Augustine of Hippo: Instructing Beginners in Faith (review)

In late 403, Augustine got a letter from Deogratias, a deacon of the church in Carthage. Deogratias was in charge of instructing of new converts and had real talent: a good knowledge of Scripture and a flair for teaching. But his lectures had, by his own admission, gotten a little boring, and he was struggling with burnout. So he sought Augustine's advice. Augustine answered with a brief, but brilliant treatise, Instructing Beginners in Faith (De catechizandis rudibus). This minor masterpiece is the latest volume translated for the "Augustine Series," an offshoot of New City Press's multi-volume (and generally excellent) Works of Saint Augustine. It is the first new English translation of the work since J. P. Christopher's 1946 version in the "Ancient Christian Writers" series and the first to take advantage of the critical edition in the Corpus Christianorum.

Instructing Beginners is a unique document in the surviving literature from the ancient catechumenate. No other text details so vividly that first life-altering rite of passage from pagan inquirer to apprentice Christian. In the treatise, Augustine focuses on three matters: the types and motives of inquirers; the structure and content of the catechist's evangelical address; and the emotional attitude of the catechist himself. Augustine notes that many converts came haunted by ominous dreams or visions. Some newcomers were highly learned and earnest, others humble and illiterate, still others haughty and half-educated, prone to judge catechists more by their rhetorical embellishments than by the character of their content. Augustine takes on problems familiar to veteran teachers. What if the person lies about his motives? Well, use a shrewd psychology: "you must make . . . the lie itself the starting point" not to unmask it, but to "bring him to the point that he actually enjoys being the kind of person that he wishes to appear" (p. 74). What if the audience starts yawning? Say something clever, humorous, or awe-inspiring. What if the person is not very bright? Well, "we should say much on his behalf to God rather than saying much to him about God" (p. 100).

Ancient North African churches gave converts only a single evangelical talk before welcoming them into the catechumenate. That talk, Augustine advised, should survey salvation history, and the biblical episodes that one focuses upon should be woven together by the "golden thread" of a twofold love of God and of neighbor (p. 77). Augustine was deeply concerned about a catechist's attitude. One needed hilaritas, "cheerfulness" (p. 88), and should approach inquirers "with a brother's love, or a father's or a mother's" (p. 97). This created a sacred empathy: "when our listeners are touched by us as we speak and we are touched by them as they learn, each of us comes to dwell in the other, and so they as it were speak in us what they hear, while we in some way learn in them what we teach" (p. 97).

The volume's translator, Raymond Canning of Australian Catholic University, provides a helpful introduction and solid notes. Following Pierre-Marie Hombert, Canning suggests redating the work from 400 to 403. He counters the stock view about the delay of baptism in the fifth-century Church and cites Eric Rebillard's judgment that "there is nothing in Augustine's preaching that justifies thought of crowds of indifferent Christians waiting until the hour of their death to be baptized" (pp. 20-21).

Augustine's highly crafted Latin, full of intricate wordplay and contrapuntal phraseology, poses great challenges for any translator. Canning favors a highly literal translation that reproduces Augustine's fondness for the passive voice and tries to mirror his long-lined and ornamented sentence structure. This approach comes at a cost. Canning's English has a less poetic and more abstract feel than Augustine's original.

This work should be required reading not only for pastors but also...