This was a very enjoyable history book, and certainly one of the best books I have every read on Florida history. Though it is filled with facts and dates, it is also full of stories that make colonial St. Augustine come alive. It was also helpful that each chapter is a little story of it's own which relates to the whole book, but can be read separately. Best of all, the Spanish Inquisition makes an appearance, and nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

I picked up the book and thumbed through it and became so interested I ordered a copy. It is both scholarly and entertaining. A very worthwhile volume about a fascinating part of American history.

The way I look at these tapes as the best way of reading philosophy while you are driving. Please keep your eyes on the road while you are driving. These series are great. I believe they are not intended to be comprehensive and they could not be in two hours but they give you %60 biography %40 philosophy. Some of them even have accent as they though they were immigrants from original contries to US, Kant speakes with German/English accent. It is fun, entertaining, illuminating. Much better than talk shows. Please this is not a substitute for a real book so judge accordingly.

This brief introduction to Hume is exceptional. I went from this tape to Hume's "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" and "An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals". I don't think it would have been such an easy transition without learning how Hume fits into Western philosophical history and what problems concerned him. It startled me to discover that Hume's major point is that inductive thinking (thinking about "matters of fact" ) is irrational: forming general laws about the world has its basis in custom and experience and not by the sort of reasoning used in math and logic ("relations of ideas" in Hume's lexicon).

Hume's political, historical, and ethical ideas are also interesting and I was surprised to learn how much Hume's ideas on the separation of powers in government had influenced James Madison.

Charlton Heston does it again.Another project that I have absolutely fallen in love with.He sounds so smart and sexy,just like those philosophers were,therefore an appropriate choice to narrate.I wonder,if they were alive today,what would these philosophers have to say about guns?Ah,no matter,they'd all agree with me that Mr.Heston did an excellent job on what i'm sure will be a quintessential work on the subject.

The author points out Christianity has faced prior challenges from a hostile culture. The first after the fall of Rome, when pagans sought to blame social problems on Christians, the second from a rising Islam.

The challenges stimulated Augustine (413 A.D) and Aquinas (1260 A.D.) respectively, whose responses took the written form of "The City of God" and "Summa Contra Gentiles", two key works in the history of Western civilization.

The author compares the two responses and concludes they share methods that allowed successful disarming of the threats: "entering the challenger's story", "retelling it", and "capturing" it in the broader logic of Christianity.

This is the natural thing to do: understand the challenger's position better than they do, show how it doesn't answer the questions they think it does, then demonstrate your position encompasses theirs. Easy to do when on the side if truth (what "is"), impossible for opponents to duplicate.

Thus chapters 2,3,4 are golden. But sections of chapters 1 and 5 aren't. The author, based in academia, asserts post-modern denial of human ability to determine truth is the dominant threat; that utopianism suffered a shattering blow in WWI and WWII and is dead.

A stronger case can be made post-modernism is a minor linguistic procedure; take the leading post-modern theorist from the ivory tower, put him on a dude-ranch, away from TV, baling hay for a few months and post-modern pretensions vaporize.

One can't function in the world while taking seriously the idea there are only myths people fabricate to avoid cognitive dissonance, or dominate others. That truth is not knowable. It is simple to see through post-modern gamesmanship, once language methods they use are understood. Post-modernism seems credible because it is poorly explained. And the other academics confronting it are also verbalists.

The college student, leaning against a pillar, vexing the author by asking "How can you know anything is true?" will, even if no one is there to answer, one day graduate and get a job. 5-10 years later, the campus nonsense will be a dim memory, lost in real-world experience. Time will have been wasted and a life diverted from greater richness, but it needn't be terminal.

By contrast, utopian idealism, the denial of human sin, has been reformulated on the assertion humans are only mechanically derived animals; complicated bits of matter to be manipulated to a higher state by an elite which believes it has higher vision (replacing God with their own desires).

