Augustine and the Cure of Souls: Revising a Classical Ideal (review)

In Augustine and the Cure of Souls, Paul R. Kolbet seeks to cover much ground in a method of Augustinian study that has received little attention in the past decade(s): he analyzes a particular aspect of Augustine’s thought, while he simultaneously refuses to lift it wholesale from the context of his training and pastoral life. Other studies of his life and works have focused narrowly on Augustine the rhetor or Augustine the philosopher or Augustine the pastor; by contrast, Kolbet realizes that studying a “unified” Augustine, rather than a dissected person who is the mere sum of his parts, bears more fruit. Not only does such a study do more justice to the trajectory of his thought (and consequently, depict him more positively), but it also gives the student of ancient Christianity a better vantage point for understanding the relationship of philosophy to theology. Of particular interest to Kolbet is the ancient practice of “psychagogy,” which he defines as referring to “those philosophically articulated traditions of therapy—common in Hellenistic literature—pertaining to how a mature person leads the less mature to perceive and internalize wisdom for themselves” (8). Kolbet contends that this is a leitmotif throughout Augustine’s work, and indeed that it functions clearly despite changes in genre or circumstance.

Kolbet divides his work, eight chapters in total, into three sections: he first establishes the context for Augustine’s thought-world, then works more or less chronologically through his life, and finally focuses on Augustine’s homiletic practices. In chapter 1, Kolbet establishes the Platonic milieu from which Augustine’s psychagogic practice emerged. Plato’s critique of sophistry that exists for its own sake, and his insistence that to be truly affective and effective rhetoric must be informed by philosophy, is the perfect environment in which Augustine can develop a theological psychagogy. In chapter 2, Kolbet sweeps through the rest of Hellenistic philosophy to establish further the developments in psychagogic practice leading up to Augustine’s time. The notion of a “rhetorically enhanced philosophy became widespread” in this society, and served as “a philosophy that could, when necessary, manipulate souls to choose their own good” (60–61).

In part 2, beginning with chapter 3, Kolbet demonstrates how the Christian task of curing one’s soul was altered by theologians, with Augustine as rhetor par excellence, from the practices of their pagan counterparts. To prove this thesis, Kolbet works through Augustine’s biography, focusing on certain formational periods of his life, including his rhetorical training, his conversion and study under Ambrose at Milan, his flirtation with Manichaeism, his philosophical retreat at Cassiciacum, etc. Through each period, Kolbet expertly demonstrates the growing role of psychagogy in Augustine’s writings, as he transitions from academician to bishop. This section culminates in chapter 6, in which Kolbet analyzes Augustine’s psychagogic strategies in De doctrina christiana and De catechizandis rudibus. This is the strongest chapter of the book, as Kolbet is able to demonstrate quite clearly the peculiar roles of preacher, Scripture, and sacraments in the cure of the believer’s soul.

In the final section—chapters 7 and 8—Kolbet briefly addresses Augustine’s explicit role as homilist, elucidating in general how Augustine himself fulfils the role of a psycha-gogue. Augustine’s goal as theological and philosophical rhetor was to assist the listener in seeking higher truths that diminished the effects of sin on the soul, in order to achieve the benefits of a life lived wholly through love of God and neighbour. This conversion requires something more than mere “affirmations” of the audience’s “increasing strength, goodness, or autonomy, but . . . their confession of the very divine goodness that continually exposes their human vulnerability” (94). Thus, one might conclusively state that for Augustine, the proper role of psychagogy is an intense Christian humility, rather than a sort of quasi-Pelagian noetic ascension as the rhetors and philosophers...