Augustine's Early Theology of the Church

The Author: David C. Alexander received his B.A. in history and physics from Rice University, Houston, Texas. He completed the M.Th. program of study en route to receiving his Ph.D. in patristic history and theology from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He now lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, where as an independent scholar he researches, writes, and travels to lecture on Augustine, early Christianity, and Christian doctrine and practice. Alexander has taught lay, undergraduate, and graduate courses on these subjects on four continents and has traveled extensively in the Mediterranean world of early Christianity including North Africa. He has published on Augustine in Studia Patristica.

«David C. Alexander has written a work of immense learning and applications about a period in Augustine's early writing of very great significance for Augustine's later theology, and which greatly needed to be written. Alexander's thesis, with which I agree, is that Augustine's conversion was brought about by contemplative experiences of a markedly Platonic character, in which communal worship and active participation in the life of the Church played only a limited part. The Cassiciacum discussions were therefore essentially individualistic, being concerned with the manner in which a Christian can raise himself to the Vision of God by an intellectual effort, like the Vision of Ostia. In the years following Cassiciacum, Augustine became increasingly an apologist for Christianity and increasingly concerned himself with the 'rudes ac simplices', those humbler believers who were not intellectuals but followers of Christ who held the faith and were nourished by the sacraments, the people to whom Augustine was later to minister as priest and bishop of Hippo. In the period 387-391, however, his desire was to be a teacher of the Church and Christian apologist rather than a priest, especially in the increasingly monastic atmosphere of the Thagaste community. Alexander traces these developments with considerable thoroughness and great erudition. Alexander's narrative and three appendices to the study illustrate the increasing use of technical ecclesiastical terminology in Augustine's treatises, culminating in the 'De Vera Religione', which can be seen as ushering in the great writing of his episcopate. I have been much impressed by Alexander's work and welcome its publication.» (Gerald Bonner, Emeritus Reader of Theology, University of Durham, England; Distinguished Professor of Early Christian Studies, Catholic University of America)
«David C. Alexander's study of Augustine's early understanding of the church will take its place among a handful of essential works for