This idealism has spread far from academia. It shapes nations, political parties, education, law and people's lives, on a moment to moment basis. From Darwin to Marx to Freud to Stalin to Hitler to the 60's culture to modern hate groups, socialists and activists; all linked by the belief humans can "progress" to a perfect world they imagine. Christians understand a fallen humanity cannot. Utopianism IS a virulent threat, corroding the culture as a now invisible assumption.

So one must keep the book's title in mind; it's about engaging "unbelief", not disbelief. But the author dismisses disbelief, the greater threat, too readily. Unbelievers go quietly into the night, like a forest of deadwood clearing itself. Disbelievers do not.

Another concern is an author too far gone "entering the challenger's story". He seems to accept the premises of post-modernism; that life is about myth-making and story-telling, seemingly conceding the concept of truth. He urges incorporating the opposition's beliefs, which he apparently has done.

If the author saw in Augustine the idea of taking captive opponents' ideas, a clearer picture of how the Church in Rome became the Roman Catholic church snaps into view; the praying to Mary more than God (goddess worship), rituals involving physical objects (rosaries, statues), papal (human) infallibility, icons such as paintings of Jesus and other human-built objects of veneration.

Protestants have historically seen this as idol worship of false images, contrary to biblical law, but similar to pagan customs. It seems one can enter the opponent's story a bit too much. There is the impression Augustine's battle with Roman pagans was not conclusive, trading away some of God's laws for the church, so as to cease hostilities. Is this why we have thousands flocking to offer prayers to a tortilla whose shadows look like Mary?

In the end, the author suggests addressing the post-modern era in its own language: film-making. Protestants would say this a call to create false images of worship; idolatry. That there is a good reason there are no physical descriptions of Jesus. That Christianity needs spiritual doctors, not herding people into dark isolation rooms to see human contrived, out-of-context images flashed before them for emotional manipulation.

The author says the post-modern Augustine or Aquinas probably won't be one of the white male Christians with impeccable credentials, but will most likely be someone on the margin, as Augustine and Aquinas were: "...a single Pakistani woman who has an abortion before coming to Jesus and is a budding film-maker."

Ruinous conclusions drawn from an interesting comparison. Perhaps the problem lies in misuse of the sources he returns to for inspiration. Or far more likely, perhaps the problem is intrinsic to the sources. Because there is a pattern.

A more comprehensive and practical presentation from the Protestant understanding (marginalized in this book) is "How Now Shall We Live". Christianity needs to be understood as a comprehensive world-view before one can easily deal with the disbelievers and unbelievers. And you don't have to give up on truth in the process.

Curtis Chang has an excellent idea: read Augustine and Aquinas, two great Christian thinkers, compare how they explained their faith to non-Christian contemporaries of their eras, and see what we in the "post-modern" world can learn. Overall, I think he pulls it off well. Chang is a thoughtful writer, and the book is well-organized and clearly (though not eloquently) written. (Chang seems to be one of those writers whose diction remains structured and careful even when he gets a bit passionate.)

I was happy to learn a bit about Aquinas (whom I had not read) and to bask in Chang's exposition of one aspect of the thought of Augustine (whom I have long appreciated). He argues that the two men entered into the stories of their non-Christian opponents, deepened them, and retold them as facets of the "metanarrative" of the Gospel. This subject particularly interests me because I am doing research on the fascinating (and long) story of how Western, Indian and Chinese Christians have related the Gospel to their cultures. Also, I wrote a book a couple years ago, Jesus and the Religions of Man, that relates the Gospel to modern religions and ideologies in a way rather similar to Augustine's approach in City of God -- maybe more by accident than by design. I think the period in which Augustine wrote resembled our own diverse, multi-cultural society in many ways, and we have much to learn from him. (And, it seems, from Aquinas as well.)

