The first fruits of the literary career of St Augustine, the great theologian and Christian philosopher par excellence, are the dialogues he wrote at Cassiciacum in Italy following his famous conversion in Milan in AD 386. These four little books, largely neglected by scholars, take up the ancient philosophical project of identifying the principles and practices that heal human desires in order to attain happiness, renewing this philosophical endeavour with insights from Christian theology. Augustine's later books, such as the Confessions, would continue this project of healing desire, as would the writings of others including Boethius, Anselm, and Aquinas. Mark J. Boone's The Conversion and Therapy of Desire investigates the roots of thisproject at Cassiciacum, where Augustine is developing a Christian theology of desire, informed by Neoplatonism but transformed by Christian teaching and practices.

The first fruits of the literary career of St. Augustine, the great theologian and Christian philosopher par excellence, are the dialogues he wrote at Cassiciacum in Italy following his famous conversion in Milan in 386 AD. These four little books, largely neglected by scholars, investigate knowledge, ethics, metaphysics, the problem of evil, and the intriguing relationship of God and the soul. They also take up the ancient philosophical project of identifying the principles and practices that heal human desires in order to attain happiness, renewing this philosophical endeavor with insights from Christian theology. Augustine's later books, such as the Confessions, would continue this project of healing desire, as would the writings of others including Boethius, Anselm, and Aquinas. Mark Boone's The Conversion and Therapy of Desire investigates the roots of this project at Cassiciacum, where Augustine is developing a Christian theology of desire, informed by Neoplatonism but transformed by Christian teaching and practices.

In Reason, Authority, and the Healing of Desire in the Writings of Augustine, Mark Boone explains the theology of desire developed in a cross-section of Augustine’s On the True Religion, On the Nature of Good, On Free Choice of the Will, On the Teacher, On the Usefulness of Believing, On the Good of Marriage, Enchiridion, and Confessions. Throughout his writings and in many ways, Augustine develops a Platonically informed, yet distinctively Christian, account of desire. Human desire should respond to the goodness inherent in things, loving the greatest good above all and great goods more than lesser goods. Above all, we should love God and souls. Sin, an inappropriate desire for lesser goods, is healed by the redemption of Christ.

A fresh, new translation of Augustine’s fourth work as a Christian convert The first four works written by St. Augustine of Hippo after his conversion to Christianity are dialogues that have influenced prominent thinkers from Boethius to Bernard Lonergan. Usually called the Cassiciacum dialogues, these four works are of a high literary and intellectual quality, combining Ciceronian and neo-Platonic philosophy, Roman comedy and Vergilian poetry, and early Christian theology. They are also, arguably, Augustine’s most charming works, exhibiting his whimsical levity and ironic wryness. Soliloquies is the fourth work in this tetralogy. Augustine coined the term “soliloquy” to describe this new form of dialogue. Soliloquies, a conversation between Augustine and his reason, fuses the dialogue genre and Roman theater, opening with a search for intellectual and moral self-knowledge before converging on the nature of truth and the question of the soul’s immortality. Foley’s volume also includes On the Immortality of the Soul, which consists of notes for the unfinished portion of the work.

A fresh, new translation of Augustine's third work as a Christian convert The first four works written by St. Augustine of Hippo after his conversion to Christianity are dialogues that have influenced prominent thinkers from Boethius to Bernard Lonergan. Usually called the "Cassiciacum dialogues," these four works are of a high literary and intellectual quality, combining Ciceronian and neo-Platonic philosophy, Roman comedy and Vergilian poetry, and early Christian theology. They are also, arguably, Augustine's most charming works, exhibiting his whimsical levity and ironic wryness. On Order is the third work in this tetralogy, and it is Augustine's only work explicitly devoted to theodicy, the reconciliation of Almighty God's goodness with evil's existence. In this dialogue, Augustine argues that a certain kind of self-knowledge is the key to unlocking the answers to theodicy's vexing questions, and he devotes the latter half of the dialogue to an excursus on the liberal arts as disciplines that will help strengthen the mind to know itself and God.

The relationship between faith and reason is multifaceted. Faith transcends reason in that it is more than reason alone can contain or fully guarantee, yet it is neither unreasonable nor something to which reason is irrelevant--and reason says some pretty fine things about it! This volume updates nine previously published articles on faith and reason by a Christian philosopher who has been studying these matters for two decades, alongside one new essay and a philosophical dialogue. These articles explain and integrate key ideas on faith and reason, including Alvin Plantinga's account of how Christian belief can be knowledge even without evidence; defenses of faith from Augustine and William James; accounts of empirical evidence for faith from different world religions; the distinction between faith and sight in the New Testament; the structure of the evidence for the authority of the Bible; the idea that faith transcends reason because some articles of faith are beyond human comprehension, even if we have evidence that they are true; and the nature of faith as a total commitment beyond what the evidence alone can guarantee.

A fresh, new translation of Augustine’s inaugural work as a Christian convert The first four works written by St. Augustine of Hippo after his conversion to Christianity are the “Cassiciacum dialogues,” which have influenced prominent thinkers from Boethius to Bernard Lonergan. In this second, brief dialogue, expertly translated by Michael Foley, Augustine and his mother, brother, son, and friends celebrate his thirty-second birthday by having a “feast of words” on the nature of happiness. They conclude that the truly happy life consists of “having God” through faith, hope, and charity.