Book Review
Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia
Allan D. Fitzgerald, editor. Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1999. Pp. il + 902. $75.00.
This volume is a superb encyclopedia devoted to one of the most influential thinkers in the history of Western thought. As a student and an admirer of Augustine, I am especially grateful to see this encyclopedia in print. Augustine wrote a great number of works. The spectrum of his writings ranges from theology to philosophy, ethics to metaphysics, epistemology to philosophical psychology, pastoral sermons to polemic writings, and so on. Among his works, roughly five million words and 120 titles are preserved. Due to the massiveness of the Augustinian corpus and the fact that Augustine did not write his works according to modern categories, the attempt to gain an understanding of his thought on a particular issue is often a humbling experience. It can easily take a person hours, or even days, to plow through those numerous pages but acquire only a feeble grasp of Augustine's thought. Now with the invaluable help of this encyclopedia, the hours of painful labor will surely be shortened.
This volume is the first encyclopedia on Augustine that is produced by a top-notch American editorial team and the first that is written entirely in English. Something that probably comes closest to it in scope is probably the series [End Page 305] Augustinus-Lexikon, edited by C. Mayer and published by Schwabe & Co. of Switzerland. Although Augustinus-Lexikon contains some articles written in English, it also has many articles in French, German, and other languages. That series is useful for specialists in the field, but it may not be accessible to general readers. In this sense, Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia is a monumental work, a work that, I believe, will promote great development of Augustinian scholarship in the English-speaking world and a work that will make the complete corpus of Augustine much more accessible to the general public.
This volume is crafted under the auspices of a highly accredited editorial team, led by the general editor, Allan D. Fitzgerald, and accompanied by four associate editors: John Cavadini, Marianne Djuth, James J. O'Donnell, and Frederick Van Fleteren. Their fields of expertise include classical studies, patristics, philosophy, and theology. The wide-ranging academic backgrounds of the editors assure a good balance in the volume and high quality in the articles. The volume is also an amazing collaboration of an international group of nearly one hundred and fifty scholars with expertise in classics, history, philosophy, political science, and theology. This impressive list of contributors includes (to name just a few): Raymond Canning and Kim Power (Australia); Mathijs Lamberigts and Tarsicius J. van Bavel (Belgium); Pamela Bright, Leo C. Ferrari and J. Kevin Coyle (Canada); Frédéric Chapot and Goulven Madec (France); Lewis Ayres (Ireland); Pier Franco Beatrice (Italy); Neil McLynn (Japan); E. L. Saak (The Netherlands); Gerald Bonner, G. R. Evans, Carol Harrison, and Robert A. Markus (United Kingdom); J. Patout Burns, John Caputo, Elizabeth A. Clark, Mary T. Clark, Brian E. Daley, Joseph Lienhard, Jane E. Merdinger, Katherin A. Rogers, Roland J. Teske, Eugene TeSelle, and James Wetzel (United States).
This encyclopedia runs nearly one thousand pages and contains nearly five hundred entries, on a broad variety of topics. There are entries on general topics such as "Ethics," "Liberty," "Soul," "Life, Culture, and Controversies of Augustine," "Original Sin," "Grace," and so on. There are also entries on more specific topics such as "Abortion," "Habit (consuetudo)," "Mary, Mother of God," places (e.g., "Cassiciacum," "Carthage," "Ostia"), and names of people (e.g., "Adeodatus," "Alypius") that are important to Augustine personally. There are entries for each of his individual works (e.g., The Happy Life, Confessions, The City of God, On Nature and Grace) which give readers an overview of each. There are also entries on Augustine's various opponents and their beliefs (e.g., articles on Arianism, Donatism, Manicheism, and Pelagianism), and entries on his polemical works that are written against those positions (e.g., articles on anti-Arian works, anti-Manichean works, anti-Donatist works, and anti-Pelagian works) so as to help readers to understand the broader context of these works. In addition, while some entries deal with theories or traditions that influenced Augustine (e.g., entries on Plato, Cicero, Plotinus, Ambrose, Stoicism), other entries focus on Augustine's own influence on the thinkers through the ages. For example, there are entries on Boethius, Anselm, Bonaventure, Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Kierkegaard, Adolf von Harnack, Heidegger, and others. Moreover, this volume is designed for interdisciplinary use: many [End Page 306] entries are, for example, on history (e.g., Augustinianism in the Reformation, North African Church, 312-430, archaeology), on philosophy (e.g., anthropology, knowledge, illumination, ethics), as well as on theology (e.g., concupiscence, grace, Mary, the council of Trent).