I also learned a bit about "post-modernism" here, at last. (The term being unnecessarily ugly, I have previously tried to avoid finding out what it referred to. Ignore it, and it will go away!) I don't think, as one reviewer below seems to, that Chang accepts the "post-modern" view wholeheartedly, nor ask us to. "Both (A+A) . . . enter the pagan and Islamic stories still retaining their distinctive Christian identities. They refuse to give in to some confusing syncretism or an intellectual appeasement that would change the essence of the gospel." I don't think Chang is unconcerned about truth, just because he emphasizes story. (Which he calls "narrative," yikes.) Story and truth need not conflict. The Gospel marks where the two cross and become one. Chang's approach is to find truth in non-Christian philosophy, and show how the Gospel deepens and supplements it. I think that is a valid, Biblical, and rational approach to any worldview that contains truth, as "post-modernism" undoubtedly does.

Chang talks about Islam in an indirect way, because he thinks Aquinas wrote Summa Contra Gentiles to help missionaries reach the educated, philosophical Muslims of his day. Islam is of course on a lot of peoples' minds, my own included. I think Chang is a bit hard on the Crusaders -- it would only be fair for us to enter their story, too, if we are going to enter that of the Muslims. Not everyone has the luxury of responding to armies with words alone. And I am not sure Aquinas was always entirely tolerant either.

Postmodernism is a notoriously slippery subject, but in this book Curtis Chang does a good job of introducing and explaining it; he then proceeds to give a plan of action for engaging it, based upon his reading of St. Augustine's CITY OF GOD and Aquinas' SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES.

To me, the most important facet of this discussion is how the Christian faith, which claims objective truth, can be communicated to people who do not admit the existence of such truth (at least in theory). The apologetic method of the past hundred or so years, the "evidence-that-demands-a-verdict" approach, isn't particularly successful anymore. Is there something that can replace it, so we can better communicate the faith to those that have rejected Enlightenment rationalism? That is the question that Chang attempts to answer here.

There is, as one reviewer below says, a danger in falling under the sway of postmodernist presuppositions oneself when attempting to engage with postmodernists. He believes Chang has taken this fall to a certain extent; I do not. By emphasizing the faith as story (or as myth even, remembering that it is a myth that happens to be true) rather than as a set of propositions that need to be embraced rationalistically, one need not tumble into subjectivism or relativism. To me, Chang does a good job of maneuvering between this rock and hard place.
I must also say that the previous reviewer's claim that Augustine himself fell into this trap, thus paving the way for Roman Catholicism's acceptance of devotion utilizing images and physical objects, is more than slightly wrongheaded. This reviewer is repeating (whether he knows it or not) old iconoclastic arguments that have been dealt with by both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, and it would do him well to read some of the works that Chang refers to when discussing this subject.

If there is one complaint about the book, it is Chang's reliance on contemporary, critical church history works. One is given a picture of the church of both Augustine's and Aquinas' times as muddled, ignorant and compromised. Undoubtedly there were some elements of the church that were like that (as there are today) but one needs to balance that picture by reading more positive appraisals such as Rowan Greer's BROKEN LIGHTS AND MENDED LIVES, which includes a valuable discussion of Augustine and his times.

All in all, though, this is a work well worth reading by anyone who is interested in the clash between Christianity and postmodern culture.

Another significant addition to the Works of Saint Augustine by New City Press. This addition contains all the particular treatises of the Great Doctor of the West dedicated to sexuality, save one ("On Marriage and Concupiscence" also in this series, in the Anti-Pelagian Collection).
The angle of this edition, demarked as "a translation for the 21st Century," is certainly borne out, for better or worse, by its translator's word choices. It does sound at times as though its individual treatises did not come from the turn of the fifth century, but from the turn of the 21st century. Yet this should lead to minimal difficulty.
The signature of the Works of Augustine, their excellent binding and notes, makes this volume an enduring component for any study. Dr. Rotelle has done a worthy job of introducing each treatise and has guaranteed that these treatises will be available for the modern debate.

