Augustine's Manichaean Dilemma. I: Conversion and Apostasy, 373–388 C.E. (review)

St. Augustine's conversion to Manichaeism in 373 and his remaining in that religion as a Hearer for at least a decade have puzzled many students of the life of the bishop of Hippo, who came to be recognized as one of the great, if not the greatest, of the Western Fathers of the Church. BeDuhn approaches the subject as an historian and not as a philosopher or theologian, and his book uses various contemporary studies of the nature of conversion and apostasy to clarify how the young Augustine was attracted to a group of bright young Manichees in Africa and why he remained with them for so long a time until he finally became disillusioned about being able to make progress in that form of Christianity. His study has, for the first time, made Augustine's conversion to the Manichaean religion and his remaining in it so long intelligible for me. He argues that Manichaeism offered a religion to the young Augustine that promised to satisfy his deepest spiritual and intellectual aspirations—aspirations that remained much the same for Augustine the apostate from Manichaeism and new convert to Catholic Christianity.

Augustine's conversion is often understood as an event that took place in the Milanese garden and that represented a complete transformation of his life to that of a full-fledged Catholic with a solid understanding of the faith illumined by the neoplatonism of Ambrose and others of the Milanese church. One of BeDuhn's central arguments is that not only did Augustine undergo many conversions but also that his conversion in Milan, although a genuine conversion to Catholicism or Nicene Christianity, fell far short of a full intellectual grasp of the character of his newly found faith for at least a decade—that is, until the time at which he wrote the Confessions, which put a quite different spin on the events in Cassiciacum and Milan. BeDuhn clearly shows from the early works of the convert that his appropriation of Catholic doctrine was much slower than is often thought.

The chapter on Faustus is an excellent account of the form of Manichaeism held by the Manichaean bishop and shows how he combined a synthesis of skepticism and religious practice, which led Augustine toward Academic skepticism and back to his original Ciceronian inspiration that he had drawn from the Hortensius. BeDuhn offers many interesting and plausible conjectures—for instance, that Augustine's sudden departure for Rome was due to the implementation of new imperial decrees against Manichaeism and that having the weight of the law against him led him to rethink his commitment to that religion in Milan. BeDuhn also suggests that the fact that Augustine heard in the summer of 386 that an indictment had been issued against him in Carthage in the prosecution of Manichaeism may have led to his sudden retirement to Cassiciacum from his teaching position in Milan. In becoming a catechumen in Nicene Christianity, Augustine "took the path of least resistance, fitting into the dominant element in Milanese society, and pleasing his mother" (p. 195). As BeDuhn sees it, it took Augustine a decade after the conversion scene in the Milanese garden to realize "what conversion would mean for him, to make of himself a 'Catholic' self" (p. 243; emphasis in original). Through an examination of Augustine's writing after his baptism up to the Confessions, BeDuhn persuasively argues that Augustine only gradually appropriated the central doctrines of Nicene Christianity, although the Confessions might seem to indicate that this was the achievement of a moment.

The present volume is the first in a series of three that the author has planned and leads the reader to eagerly anticipate its successors.