The quality of the articles is consistently of very high caliber. The seriousness of scholarship is clearly seen in many ways. First, in the body of each article, there are many references to Augustine's works (e.g., "conf. [Confessions] 6.9.11"; "epp. [Letters] 29"; "civ. Dei [The City of God] 19.23") guiding readers to relevant passages that address the point under discussion. This is an especially desirable feature for readers who would like to verify the various interpretations of a text. Sometimes, if appropriate, the articles also give specific page references to essential secondary literature that contributes to the understanding or the controversial interpretations of a topic--for example, the references to "Brown 1970, 69" and "Rees 1988, xi" in the first and the second paragraphs of the article on Pelagius. To facilitate comprehension of their contents, some entries, e.g., "Life, Culture, and Controversies of Augustine," "Epistulae (Letters)," "The Eucharistic Liturgy in Hippo's Basilica Major at the Time of Augustine," also come with helpful and well constructed tables or diagrams. Second, there are cross-references after each entry to other related articles in the volume to help readers get a further grasp on the subject (such as references to church and state, guilt, justice, war, De/Contra mendacium, etc., in the article on ethics). Third, at the end of each entry, an excellent and up-to-date bibliography, including references to articles in languages other than English, is provided for further research.
Moreover, the competency and objectiveness of the contributors is also clearly seen in how they handle each subject. To illustrate this point, let us take a closer look at a few articles. The article on ethics will be our first example. It begins with an introduction to the philosophical backgrounds and the Scriptural foundations that help to shape Augustine's ethics. It then proceeds to the application of this general view to specific areas such as political ethics, social ethics, sexual ethics, lying, and war. The article not only gives a clear and comprehensive exposition of Augustine's theory but also candidly points out that some scholars have observed certain tensions in Augustine's theory. For example, his eloquent arguments on ordering all loves according to one's love for God and on the importance of restoring the mutual love among divided communities may also, it seems, be used by some to justify religious coercion (320-30).
The article on the City of God helps readers to further understand Augustine's view on social and political ethics. The author first clearly explains the structure and the purpose of the twenty-two books contained in this work. He then gives a critical review of the different interpretations and warns readers of certain often-misconceived ideas. For example, for Augustine, the two cities are mystical cities, and their members are really not visible to us but only known to God, the reason being that others' intentions, and sometimes even our own, are opaque to us. Thus, the visible members of the church, dependent on the direction of their intentions, are not necessarily members of the city of God (196-202).
To understand Augustine's ethics, one cannot do without some grasp of his [End Page 307] position on liberty (or freedom) and concupiscence. Augustine uses the term liberty (libertas) in a plurality of contexts, but he does not provide a systematic account of this notion. The article on liberty is especially helpful in elucidating the types (e.g., political liberty, religious liberty) and meanings of freedom (e.g., prelapsarian liberty, postlapsarian liberty, false liberty, and true liberty) that Augustine employs in his various works (495-98). The concept of concupiscence is central to Augustine's mature view on original sin, liberty, grace, and ethics. The article on concupiscence gives a concise yet comprehensive introduction to the notion. It explains how concupiscence, as the penal effect of Adam's sin, affects all of humanity and reduces our original state of liberty (the ability not to sin) to false liberty (the liberty to sin, the inability not to sin). And, as a result of this moral weakness, none can will to do the least good without being enabled by grace (224-27).
