Saint Augustine: A Life (Penguin Lives Biographies)

Saint Augustine follows its subject from his youth in fourth-century Africa to his conversion and subsequent development as a theologian. It challenges the widely held misconceptions about Augustine s sexual excesses and shows how, in embracing classical philosophy, Augustine managed to enlist pagan authors in the defense of Christianity. The result is a biography that makes a spiritual ancestor feel like our contemporary.

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"Saint Augustine explores both the great ruminator on the human condition and the everyday man who set pen to parchment. It challenges many misconceptions--among them those regarding his early sexual excesses. Here, for students, Christians and voyagers into the new millennium, is a lively and incisive portrait of one who helped shape our thought. "

Wills does two corrections right off the bat that helped to avoid a lot of confusion and made the human drama in Africa more alive. First, he renamed the Confessions the Testimony, since "confessions" in this case doesn't mean going into a box or getting the third degree. "Confessions" means this is what Saint Augustine believed, pure and simple.

Second, he names Saint Augustine's mistress, because Augustine never does. Wills gives her the name Una, meaning one, for she was the one. Wills makes the good point that Saint Augustine may have had a love life that was torrid, but compared to our century, he and Una were like the college couple next door. Saint Augustine, all through his life, was never promiscuous. Augustine and Una had one son from their association, whose name Wills translates as Godsend (from Adeodatus). Augustine was not pleased with the birth, though Godsend became a constant companion until his birth after Augustine returned to Africa.

Augustine founded a monastic order that exists to this day. Two American colleges (Villanova and Merrimack) are Augustinian schools. He wrote and expounded on a wide range of topics. His meditation on the Trinity is still compelling: The Father created the Son, and the love between the two formed the Holy Spirit. In an earlier work, Wills said that the first two verses of St. John's Gospel have a sense of turning, as the Father beheld (and turned) on the Concept (logos).

Still another idea was that of original sin, the sin of Adam or the shortcomings we all have for being human. St. Augustine worked that out, and many give their assent to the notion. Wills, in another work, said that he thought original sin said that the human race had a past, as people once talked of women having pasts. Thomas Merton rings in by saying original sin was self-centeredness, and few would deny that an infant is totally self-centered. And G. K. Chesterton wrote that original sin explained why, on a beautiful summer Sunday afternoon, two young children would decide to torture the cat.

For a book so short, it contains a mine of ideas and information. I'm a fan of Wills, and I've read many of his books. I've been waiting for this book for some years now, and this book did not disappoint me.


A fine job on a difficult subject   February 8, 2000
Tom Gillis (Kensington, MD USA)
24 out of 31 found this review helpful

I wanted very much to like this book, and I did by the time Ifinished and reflected on it. A short biography of Augustine, aninfluential but little-known (to modern Americans) figure in Western history, was a great idea. Writing a biography of someone like Augustine is difficult -- little information is available other than Augustine's surviving writings. The successful biographer needs to ground the available information, and a critical rereading of previous biographies, in our current understanding of the state of society at that time. Garry Wills has pulled that off nicely.

Augustine lived in interesting times: Church doctrine was evolving and identifying heretical docrines (e.g., Donatists); the Roman Empire was effectively split in two, with the Western capital moved from Rome to Ravenna; and (mainly) Christianized "barbarian" groups were taking over large sections of the Western Empire (Alaric's Goths captured Rome during Augustine's lifetime, and Augustine died near the end of the Vandal conquest of Roman Africa). Wills successfully places Augustine's life in context of these important events.

Other Amazon reviewers have noted that this is not a good introductory volume. I disagree, as long as the reader has some knowledge of the historical period. Even in that case, however, the early sections of the book can drag -- e.g., with lengthy reinterpretations of specific Augustinian phrases. But how can one complain about an Augustine biography that (in the final pages, anyhow) manages to incorporate discussions of both Roth's "Portnoy's Complaint" and Chesterton's "Secrets of Father Brown"?


A relatively pain-free introduction to Augustine   February 17, 2000
Tom Gillis (Kensington, MD USA)
19 out of 22 found this review helpful

I wanted very much to like this book, and I did by the time I finished and reflected on it. Publication of a short biography of Augustine, an influential but little-known (to modern Americans) figure in Western history, was a great idea, and I'm pleased that Penguin took on the project.

