Saint Augustine

[MrMean_]

Provost Chronicles Life and Legacy of Augustine
In his book, Augustine: A New Biography (HarperCollinsPublishers, April 2005), James J. O'Donnell, preeminent Augustinian scholar and creator of a three-volume standard scholarly edition of Confessions, offers a penetrating personal chronicle of a legendary figure who turns out to be more complex and more important than even readers of Augustine's masterwork realize. This revelation leads readers of every persuasion to think differently about Christianity and its past.

"This book will be the starting point for an entire rethinking of Augustine's career and body of writings," said Gary Wills, adjunct professor of history at Northwestern University. "What Pierre Courcelle did for Augustinian studies half a century ago, O'Donnell has done for our time."

Augustine concentrates first on the Augustine who lived from 354 to 430 A.D., through the lens of Hippo Regius (modern Annaba, Algeria), the city where he spent almost 40 years as a priest and bishop. Though little is known about how Augustine looked, the man and Christian come alive through his voice. Among other topics, the text touches on Augustine's renunciation of sex and its impact on celibacy for priests, his interpretation of scripture and hard-line stands on baptism and original sin and his role in shaping all latter ideas of Christianity and advancing universal faith in an almighty God.

Reading between the lines of Augustine's writings, as well as drawing on archives of historical sources, O'Donnell presents the portrait of a fervent convert and conflicted mortal surrounded by rich men using Christianity for ambitious means, priests devoted to hiding their sexual and financial transgressions, Roman generals playing games of barbarian geopolitics and true believers caught up in clashing visions of Christianity and many different gods.

"Although there are many Augustines, this book is about two in particular, the one who lived and died a long time ago and the one who lives to be remade by us and is known from his works," said O'Donnell. "It is impossible to tell the story of one without the other. It will be impossible for us not to think of our now when we read about his then. But we should not jump to conclusions about him, or accept simple answers. I suspect most readers will find that he has more to offer our world, even as he becomes less simple to imagine or invoke in his own."

Born Aurelius Augustinius in Tagaste, now Souk Ahras, Algeria, in 354 A.D., this trail-blazing churchman and theologian was not baptized a Christian until the age of 33, following a religious crisis that ended his meteoric rise from provincial obscurity to the fringes of an imperial court. Nine years later, he was ordained a bishop at Hippo Regius, a wealthy port city in Roman-ruled North Africa. Not long after, between the years 397 and 401, he wrote Confessions -- a profound, intimate work of meditation on his own identity, past and future.

Nearly 1600 years after his death, Confessions continues to be read by an astonishing variety of people. Augustine finds an audience among the devout and the soul-searching, as well as religious and medieval scholars around the world, but his appeal is far wider and more enduring. The stories of his life resonate deeply across all borders. In recent years, he has been promoted and publicized by the government of his native Algeria, proud of him in spite of his religious affiliations.

The bishop who had written the Confessions progressed through a career in which he led his faction of Christianity to pre-eminence in Africa and fought and won doctrinal wars with Christians who did not measure up to his standards of orthodoxy and piety. Those conflicts are narrated here in a way that both catches the flavor of life in that time and makes understandable the importance of these debates for later times.

[RS]

Thanks Mr Mean - I think that I should write be it an essay, to put back into place where they belong all these "o donell, and such" who have problems digesting who their teacher is... Two things areare certain:
1. Religion is man made, and the western one is AMAZIGH MADE
2. Augustine's superiority in rethtorics (philosophy), is yet to be matched ! rom Ntsche, and the all the list that follows...they gravitate around "free will" or Tamazight !

I will try to locate a FREE COPY of the BOOK because I am definately NOT the sponsor of these .... (fill the blanks)

Take care