There are also entries on Augustine's anthropology and epistemology. In the hierarchy of created beings, Augustine ranks living beings as superior to non-living beings and the soul as superior to the body. In Soliloquia 1.2.7, he makes it clear that the two central foci of his epistemology are to know God and to know the soul--for the soul is the doorway of our ascent to God. The article on soul begins with a clear introduction to Augustine's understanding of the soul: its definition (as the source of life, sensation, appetites, thinking, willing, etc.), its nature (being incorporeal, mutable, created, immortal, etc.), its partnership with and superiority over the body, and the arguments for its incorporeality. The article then proceeds methodically to more complicated subjects such as the world soul, or the universal soul, the four hypotheses of the origin of human souls, and to the debates among scholars as to which of the four hypotheses is the one that Augustine favors (807-12). For Augustine's epistemology, his theory of illumination is crucial. The article on divine illumination skillfully guides readers through this difficult subject. It does so by enumerating and explaining the four main interpretations as to how God in some way illumines and enables the human mind to know: (1) Thomas Aquinas' interpretation, (2) the Franciscan theory, (3) Copleston's and Gilson's formal theory, and (4) Nash's modification of the Franciscan theory (438-40).
For historians and theologians, Augustine's influence on the subsequent church history is evident. The article, "Church, North African, 312-430," gives a vivid account of an eventful time in the African church. It describes in details the important historical events at the time (e.g., the political struggles between Maxentius and Constantine), how these events intermingled and affected the unfortunate long period of schism of the Church between the Donatists and the Catholics, and how Augustine became involved in more than fifteen years of debate with the Donatists (185-90). Another important movement in the history of the Church is the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, often referred to by historians as an Augustinian movement. The article on Augustinianism in the Reformation introduces readers to how Augustine's doctrine on original sin, free choice, grace, and election influenced the Reformation (with special emphasis on Luther and Calvin), and how different historians have disagreed over the degree and the sources of Augustine's influence (705-7). [End Page 308]
Shorter articles dealing with minor themes are handled with equal care. Abundant textual references, cross-references, and an up-to-date bibliography accompany each of these short entries. For example, the article on abortion gives a nutshell view of Augustine's position on this issue in one page. It explains that, as textual evidence shows, although Augustine accepts "the distinction of 'formed' and 'unformed' fetuses found in the Septuagint version of Exodus 21.22-23," he condemns the abortion of both because it violates one of the three goods of marriage (see, e.g., On Marriage and Concupiscence 1.15.17; On the Goodness of Marriage 5.5). Therefore Augustine claims, though the abortion of an unformed fetus is not considered murder, it is still morally wrong (1). The article on Ostia gives a to-the-point description as to the geographic location of the place, the historical changes that took place there, and why the place is important to Augustine (617-18).
In addition to the high quality of the articles, the encyclopedia is also filled with numerous user-friendly features. At the beginning of the volume, there is a general bibliography containing books, series, or journals that are frequently consulted by scholars (xxvii-xxxiii). This feature is especially useful for beginners in Augustinian studies but is also a convenient tool for the specialist. A comprehensive and reliable table of abbreviations, titles, Latin editions, and available English translations of Augustine's works is provided (xxxv-xlii). There is also a table of the dates of Augustine's works followed by a brief explanation whenever necessary (xliii-il), cross-references after each entry, and a list of entries at the beginning of the volume to help readers find the subjects that have independent entries (ix-xii). The general index at the end serves as an added tool to help readers locate terms or subjects that might not have an independent entry but are contained in other essays (895-902).
All of these features, coupled with the wide-ranging entries and excellent quality of the articles render this encyclopedia an indispensable reference book for all readers. Whether one is a specialist or an amateur, a professor or a student, a theologian or a philosopher, one will find this volume to be invaluable. It is a "must-have" item for all libraries and one's own bookshelves, a book that will surely soon become a standard reference work. I recommend it with great enthusiasm!
Ann A. Pang-White
University of Scranton, Pennsylvania
