajja li toħroġ minn dawn il-paġni ma hix waħda kompluta, u turi wkoll l-inabilità li nipperfezzjonaw u ngħaqqdu l-ħajja morali tagħna. Dan kollu ma hux xi punt ta’ qtiegħ ta’ qalb, imma huwa aktar mod ta’ kif inħarsu, ma’ Wistin, lejn Alla bħala s-sors u l-oġett tal-akbar xewqa tagħna.

Huwa ktieb interessanti għaliex jaħseb ma’ Santu Witin u mhux jeżaminah. Ktieb ta’ ħsieb, provokattiv, b’ħafna punti ta’ riflessjoni u wkoll meditattiv.

Augustine of Hippo: The Role of the Laity in ecclesial Reconcilation

 

Ktieb interessanti u b’ħarsa wkoll differenti lejn il-lajċi, u li jista’ jkunu ta’ ispirazzjoni għal Ġublew tal-Ħniena huwa l-ktieb ta’ Joseph Carola, Ġiswita, li kiteb fuq Augustine of Hippo: The Role of the Laity in ecclesial Reconcilation. Huwa ktieb ippublikat fl-2005, wara li Carola ddefenda t-teżi dottorali tiegħu fl-Augustinianum fl-2001. Dan l-istudju, l-ewwel wieħed tat-tip tiegħu, juri kif Santu Wistin fehem il-lajċi nsara ukoll fil-qsim tal-qawwa li torbot u tħoll lill-midinbin (cf Mt 16,19) (bind and loose).  Carola jindirizza l-korrezzjoni fraterna bejn il-lajċi u wkoll li wieħed iħoll lil ħaddieħor permezz tat-talb, li wieħed jitlob għal midneb.  Carola jeżamina t-teoloġija u l-viżżjoni pastorali ta’ Wistin, f’din il-parteċipazzjoni tal-lajċi fir-rikonċiljazzjoni ekkleżjali. Fil-fatt Carola jsemmi li l-istudju “revealed a spiritual depth to Augustine’s understanding of the laity’s grant of remissive authority which transcends external participation in the liturgical rite and domestic surveillance. The power of the keys which they employed is the power of prayer to effect a change in the being of another. The lay’s faithful’s prayer offered in unison with that of their clergy is, according to Augustine, a true and efficacious means of conversion and reconciliation wrought by God”. (p299). It-talb tal-lajċi maqgħud ma’ dak tas-saċerdot huwa mezz effikaċi u veru għal konverżjoni u r-rikonċiljazzjoni.