Made up of three books that are the earliest extant works of St. Augustine, these works claim to give a reliable picture of the mind and way of life of one of the greatest figures of the West, precisely at the moment that was for him most critical and vital. Augustine's Confessions and his earliest philosophical writings, represented here, are his most accessible extant works. Although his pieces are against pagan Platonism they represent the thought world which he and many other educated persons, pagan and Christian, inhabited at the time.

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

St. Augustine and Roman law are the two bridges from Athens and Jerusalem to the world of modern law. Augustine's almost eerily modern political realism was based upon his deep appreciation of human evil, arising from his insights into the human personality, the product of his reflections on his own life and the history of his times. These insights have traveled well through the ages and are mirrored in the pages of Aquinas, Luther and Calvin, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hannah Arendt. The articles in this volume describe the life and world of Augustine and the ways in which he conceived both justice and law. They also discuss the little recognized Augustinian contributions to the field of modern hermeneutics - the discipline which informs the art of legal interpretation. Finally, they include Augustine's valuable discussion of church/state relations, the law of just wars, and proper role and limits of coercion, and the procreative dimensions of marriage. The volume also includes an extremely useful, definitive bibliography of Augustine and the law, and will leave readers with an increased appreciation of the contributions which Augustine has made to the history of jurisprudence. No one can read Augustine and these articles on his view of the law without taking away a new view of the law itself.

After setting Augustine's thought firmly within the context of his life and times, Ryan Topping examines in turn the causes of education (the purposes, pedagogy, curriculum, and limits of learning) as Augustine understood them. Augustine's towering influence over Medieval and Renaissance theorists – from Hugh of St Victor, to Aquinas, to Erasmus – is traced. The book concludes by drawing Augustine into dialogue with contemporary philosophers, exploring the influence of his meditations on higher education and suggesting how his ideas can reinvigorate for our generation the project of liberal learning.

The most influential of Augustine's works, City of God played a decisive role in the formation of the Christian West. Augustine wrote City of God in the aftermath of the Gothic sack of Rome in AD 410, at a time of rapid Christianization across the Roman Empire. Gerard O'Daly's book remains the most comprehensive modern guide in any language to this seminal work of European literature. In this new and extensively revised edition, O'Daly takes into account the abundant scholarship on Augustine in the twenty years since its first publication, while retaining the book's focus on Augustine as a writer in the Latin tradition. He explores the many themes of City of God, which include cosmology, political thought, anti-pagan polemic, Christian apologetic, theory of history, and biblical interpretation. This guide, therefore, is about a single literary masterpiece, yet at the same time it surveys Augustine's developing views through the whole range of his thought. As well as a running commentary on each part of the work, O'Daly provides chapters on the themes of the work, a bibliographical guide to research on its reception, translations of any Greek and Latin texts discussed, and detailed suggestions for further reading.

This title was first published in 2000: Augustine of Hippo (354-430 CE) - Bishop, theologian, philosopher, and rhetorician - has left a rich legacy for reflection upon relationships between Christianity and culture, between Christian catechesis and liberal education, and between faith and reason. Contemporary educational institutions have begun to explore their roots, digging into their intellectual traditions for the resources for renewal of liberal education. Augustine and Liberal Education sheds light on liberal education past and present, from an Augustinian point of view. Ranging from historical investigations of particular themes and issues in the thought of Saint Augustine, to reflections on the role of tradition and community and the challenges and opportunities facing universities in the next century, the contributors return to the sources of traditional reflection whilst exploring contemporary issues of education and 'the good life'. Essays on Augustinian inquiry in medieval and modern eras address critical questions on the role of rhetoric, reading, and authority in education, on the social context of learning, and on the relationship between liberal education and properly Christian catechesis. Contemporary questions on liberal education from philosophical, political, theological, and ethical perspectives are then explored in the essays which move from the past to the present. This book offers a valuable contribution to the growing scholarship on Catholic universities and on Augustine of Hippo, engaging in 'Augustinian inquiry' and pointing to possibilities for renewal in liberal education in the twenty-first century.