A New Approach to Augustine's Dialogues

Abstract

Nearly all twenty-first-century readers of St. Augustine of Hippo become interested in him after reading the story of his Confessions. Yet when nonspecialists want to read more of him, they are directed to the later and more magisterial writings whose author is not immediately recognizable as the young searcher from the Confessions: City of God, On The Trinity, On Christian Doctrine, the scriptural commentaries, the anti-Pelagian tracts. The bishop of Hippo, unlike his younger self—and also unlike his philosophic predecessors, as he well knew—was obligated not to let so much as his word choice cause scandal to pious and uneducated ears.1