Augustine and His Critics: Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner (review)

Robert Dodaro and George Lawless, editors. Augustine and His Critics: Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. Pp. xiii + 270. $90.

Augustine did not shy away from criticism. As he once remarked: "What I desire for all my works is not merely a kind reader but also a frank critic" (De trin. III, prol. 2). Of course, Augustine has had his fair share of frank critics--from his lifetime to ours. The essays in this festschrift dedicated to Gerald Bonner probe the most fiercely and frequently criticized facets of Augustine's theology. The editors, Robert Dodaro and George Lawless, chose their theme well, for Bonner has spent his career probing Augustine the controversialist, notably in his classic St. Augustine of Hippo: Life and Controversies, and more recently, in his rich-textured studies of the Pelagians. Where Bonner's work has focused on Augustine's ancient critics, this volume turns its attention to his modern ones.

Robert Crouse explores Augustine's Platonism and deftly rebuffs old claims; that Augustine had converted to Platonism rather than Christianity (Alfaric); that he ended up hellenizing the gospel with his illegitimate amalgam of Platonic and Christian concepts (Nygren). Crouse charts how recent advances in understanding "pagan" Platonism allow us new perspectives on the unique contours of Augustine's Christian Platonism, its "systematic simplification" (41). Lewis Ayres explores Augustine's trinitarian thought and masterfully debunks those who "foist" on Augustine "all the evils" that can mar the Latin tradition: that his trinitarianism is insufficiently trinitarian; that it is too Platonic, too focused on unities, and is insufficiently "personal" (52); that it presumes a divine essence prior to or as a source for the divine persons (68). With exquisite care and nuance, Ayres shows the way Augustine used "the grammar of divine simplicity" to etch out, quite tentatively, his trinitarianism--all the while insisting that "there is nothing but the three co-eternal and consubstantial persons" (68). Robert Dodaro confronts Augustine's political thought, dispelling claims that his "politics of confession" paved the way for political author{tar{an{sm and religious intolerance. E. Ann Matter offers a brisk and balanced survey of Augus-tine's attitudes toward women, both specific women with whom he enjoyed varied relationships and "women" considered more abstractly, as a social and theological category. She offers an equally balanced survey and assessment of the feminist critique of Augustine. Mathijs Lamberigts addresses Augustine's views on sexuality--whether Augustine is to blame for putting the "scowl" on the face of Western humanism (176). He focuses especially on the clash between Augustine and Julian of Eclanum. The result is a nuanced (and amply footnoted) compendium of Augustine's intricate views on the paradoxes of sexual desire and the human condition.

The essays in this volume do more than survey what Augustine said or what modern critics claim he said. They correct misconstrues and skewed judgments, and the best ones lay the groundwork for fresh new understandings and genuine advance. Ayres's essay does so brilliantly. So do two other essays. Rowan Williams, in his study "Insubstantial Evil," explores Augustine's "grammar of evil"--that evil is not a thing in itself, but a loss, a corruption of the good. Against objections raised in John Hick's classic Evil and the God of Love, Williams insists that any talk of evil-as-privation is simultaneously talk about God, that, rightly understood--and right understanding is full of paradoxes--Augustine "is engaged in 'despatialising' talk about both God and evil: neither has a place in the universe, neither is a subject competing with others" (120). Williams poignantly addresses postmodernity's denial of a transcendent Good, its fracturing and pluralizing the world into incommensurable goods. Against postmodernist objections raised in Kathleen Sands's Escape from Paradise, Williams argues that Augustine's view of evil-as-privation is a "pincer movement" that forces us...