Monroe introduces his superb book by emphasising the role of humility in Confessions. Augustine, in authoring Confessions, thinks such humility is what he lacked prior to his conversion. But as Monroe points out, Augustine's writings in his first years as a Christian exhibit a general absence of references to humility. This fact suggests that Augustine's theology developed quite significantly in the mid-390s. In this respect, he agrees with Michael Cameron and Joanne McWilliam.
The first chapter traces Books I–VI of Confessions. Monroe notes that as a child, Augustine in the midst of an illness begged his mother to have him baptised. Although Monica agreed, she changed her mind when the illness subsided. Monroe argues that in recounting this story and describing his youthful disordered desires, Augustine is teaching that faith is not enough – baptism is needed. Even when the young Augustine knows the truth, his will turns away from it in pride. His pride makes it impossible for him to receive the humble Christ revealed in the Scriptures whose literary presentation is itself humble. Instead, he embraces the pride of Manichaeanism, masking a foolish inability to apprehend God's incorporeality and transcendent causality.
Monroe pays a good bit of attention to Augustine's story of his friend who, while enduring a mortal illness, received baptism and experienced great joy and peace. By contrast, Augustine the Manichaean considered that baptism could have little or no value. Nor did Augustine at this time believe that the cross (on which for Manichaeans Jesus only seemed to die) had redemptive power.
The second chapter treats Books VII–X of Confessions. Here, the footnotes contain important engagements with scholarship on Augustine's conversion, to which Monroe adds a persuasive argument that Augustine at the time of writing Confessions viewed his conversion as fully accomplished only through his baptism. The material mediation of the incarnate Word and his sacraments is necessary in order to heal the pride that turns the fallen human will towards nothingness, even when intellectually the truth is known (Monroe recognises that his thesis cuts against that of Phillip Cary). In Monroe's interpretation of Books VII–X, the centre is Augustine's decision to undergo baptism, by which Augustine is incorporated into Christ's body; and the purpose of Book X is to show how the baptised person continues to struggle with sin, aided by the power of the cross and the sacraments.
In Book VII, Augustine attains to wisdom about the incorporeal God, but the result of coming to know the truth is an expansion of his pride and a deepening of his need for the humble Christ. Still under the influence of the Manichaeans, Augustine imagines that Christ is simply a great teacher, and his Christology is Photinian at this time. Monroe distinguishes between ‘moments of new Christological understanding per se’ and ‘moments of Christic incorporation’, and he shows that Augustine in Books VIII and IX places the emphasis on the latter – especially baptism – without relativising the former (p. 80). Book X responds in part to the moral superiority claimed by the Manichaean elect. Augustine makes clear that Christ's baptised followers are still plagued by disordered desires, in need not only of Christ's teaching but also of Christ's cross, heavenly intercession and the eucharist.
The third chapter moves behind the Confessions to the texts written by Augustine between 386 and the early 390s. Monroe finds that the soteriology present by Book IX of Confessions is not present in the writings of the new Christian Augustine. For one thing, the emphasis on humility and pride is not present. For another, the focus is on Christ as teaching or demonstrating ‘the transcendent immaterial truths obscured by the soul's preoccupation with corporeal life’ (p. 112). Christ cleanses the soul's vision and enlightens the soul's ignorance so as to ensure true worship, but Augustine does not reckon with the depth of the will's disorder. During this time, Augustine's theology begins to shift, as Monroe documents, but Augustine continues to think that salvation consists fundamentally in Christ's intellect-centred ‘work of revelation or demonstration’, a work shared in by the sacramental signs (p. 152; cf. pp. 170, 174). The fourth chapter focuses on the writings of the mid-390s, in the context of debates with the Manichaeans and Donatists. A strong humility–pride pairing begins to emerge by 393, and appreciation for the saving power of Christ's historical acts takes shape as well. Drawing upon such texts as 1 Corinthians 8:1, Augustine becomes increasingly aware – but still not yet fully aware – of the ‘distinction between simple intellective apprehension and apprehension coupled with a healed will’ (p. 200). By the time of Augustine's Commentary on Galatians, as others have also shown, Monroe finds a more mature recognition of ‘[t]he logic of Christ's participation in, and real signification of, human death on the Cross’ as well as the efficacy of the sacraments which ‘participate in the power of Christ's crucified humanity’ (p. 211). But even at this stage, Augustine has not arrived all the way to where he stands in Confessions.
The fifth chapter brings the book to conclusion. Indebted to Patout Burns, Monroe shows that the final shift occurs when Augustine brings on board the traditional North African sense of baptism's objective saving power. Augustine develops his mature sacramental theology, the one found in Confessions, in polemical dialogue with the Donatists. At the same time, he intensifies his pride–humility pairing to address the fact that the Donatists possess in most respects the true faith, yet have separated themselves from Christ.
Monroe's book is not only a rich exposition of Augustine's soteriological development, but also an inspiring spiritual account. The reader of Monroe's book will gain insight into our own predicament and the way in which Christ and the sacraments are fitting instruments of our (gradual) healing. The result is not only a splendid work of scholarship, but also – Augustine would be pleased! – a splendid work of Catholic spiritual instruction.
