Carol Harrison, over against a broad consensus stemming from Peter Brown's biography, here argues that there was no rupture or revolution in Augustine's theology with Ad Simplicianum and then the Confessions, and that he was fully Christian, fully Pauline, and indeed ‘fully Augustinian’ (p. 286) in terms of sin and grace ever since his conversion in 386. This thorough rereading of the early works of Augustine is thus a major challenge to the prevailing view that Augustine was first a philosophically minded optimist about free will and human capacity, to put it bluntly, and only later (in the throes of ministry and wrestling with Paul's letters in the mid-390s) a theologically minded pessimist about human potential who thus attributed everything to God's grace, even the beginnings of faith.
Harrison first credits Peter Brown's elegant and evocative chapter, ‘The Lost Future’, as the source of the general impression of discontinuity in Augustine's thought even as she absolves him of the excesses reached by some advocates of a ‘revolution’ or even ‘two Augustines’ such as A. Flasch or G. Lettieri (already soundly critiqued by N. Cipriani). In fact, Brown's recent postscript is quoted (pp. 16–17) as a disclaimer of such discontinuities and an invitation to see Augustinian consistency after all. This book is ‘an acceptance of Brown's generous invitation’ (p. 17), at least regarding the early works, although Brown's reconsideration applies both ways, namely, that perhaps the early Augustine was not so ‘optimistic’ nor the older bishop so ‘pessimistic’ as the caricatured discontinuity would have it.
Such an argument for Augustine's theological consistency between 386 and 396 has immense implications not only for the interpretation of his early works, but also and especially for understanding his conversion. Harrison reads the Confessions not as Augustine's reinterpretation of his experience once he became a Pauline champion of grace but as a consistent and trustworthy presentation of his original encounter with St Paul and thus with God's all-sufficient grace back in Milan. There is much at stake here, historically and theologically, and Augustinian studies must now reckon with a major new argument.
Specifically, Harrison's argument has several components. First, she has combed or rather scoured the early works for every hint of ‘Augustinian’ theology regarding sin and grace, free will and St Paul, and presents considerable evidence along those lines. Second, she argues that ‘Creation from Nothing’ (chapter 4) contains within itself the original break from Platonism and the Manichees as well as an utter reliance on God's grace. Third, she interprets On Free Will not as charting the change in Augustine but as fundamentally consistent from first book to last; the early texts that seem to affirm free will only refer to ‘a theoretical description of Adam before the Fall’ (p. 224) whereas humanity's present state is hopelessly fallen and thus in abject need of God's grace. This ‘is what Augustine tells us in the Retractationes: why should we not believe him?’ (p. 237).
The complication in all of this is that the elderly bishop himself tells us in his Retractationes that when it came to Romans he ‘indeed laboured in defence of the free choice of the human will, but the grace of God conquered’ (p. 151). Harrison argues that only in a few passages (e.g. the Expositio) did Augustine ever waver on the issue of grace, and specifically on whether to credit God with the initium fidei or the beginning of faith. When, to Simplician, the bishop of Hippo finally attributes even the start of faith to God's grace, this was ‘a decisive step’ but nothing ‘groundbreaking or earthshattering’, more of a ‘natural evolution’ (adducing Hombert, and earlier Madec) than a revolution (pp. 151–2). (Yet it seems unnecessarily speculative to assert here that this was ‘what he had always, deep down, believed’.) From the later perspective of Pelagian controversies, including the sixteenth century, perhaps the initium fidei was exactly the pivotal point, yet Harrison's argument needs to minimise it, within her discussion of ‘Revolution or Evolution’ in chapter 5 on Paul.
In the end, Harrison's evidence and argument do successfully qualify the many excessive claims for a ‘revolution’ or utter discontinuity in Augustine's early thought. That alone constitutes a major contribution to the literature. Yet in her pedagogical repetitions of the argument for continuity, she sometimes suggests a static and finished ‘sameness’ to all the early works at once without allowing for different contexts or any development of Augustine's thought over time. On that front, the preface admits that in her ‘overzealous and overconfident excesses’ she may ‘have overstated it and failed to allow for the new convert to evolve [original emphasis] into the new bishop’ (p. vii). Disarming disclaimers aside, Augustinian scholarship should welcome this course correction and look again at the early works through the Confessions as a matter of gradual evolution rather than abrupt revolution or as simple continuity.
The book is elegantly written, if occasionally repetitive, and solidly produced, except for the reversal of the cover art wherein the baptismal blessing of Ambrose is left-handed and Mo(nica) seems to be chanting ‘om’!
