The selections gathered in this volume are social and business letters written during the period of St. Augustine's monastic retirement, and reflect his multifaceted obligations and concerns as bishop, counselor, preacher, and judge. Of timeless interest, his ideas have had a lasting impact on theology, philosophy, and Western religion.
The first collection of Saint Augustine's varied writings on human and divine love—chosen to reflect his lifelong preoccupation with ordo amoris, the principle of rightly directed love. "My weight is my love," Saint Augustine writes in The Confessions. He sees our ability to love as disordered by sin, so that we often choose badly what and how to love. Only by recognizing that we are commanded to love God first can any other object of our love be properly ordered, Late Have I Loved Thee draws on the riches found in Augustine's sermons, letters, treatises, and Scripture commentaries, as well as passages from The Confessions and City of God. Augustine (354-430 A.D.) was the most prolific writer of Christian antiquity and the most influential theologian in Church history. In his first encyclical, God Is Love, current Pope Benedict XVI acknowledges his indebtedness to him. When we read Augustine today, we encounter the same direct, eloquent passions his original listeners experienced, infused with his deep sense of human weakness and burning desire for union with God.
"As the psalms are a microcosm of the Old Testament, so the Expositions of the Psalms can be seen as a microcosm of Augustinian thought. In the Book of Psalms are to be found the history of the people of Israel, the theology and spirituality of the Old Covenant, and a treasury of human experience expressed in prayer and poetry. So too does the work of expounding the psalms recapitulate and focus the experiences of Augustine's personal life, his theological reflections and his pastoral concerns as Bishop of Hippo."--Publisher's website.
Here in one concise volume is St. Augustine's brilliant analysis of where faith and politics meet - casting a penetrating light on Roman civilization, the coming Middle Ages, ecclesiastical politics, and some of the most powerful ideas in the Western tradition, including Augustine's famous "just war theory" and his timeless ideas of how men should live in society.
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
With: Historical commentary Biographical info Appendix with further readings For nearly 2,000 years, Christian mystics, martyrs, and sages have documented their search for the divine. Their writings have bestowed boundless wisdom upon subsequent generations. But they have also burdened many spiritual seekers. The sheer volume of available material creates a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. Enter the Upper Room Spiritual Classics series, a collection of authoritative texts on Christian spirituality curated for the everyday reader. Designed to introduce 15 spiritual giants and the range of their works, these volumes are a first-rate resource for beginner and expert alike. Writings of Augustine compiles some of the most profound and moving writings of the 4th-century African Christian who had a vast influence on the Christian church and Western culture. Included are excerpts from Augustine's Confessions and other writings.
The person to whom I had addressed the three books entitled De Peccatorum Meritis et Remissione, in which I carefully discussed also the baptism of infants, informed me, when acknowledging my communication, that he was much disturbed because I declared it to be possible that a man might be without sin, if he wanted not the will, by the help of God, although no man either had lived, was living, or would live in this life so perfect in righteousness. He asked how I could say that it was possible of which no example could be adduced. Owing to this inquiry on the part of this person, I wrote the treatise entitled De Spiritu et Littera, in which I considered at large the apostle's statement, "The letter kills, but the spirit gives life." In this work, so far as God enabled me, I earnestly disputed with those who oppose that grace of God which justifies the servances of the Jews, who abstain from sundry meats and drinks in accordance with their ancient law, I mentioned the "ceremonies of certain meats" [quarumdam escarum cerimoniæ] - a phrase which, though not used in Holy Scriptures, seemed to me very convenient, because I remembered that cerimoniæ is tantamount to carimoniæ, as if from carere, to be without, and expresses the abstinence of the worshippers from certain things. If however, there is any other derivation of the word, which is inconsistent with the true religion, I meant no refernce whatever to it; I confined my use to the sense above indicated. This work of mine begins thus: "After reading the short treatise which I lately drew up for you, my beloved son Marcellinus," etc.
Augustine, the man with upturned eye, with pen in the left hand, and a burning heart in the right (as he is usually represented), is a philosophical and theological genius of the first order, towering like a pyramid above his age, and looking down commandingly upon succeeding centuries. He had a mind uncommonly fertile and deep, bold and soaring; and with it, what is better, a heart full of Christian love and humility. He stands of right by the side of the greatest philosophers of antiquity and of modern times. We meet him alike on the broad highways and the narrow footpaths, on the giddy Alpine heights and in the awful depths of speculation, wherever philosophical thinkers before him or after him have trod. As a theologian he is facile princeps, at least surpassed by no church father, schoolman, or reformer. With royal munificence he scattered ideas in passing, which have set in mighty motion other lands and later times. He combined the creative power of Tertullian with the churchly spirit of Cyprian, the speculative intellect of the Greek church with the practical tact of the Latin. He was a Christian philosopher and a philosophical theologian to the full.
