Presents the best scholarship on Augustine's Confessions which will facilitate a better understanding of this masterpiece.

This second edition of the Companion has been thoroughly revised and updated with eleven new chapters and a new bibliography.

This book is a tool for teaching and studying the great Christian classic, Augustine's Confessions. It is a unique venture in which thirteen different scholars look at each of the thirteen books in the Confessions and interpret their chapters in light of that book and in light of the rest of Augustine's work. The result is that the richness and ambiguity of Augustine's work shines through as well as the richness and ambiguity of different readings of the Confessions.

It is hard to overestimate the importance of the work of Augustine of Hippo, both in his own period and in the subsequent history of Western philosophy. Until the thirteenth century, when he may have had a competitor in Thomas Aquinas, he was the most important philosopher of the medieval period. Many of his views, including his theory of the just war, his account of time and eternity, his understanding of the will, his attempted resolution of the problem of evil, and his approach to the relation of faith and reason, have continued to be influential up to the present time. In this 2001 volume of specially-commissioned essays, sixteen scholars provide a wide-ranging and stimulating contribution to our understanding of Augustine, covering all the major areas of his philosophy and theology.

This work provides an in-depth commentary on all thirteen books of St. Augustine's Confessions. It scrutinizes the details of this world-famous intellectual and spiritual autobiography, while addressing the key issues raised by past and current scholars.

Augustine's Confessions and Contemporary Concerns takes each of the thirteen books of Augustine's classic omnibiography to see how the major themes contained therein still speak to each of us today. The Bishop of Hippo never intended that the audience for his work be limited to himself and his contemporaries. He wrote on the perennial themes of childhood, humanity's search for meaning, the relationship between religion and science, and the nature of Christian conversion, as well as the philosophical implications of time, embodiment, of reading rightly, and many other longings that will always be found in the restless heart.Accordingly, scholars expert in Augustine came together to ask what each book of his Confessions offer for the modern mind. This commentary on the Confessions opens with John Martens on infancy and human growth (Book 1), David Vincent Meconi, SJ, on sin as self-sabotage (Book 2), Jeffrey Lehman on Augustine's understanding of presence and love (Book 3), Augustine's aesthetics as explained by Erika Kidd (Book 4), Christopher J. Thompson on the importance of identity and inclusivity (Book 5), and the Dominican Andrew Hofer on Augustinian anxiety (Book 6), before Gerald Boersma explains the limits of vision when trying to "see" God (Book 7). Paul Ruff appears next as he discusses the nature of conversion and the transformational journey to one's truest self (Book 8), while John Peter Kenney explains what Augustine means by Christian Transcendentalism (Book 9). Hilary Finley illuminates the importance and meaning of Augustine's stress on memory and individualism (Book 10), followed by Veronica Roberts Ogle on the nature of time (Book 11), and Margaret Blume Freddoso on contemplation and prayer (Book 12), concluding with Joseph Grone on Augustine's understanding of the Church Christ founded (Book 13). These essays will shed insight on Augustine's master work, proving useful to readers of all levels, to those interested in both patristic theology as well as in contemporary questions of meaning.

The 'Confessions' of St. Augustine is one of the few Christian classics that is still widely read in the secular academy. Yet, oddly enough, it is not often read in the manner Augustine appears to have intended and in which the church read it for centuries: as a model of conversion, devotion, friendship, and the love of God. This book is a companion for any reader of the Confessions -- whether in an academic, ecclesial, or devotional context -- informed by the latest scholarship yet always directed toward pushing the reader, with Augustine, toward God.

The Reading Augustine series presents concise, personal readings of St. Augustine of Hippo from leading philosophers and religious scholars. Ian Clausen's On Love, Confession, Surrender and the Moral Self describes Augustine's central ideas on morality and how he arrived at them. Describing an intellectual journey that will resonate especially with readers at the beginning of their own journey, Clausen shows that Augustine's early writing career was an outworking of his own inner turmoil and discovery, and that both were to summit, triumphantly, on his monumental book Confessions (AD 386-401). On Love, Confession, Surrender and the Moral Self offers a way of looking at Augustine's early writing career as an on-going, developing process: a process whose chief result was to shape a conception of the moral self that has lasted and prospered to the present day.

Books V-IX of the Confessions trace five crucial years in the life of Augustine, from his debut as a teacher of rhetoric in North Africa to his baptism as a Christian and the renunciation of a worldly career in Milan. This commentary will be invaluable for those wishing to read his story in the original Latin. Through careful glosses and notes, Augustine's Latin is made accessible to students of patristics and of classics. His extensive quotations from Scripture are translated and explained in light of the variant Bible texts and the interpretative assumptions through which he came to understand them. The unfolding of his career is set against the background of political, cultural, and religious change in the fourth century, and the art with which he created a form of narrative without precedent in earlier Latin literature is illustrated in close detail.

An exhaustive guide to every significant Christian theologian who lived from the first century to 1308, the year in which John Duns Scotus died. The dictionary encompasses the Catholic, Orthodox, Nestorian and Monophysite traditions, including information not previously available in English. Thoroughly indexed, the dictionary incorporates common variants of names and concepts which will help and direct the reader. The main criterion for inclusion has been contribution to the development of Christian theology. Sub-criteria by which that is measured include, above all, originality and influence on later figures. With over 290 entries, the dictionary provides a handy summary of theologiansi lives and writings together with recent scholarship,as well as an up-to-date, definitive bibliography listing primary texts, translations and secondary literature in the major western European languages. Useful for all levels of academia; no other text matches the depth of the dictionaryis bibliographies. The unprecedented thoroughness of Hill's compilation provides an essential resource for studies at all levels on such a large and varied range of Church thinkers.