Orthodox Readings of Augustine

Few things move me to mockery faster, or awaken a deeper sense of scorn, than those ignorant ravings proffered by people who, without the slightest facility in Latin or the least evidence of any ability to read primary sources and critical editions, nonetheless purport to subject us to their grand theories about how all errors of Latin Christianity may be found in what I call the A Team of Latin Christians: Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas. Which of us has not been subject to some bore holding forth about Augustine's doctrine of original sin, or Anselm's atonement theory, or just about anything in Aquinas as the paradigmatic figure of that wicked movement of "scholasticism"?

That is why that this book, now well over a decade old, is so important to have in a newly reissued form. Both at time of its original publication, and again today, this is such a welcome and important volume, a landmark really, showing significant progress not just in East-West rapprochement but also in the crucial question of how our historiography sometimes keeps us apart as we continue to tell tales about each other's saints and traditions rather than studying them together. If you missed it in 2008 when it first appeared, do not make that mistake again now but be sure to get your copy of this scholary collection newly reissued with a smart Coptic icon on the cover: Orthodox Readings of Augustine, eds. Aristotle Papanikolaou and George E. Demacopoulos (New York: Fordham University Press, 2020), 314pp.

When the original was published, we asked the now-deceased Augustine scholar and sometime Augustinian priest J. Kevin Coyle to review it for Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, which he did in glowing terms.

About this newly reissued collection the publisher tells us this:

Orthodox Readings of Augustine examines the theological engagement with the preeminent Latin theologian Augustine of Hippo in the Orthodox context. Augustine was not widely read in the East until many centuries after his death. However, following his re-introduction in the thirteenth century, the Latin Church Father served as an ecumenical figure, offering Latin and Byzantine theologians a thinker with whom they could bridge linguistic, cultural, and confessional divides.

Contributors: Lewis Ayres, John Behr, David Bradshaw, Brian E. Daley, George E. Demacopoulos, Elizabeth Fisher, Reinhard Flogaus, Carol Harrison, David Bentley Hart, Joseph T. Lienhard, Andrew Louth, Jean-Luc Marion, Aristotle Papanikolaou, and David Tracy