This is a collection of short works by Augustine on the title subject (marriage and virginity). The table of contents is as follows:

General Introduction

The Excellence of Marriage (with introduction and notes)

Holy Virginity (with introduction and notes)

The Excellence of Widowhood (with introduction and notes)

Adulterous Marriages (with introduction and notes)

Continence (with introduction and notes)

Index of Scripture

General Index

All of the works in this collection were translated by Ray Kearney. In addition to the General Introduction, each work has a short introduction of its own and notes at the end. The introductions and notes are by David G. Hunter. The introductions aim to provide historical context for the works, with the general introduction providing an overview of the twenty-year period from which these works were written, and the individual introductions providing the background for each particular work. The notes supplied at the end mostly identify Augustine's references to other works, both by himself and by others. The supplementary material is not copious, but doesn't really need to be; none of the works in this collection is obscure or difficult.

"The Excellence of Marriage" was one of Augustine's most influential works. He wrote it to define the purpose of marriage and to defend it as a good - not as good as holy virginity but a good nevertheless. To this end, he defined the purpose of marriage (what goods it brings to those in the married state), and from this what the duties of marriage must therefore be. It is a work at once strange and familiar. It is strange in the pains it takes to defend the idea that marriage is not actually sinful (a charge that few would even think to make today). It is familiar in that many of the most criticized aspects of the Catholic view of marriage, such as the denial of divorce and the sinfulness of non-procreative sex, are presented and defended in this work. It is a powerful presentation of these embattled points of doctrine and well worth reading.

"Holy Virginity" is a work that necessarily followed Augustine's works on marriage. Having defended the goodness of marriage, a defense of the superior goodness of virginity was required. The argument is rhetorical in form and scriptural in content. The main purpose is completed fairly quickly - Augustine draws on the lives of Mary, Jesus, the Apostles, and the teachings of Paul to establish that holy virginity is a good thing. Surprisingly, he then devotes considerable space to warning those practicing virginity not to be over-proud of their state and its superiority over marriage and to caution those practicing virginity to humility.

"The Excellence of Widowhood" is a long letter written to a widow asking Augustine's advice. In content it is fairly thin, but it was interesting to note that in it Augustine explicitly names a simple principal underlying much of his writing - precept first, then exhortation. The precept here (that widowhood is an honorable state) is a small one, and is treated at much more length than its worth would seem to warrant.

"Adulterous Marriages" is a treatment of a variety of possible issues and complications surrounding adultery, particularly with regard to separation and remarriage. It was built on the same theological foundations as "The Good of Marriage", but was aimed less at expounding doctrine than answering possible objections to it and clarifying the finer points. It almost serves as a set of appendices to that prior and more foundational work.

"Continence" was written, surprising as it may seem to a modern audience, not to defend continence but to defend the goodness of creation in general and marriage in particular. The opposing position was Manichaean dualism, which taught that everything good was in the soul and everything bad was in the body. As he so often had to do, Augustine had to attack one extreme while at the same time not seeming to endorse the other.

The Julian of the title is Julian of Eclanum, fifth century bishop and a disciple of Pelagius, the British monk who championed the idea of a radically free will, one which had no need of grace in order to do good. Augustine had responded before to Julian, in his Answer to the Two Letters of the Pelagians and his Marriage and Desire, and in this work Augustine responds once again, this time to Julian's To Florus, addressed to a Pelagian Bishop. In that work, Julian had defended the Pelagian theology, and attacked that of Augustine. In the Unfinished Work against Julian, begun in 427 and left unfinished at Augustine's death in 430, Augustine offers a paragraph by paragraph reply. The text alternates quotations from Julian's work with Augustine's commentary thereon. It is one of Augustine's largest works and has not previously been translated into English. Reading it, it is easy to understand why.

Augustine is not at his best here. He often comes across as a tired, cranky old man. Even the most dedicated of Augustinians would find it hard to slog though this interminable work. Much of the time Julian and Augustine are two old men sniping at each other, with Julian accusing Augustine of being a Manichee, and Augustine reminding Julian that his teacher, Pelagius, had already been condemned by the church. The number of names by which they ridicule each other, and the invectives they toss around, do not show either one in the best light.

