Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives)

Rating:
Summary: History and Spirit!
Review: Wills, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Lincoln at Gettysburg (LJ 5/1/92), makes a marvelous contribution to St. Augustine studies but one best used in conjunction with a more standard biography such as Peter Brown's Augustine of Hippo (1967). Wills reviews and explains events he thinks were crucial to Augustine's personal and theological development. His particular strength, however, is to offer an intriguing challenge to the traditional scholarship on Augustine. For example, Wills does not believe that Augustine was a sexual libertine before his conversion: "He lived with one woman for fifteen years `and with her alone, since I kept faith with her bed.'... This kind of legal concubine was recognized in Roman law." Wills also considers the title of Augustine's biography, Confessions, to be a mistranslation, opting instead for "Testimony" and arguing that Augustine is giving testimony to the presence of the Spirit rather than confessing sins. Wills offers insight after creative insight into the society, law, philosophy, and church of Augustine's fourth-century world. A three-page Bibliographical Guide and a two-page list of works by and about Augustine are included. Highly recommended as a supplementary work on Augustine.