Writing a biography of someone like Augustine is difficult -- little information is available other than Augustine's surviving writings. The successful biographer needs to ground the available information, and a critical rereading of previous biographies, in our current understanding of the state of society at that time. Garry Wills has pulled that off nicely.

Augustine lived in interesting times: Church doctrine was evolving while identifying heretical docrines (e.g., Donatists); the Roman Empire was effectively split in two, with the Western capital moved from Rome to Ravenna; and (mainly) Christianized "barbarian" groups were taking over large sections of the Western Empire (Alaric's Goths captured Rome during Augustine's lifetime, and Augustine died near the end of the Vandal conquest of Roman Africa). Wills successfully places Augustine's life in context of these important events.

Other Amazon reviewers have noted that this is not a good introductory volume. I disagree, as long as the reader has some knowledge of the historical period. Even in that case, however, the early sections of the book can drag -- e.g., with lengthy reinterpretations of specific Augustinian phrases. But how can one complain about an Augustine biography that (in the final pages, anyhow) manages to incorporate discussions of both Roth's "Portnoy's Complaint" and Chesterton's "Secrets of Father Brown"?


Small book - small story   November 23, 1999
John W. Pearson (Hawaii)
19 out of 47 found this review helpful

As a non-Catholic I had heard St Augustine's name nevertheless on countless occasions, usually uttered with a suggestion of awe. I wanted to know more, but did not fancy a specialist's tome; yet I wished for more than an encyclopaedia entry. Unfortunately the book is not for the beginner, but supposes much prior knowledge. While the author's view that the saint was not a reprehensible debauchee who made good when his hormones had subsided with age seems somewhat unorthodox (and quite plausible) there is little to put the reader clearly in the historical or geographic or, even, political background. No index, poor bibliography, not a single map. Thus it seems too slight as an introduction to the life of the saint, and is, of course, not a definitive study. It did not inspire me to seek other studies of Augustine. If it could not inspire the author to write in a more inviting manner, perhaps the inspiring days of the saint are long past.


History and Spirit   April 18, 2001
Robin Friedman (Washington, D.C. United States)
17 out of 21 found this review helpful

I was prompted to read this book after reading E.L. Doctorow's novel, City of God. I wanted to learn more about Augustine to think further about the obvious allusion in Doctorow's title, and throughout his book. I had read Augustine before, and was not a total newcomer to his thought. But I need a refresher and something that would expand my limited understanding.

Wills's book is short, clearly written, and presents in an accessible form something of the nature of this complex person, thinker, and theologian. But the book is no mere introduction. It in many ways takes issue with other accounts of Augustine and presents him in a manner that shows why he is worthy of the attention of the modern reader, as he has been of readers throughout the ages.

Wills spends a lot of time arguing that the title "Confessions" for Augustine's most famous work is inappropriate and retitles it "Testimony". This point has been made many times before, but in the process Wills does teach us something about the book. The process is not merely a pedantic exercise. Wills also argues that Augustine was not a sexual libertine in his youth and, actually more importantly for the modern reader, that he was not anti-sexual in his old age. He presents a Christianity that does not despise the body (making the simple point that in Christianity God came to the earth in a body) and that seeks to use the body for God's purpose in humility and love. In fact, Wills presents Augustine as correcting the anti-physical bias of pagan ascetics of his day.

The texts I was interested in for my purposes were the Confessions("Testimony") and City of God. The first text is referred to repeatedly in the first half or so of the book and forms the basis for Wills' discussion of Augustine's life, conversion, and theology. The second book is summarized briefly late in the book, and I found it useful. Again, Wills argues agains an other-worldy interpretation of the City of God and finds Augustine willing to bring the City to earth in a world believers share with nonbelievers through an early form of toleration, through love, and through common purpose.

There is a good, if necesarily brief, description in the book of the closing days of the Roman Empire. This is in itself worth reading and I had known little about it.

I think somebody coming to Augustine for the first time could benefit from the book and be encouraged to think and learn more. I found it useful. I think Penguin is to be commended for its biographical series, making important lives accessible to modern readers in brief, but not superficial texts.