Augustine’s Theology of Preaching. By Peter T. Sanlon.

Abstract

W hile the format of this book is largely given by its origins in a doctoral thesis, it is aimed primarily not at fellow academics or students (though the latter in particular may benefit from its clarity of argument and accessible prose style) but at those with a lively interest in preaching the Word of God. To judge by the preface and introduction, it is written in particular for those whose interest is informed by an evangelical protestant faith, but its merit is by no means limited to this readership. The book serves its readers by illuminating for them the ‘undergirding theological convictions which shaped Augustine’s approach to the task of preaching’ through study of his Sermones ad populum (p. xix), some 590 of which have come down to us. Chapter 1 is entitled ‘The Historical Context of Augustine’s Preaching’ and offers an extremely brief account (21 pages) of the North African ecclesial context and earlier Christian preaching. It may be helpful for newcomers to Augustine and early Christianity, but others will find it thin (Origen and his allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament is a significant omission, while the account of Ambrose’s preaching says nothing of his hermeneutical debt to Basil and through Basil to Origen). Chapter 2, ‘Pagan Oratory’, offers snapshots of major figures in the pagan oratorical tradition: Gorgias, Plato, Cicero, Quintilian, and Apuleius. Scripture is introduced as the authority which replaces for Augustine Plato’s reliance upon ‘philosophical truth’. Christ is the teacher who speaks exteriorly through Scripture and interiorly within the believer’s heart in the reception of Scripture. Sanlon holds that Augustine’s ‘immersion in scripture’ together with his reflection on the ‘inadequate anthropologies of Pelagianism and Stoicism’ (p. 44) led to a new understanding of the heart rather than the mind or pure intellect as the focus of the preacher’s ministry. The heart could be swayed by the temporal or narrative dimension of Scripture as Augustine invited listeners into the story where ‘they could be forgetful of their prior self-interpretations’ and their loves could be reordered (p. 45). For Sanlon, this means that ‘Augustine’s preaching brought an authority to bear upon listeners with an inner power which surpassed that available to secular rhetoric’.