But this is not to say that there is nothing worthwhile in the work. Because Augustine quotes Julian's work before replying, it offers the most extensive exposition of the Pelagian doctrine from a Pelagian's point of view. At the same time it offers a detailed exposition of Augustine's view of the effects of the Fall, a view he is forced to refine because of the nature of this work. One of the most interesting controversies is that concerning unbaptized babies. Julian argues that the doctrine of original sin makes marriage the work of the devil and brings into disrepute human nature itself. Augustine continues his traditional defense of marriage, and reiterates his position, seen especially in book fourteen of the City of God, that had Adam and Eve not sinned, the flesh, and hence sexual desire, would have been subject to the will.

One of the main controversies concerns how original sin is passed on. Augustine claims it is by generation, Julian that it is by imitation. They each offer their own interpretations of Paul's Epistle to the Romans and of Genesis. Julian argues that a just God could not punish individuals for a sin they did not commit., as is the case with original sin. Augustine upholds the traditional teaching about the gravity of the sin of Adam and Eve, and its dire effects on the human race, and argues on behalf of the grace of God. Questions of grace and free will come up, and are debated, with appeals to Scripture and the nature of God. And the question of evil is treated at length.

Unlike the other volumes that Teske has translated for this series, this one does not contain a detailed summary. The table of contents, however, offers a detailed list of topics. And in the general introduction Teske offers an exposition of the key topics. At the back of the book is the usual index of Scripture citations and a general index.

Richard Price does an wonderful job touching on the theology of Bishop Augustine, as well as giving a simplistic introduction to the Saint.

Augustine of Hippo wrote some of the most influential Christian doctrine, but it was, and is, very difficult reading for the layperson.

This book puts forth Augustine's difficult topics like Original Sin, Relations within the Church, and the Trinity in an easily read format. The book is dry at times, but is still a most enlightning read.

If you are looking for a beginner book on Saint Augustine of Hippo, or if you are looking for a brief review of this Holy Doctor of the Church, than this is a very good resource.

The theological insight propounded by Augustine, in his "Enchiridion"(Greeek for handbook),remains unparrelled when contrasted with the concise nature of this work. Augustine necessitated nearly all the creedal professions and beliefs of the Nicene Fathers with an uncanny brievity. As intended, then, for an educated Roman layman, the "Enchiridion," now, raises interest in those who come in contact with it today.

The three-fold division of faith, hope and love, at times, seems a bit obscure and difficult to detect. In other words, I had some trouble identifying Augustine's thesis as a whole(as the translators did also). However, this was mearly a work that was quickly thrown together(Augustine makes this apparent at the opening),and is to be highly respected for its in-depth learning. I doubt that Augustine intened his "handbook" to become some sort of "magnum opus"...it's strictly a handbook.

Augustine also deals with grace, original sin, repentance, and predestination with a scholars lore. This work conveys an image of Augustine's thought in relation to the Orthodox beliefs of Christianity then and now, and continues to stand as not his greatest, but yet, one of his most unique works.

"The Rhetoric of Religion" is the unofficial third volume in Burke's second trilogy (a claim also made by some for "Language As Symbolic Action"), following his "Rhetoric" and "Grammar of Motives," although it is clearly neither the summation nor the completion of his line of inquiry begun in those other volumes. What makes this volume stand out is more the applied use of his concepts than their theoretical development. Burke offers a short discussion on "On Words and The Word" before proceeding to a detailed analysis of verbal action in St. Augustine's "Confessions." For me the key section is his analysis of the first three chapters of Genesis, where he works backwards to explain the creation of the Creation story, the best explication of Burke's Iron Law of History. Returning to his literary roots, the final section finds Burke offering a conversation between God and Satan in "Prologue in Heaven," where Burke literally puts his case before the highest court.

Ultimately, the point is one that Burke has sounded before: that we should not be using terminologies developed in laboratories for our study of human motives. Instead, Burke offers his theories of transcendence and the model of the symbolic act as developed over the previous four decades. Consequently, "The Rhetoric of Religion" is not a book with which to begin your inquiry into either Burke or the field of rhetoric and social theory, but rather the volume that provides a more practical application of his work. Like "Language As Symbolic Action," it should be read after going through his "Rhetoric" and "Grammar" volumes.

There's no place like Hippo for the holidays. Especially when it's the turn of the fifth century and you've gotten yourself over to the cathedral early enough to score a good spot for the bishop's Mass. I'm telling you, that guy can flat-out preach.

Fast-forward 16 centuries. Many familiar with St. Augustine know him from his greatest written works, The Confessions and The City of God. Both are bedrocks in the Western literary canon, fussed over by students not only of literature, but also of history, philosophy and theology. But how many of us, his fawning fans included, know what it was like to have your ears tickled by the very voice of Christendom's greatest genius?

William Griffin thinks he has a pretty good idea. And he does a fine and fun job of putting his insights across in these translations of Augustine's Christmas-season sermons.

This is Augustine like you've never read him. Glib, pointed, playful, colloquial, streetwise: He'll say whatever needs to be said to get you to let the facts of Christ's coming open your mind, penetrate your heart and change your life. And, true to form, for all his crafty rhetorical flourishes, he doesn't speak a word or even think a thought that can't be directly traced to Scripture. We already knew that about the bishop of Hippo, but we haven't seen it relayed in quite this way before.

"Let's recognize this day for what it is, my dear Brothers and Sisters," Griffin's Augustine says of Christmas. "Let's pretend we ourselves are the day! Yes, when we were living unfaithfully, we were the night. Indeed the slip-sliding in our faith had made the nights longer and colder till day itself was about to be snuffed. That's how it was on the day Our Lord Jesus Christ was born. The shortest day of the year. The Winter Solstice. From this point onward in human history, the nights grew shorter, the days longer." John 1:9, anyone?

Just as Augustine was a dexterous and innovative interpreter of the Word of God, ever intent on making the Bible accessible to the widest possible swath of humanity, so Griffin shows himself a witty and creative interpreter of the words of Augustine. In fact, so breezy is the sermonizing here that many turns of phrase beg the question: At what point does Augustine leave off and Griffin pick up?

The latter drops some helpful clues. The largest single section of Griffin's informative and entertaining foreword is an apologia for his use of the paraphrasal method of translation, rather than the literal, in turning ancient Latin into contemporary English. It's an approach that allows him to present Augustine as he might sound were he alive today.

Naturally, it also permits plenty of leeway for artistic indulgence. "Neither [men nor women] should give the Creator the finger," Griffin has the saint saying, "for that horrible trick he played on them in the Garden."

The bishop of Hippo may well have been similarly jarring in person. But would he have used so low-brow an expression -- in a homily? I'm not sure, but I'm giving Griffin a pass on that passage and several others in the same vein because, on the whole, Augustine in this brusque, thoroughly modern voice is so arresting and thought-provoking. There are worse ways to get good theology. And I've seen no better way to absorb Augustine for Advent.

"The angel delivered the message," we read. "Kindly the Virgin listened to it. Against her better judgment she believed it. The conception took place. Faith in her soul. Christ in her womb. And that's all there was to it. ... What storyteller -- the great Isaiah included -- could do Justice to a birth like that?"

If Augustine wasn't up to the job, neither is William Griffin. But what a joy their combined efforts are to read -- make that hear -- as Christmastide comes each year.

David Pearson is features editor of the National Catholic Register.

Dr. Boice's "Two Cities, Two Loves" intuitively hilights how Christians can influence the society in which they live by recognizing and lovingly addressing the candid realities of the society in which they live. Dr. Boice uncovers compelling evidence which reveals many shortcomings of the church at large and discusses relevant Scriptural truths which are necessary for every person who calls themselves "Christian" to embrace. He binds everything together with applicable exhortations to "pick up the torch" of genuine Christian living in a secular society. The point? To make America, town by town, a better place to live through living virtously, drawing people to inquire about the God we serve.